Felipe G. Santos

Great timing for our new publication on how the Hungarian opposition reacts to democratic backsliding, after this weekend's huge #BudapestPride2025 march!

We study the strategic choices of the United for Hungary coalition in the 2022 elections.

🧵with link and takeaways👇

Thanks, Daniel!

this looks like a great read!

Opposition electoral strategies against democratic backsliding: the United for Hungary coalition and its 2022 primaries How do opposition actors react to democratic backsliding? Using interviews with party elites and nationally representative survey data, this article explores the motivations behind the formation of...

Ultimately, democratic backsliding creates incentives for both party elites and voters to unite around fundamental democratic values and finding other (non-electoral) venues to challenge an increasing authoritarian government.

Dive into the details here: doi.org/10.1080/1351...

Opposition voters' characteristics mirror these features, as two of the main drivers of participation in the primaries to select the leader of the opposition ticket, and voting for the opposition were dissatisfaction with democracy and involvement in non-electoral activities.

2️⃣ They adopt social movement-like characteristics, such as less strict membership requirements to participate in their organizational activities and a greater importance of non-electoral tactics in their repertoires.

We argue that, when faced with democratic erosion, opposition parties are pushed in two key directions:

1️⃣ They form ideologically diverse coalitions (from left-liberal to far-right, all under one banner), prioritizing a democratic frame over other ideological policy issues.

Opposition electoral strategies against democratic backsliding: the United for Hungary coalition and its 2022 primaries How do opposition actors react to democratic backsliding? Using interviews with party elites and nationally representative survey data, this article explores the motivations behind the formation of...

You can find our full paper "Opposition electoral strategies against democratic backsliding: the United for Hungary coalition and its 2022 primaries," coauthored with Bálint Mikola, in ‪@democratization.bsky.social‬

The paper is available here: doi.org/10.1080/1351...

Great timing for our new publication on how the Hungarian opposition reacts to democratic backsliding, after this weekend's huge #BudapestPride2025 march!

We study the strategic choices of the United for Hungary coalition in the 2022 elections.

🧵with link and takeaways👇

Hoy a las 6 de la tarde. Conéctate!

Repensando la solidaridad contra la represión en Chile y España
🚨 Frente a la criminalización de la protesta pensamos formas de autodefensa, autocuidado y organización de base.
👥 Movimiento Antirrepresivo de Madrid, Javiera Mena, Felipe G. Santos, Lidia Yáñez Lagos
📍Online

Muchas ganas de participar este martes 6 de mayo en este evento sobre autodefensa y cuidados en el contexto actual de infiltraciones policiales y criminalización de la protesta en España y el mundo.
Si te interesa el tema, regístrate a través del QR que aparece en el póster.
👇

Muchas ganas de participar este martes 6 de mayo en este evento sobre autodefensa y cuidados en el contexto actual de infiltraciones policiales y criminalización de la protesta en España y el mundo.
Si te interesa el tema, regístrate a través del QR que aparece en el póster.
👇

Our co-edited volume (with Claudius Wagemann, Toma Burean, @danmercea.bsky.social and Lorenzo Mosca) ‘Protest and Democracy: How Movement Parties, Social Movements and Active Citizens Are Reshaping Europe’ Routledge 2025 arrived in print doi.org/10.4324/9781... @feligsantos.bsky.social

Muchas gracias, Andrés! Me alegra de que estos podcast lleguen incluso hasta CEU! Un abrazo!

📣 our new Horizon Europe project on political participation since the onset of Covid-19 is now live. PR at link 👇. Watch this space for updates. @feligsantos.bsky.social @nechri.bsky.social
www.city.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

🚨New publication!
In our latest paper in the International Journal of Sociology, Matthias Hoffmann, @danmercea.bsky.social and I study brokerage in protest networks. We explore how individuals connect protest episodes and the characteristics of those occupying brokerage positions. A 🧵

Our latest paper is an attempt to understand how individuals might connect protest episodes and who those people might be who find themselves in that position. @feligsantos.bsky.social wrote a great overview of our findings in the 🧵👇

Protest as a relational field: An analysis of brokerage positions within and across contentious episodes and the individuals occupying them This paper analyses participation in multiple protest episodes to explore the potential for people to broker relations between same-issue and different-issue episodes. Through an analysis of origin...

You can read the full, open-access paper through this link: doi.org/10.1080/0020...

Altogether, this paper emphasizes the role that individuals play in creating the relations that connect otherwise seemingly separate contentious episodes. These links may facilitate the diffusion of protest repertoires or become sites of struggle among competing ideologies.

Our findings highlight that individual agency, organizational, and interpersonal embeddedness are strongly associated with specific positions in relational fields, and particularly to the potential to overcome issue boundaries.

Focusing on the differences in their network embeddedness, membership in an organization decreases the odds of being a coordinator, as opposed to a boundary spanner position, by a quarter. While having activist friends does not significantly distinguish the two groups.

Interest in politics, as well as writing online about protests, increase the odds of being a coordinator as opposed to a boundary spanner.

Focusing on how coordinators and boundary spanners differ from each other, caring for a dependent significantly increases the odds of being in a coordinator rather than a boundary spanner position.

Having written online about protests increases the odds of occupying a brokerage position by a factor of 2.

Membership to an organization increases the odds of being a potential broker by a factor of 1.4 while having friends who have either participated in a protest or are involved in a social or activist organization increase the odds of occupying a broker position by a factor of 5.7.

Moving to the characteristics of those people who occupy brokerage positions, poorer individuals are more likely to occupy a brokerage position. Also, being a man increases the odds of occupying such a position by about a third.

At least 40% of the protesters in each country have participated in more than one protest in the 2 years before our survey fieldwork. Moreover, except for Denmark, in the rest of the countries, at least one in five protesters joined three or more demonstrations.

Using survey data from Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania and the UK, we mapped protest networks in the 6 countries and identified two distinct brokerage roles:

- Coordinators: Connect within same-issue contentious episodes.

- Boundary Spanners: Connect across different-issue episodes.

Brokers can connect actors who are not communicating because of some specific barrier. They are essential for attracting new protesters as they possess the bridging capital to hold the social ties through which individuals learn about movement events and issues.