Nina Eggert

The Impact of Religion on the Political Participation of Migrants

Religion has often been found to be a strong predictor of political behaviour (Broughton and ten Napel, 2000; Lijphart, 1979; Lipset and Rokkan, 1967; Rose and Urwin, 1969; Rokkan, 1979; Tresch and Nicolet, 2010). Alongside social class and place of residence, religion was thought to be one of the primary sociological determinants of political behaviour and, especially, voting (Lazarsfeld et al., 1944; Converse, 1974). However, during the past few decades, it has become almost commonplace to stress the declining saliency of the religious cleavage and its diminishing impact on politics. In particular, a number of authors have pointed to the loss of influence of religion on voting and political attitudes (Dalton et al., 1984; Franklin, 1992; Norris and Inglehart, 2004). This diminished relevance would be the outcome of a process of secularization that has affected the entire western world (Berger, 1967; Bruce, 2002). At the same time, a process of individualization has produced a change in the forms of religious expression (Hervieu-Leger, 1999; Luckmann, 1967; Pollack and Pickel, 2007), leading to post-traditional forms of religiosity.

Does the class cleavage still matter? The social composition of participants in demonstrations addressing redistributive and cultural issues in three countries:

This article examines the role of social class for individual participation in social movements, more specifically in street demonstrations. The authors use protest survey data in order to avoid the limitations of previous research by contextualizing the effect of social class on participation in protest. The analysis focuses on demonstrations addressing redistributive and cultural issues, reflecting a well-known distinction between old and new social movements. The authors show that participants in these two types of demonstrations, as well as in a third, mixed category, present a similar class structure, which casts some doubts on this distinction, although slight differences remain. Furthermore, a comparison of three countries that differ in terms of the strength of the class cleavage (Belgium, Sweden, and Switzerland) suggests that this cleavage acts as a moderator of the relationship between social class and participation in street demonstrations.

Preparing for action: police deployment decisions for demonstrations

ABSTRACT The objective of this paper is to analyse police decision-making about protest policing. While previous quantitative studies of protest policing rely mainly on newspaper data, this study presents an alternative design to tease out how the police decide irrespective of what protesters do during demonstrations and to study ‘net’ protest policing. We propose to focus on the decisions police officers take before the actual protest event takes place. Drawing on the existing literature of protest policing we test hypotheses about police preparation for protest drawing on two concepts: police knowledge and protest threat. To test our hypotheses, we use a unique dataset of police records of demonstrations in Brussels, Belgium, between 2001 and 2010. The dataset contains full data about the official demonstration permit requests submitted by protest organisers. Our results confirm our expectations and show that police previous experience with protesters and the level of threat are important factors in explaining decision-making prior to protest events.