European Journal of Political Research 39: 461–486, 2001. © 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 461 Who is that (wo)man in the street? From the normalisation of protest to the normalisation of the protester PETER VAN AELST & STEFAAN WALGRAVE University of Antwerp, Wilrijk, Antwerp, Belgium Abstract. The time has long since passed that protests and demonstrations were regarded as the possible beginning of violent revolutionary ferment. Venting dissatisfaction or making demands in the streets has become commonplace in our ‘demonstration-democracy’. In this article we examine whether this normalisation of street protest also means that more het- erogeneous groups of people take to the streets. Have citizens become potentially peaceful protesters or is protest politics still the domain of union militants, progressive intellectuals, and committed students? In answering these questions we will use the three research methods most commonly used for studying collective action: population surveys, protest event-analysis and interviews with protesters at demonstrations. Introduction At the turn of the century, the French psychologist Gustave Le Bon (1895), a founding father of collective action studies, regarded all street protest as a form of deviant behaviour. He believed the lower classes lost themselves in the mind of the crowd and let their primitive instincts take over. Le Bon’s ideas were reflected in classic breakdown theories which regarded participa- tion in collective action as an ‘unconventional, irrational type of behaviour’ (Klandermans 1984). These theories hold that (relative) deprivation, shared grievances and generalised beliefs, are determinants of participation. With the arrival of resource mobilisation theory, these ideas have been replaced by explanatory models which emphasise the position in social networks and the costs and benefits of participation in a social movement or collective action (McCarthy & Zald 1977). Resource mobilisation theory was explored further in the 1980s and 1990s. Klandermans (1984) and Turner & Killian (1993) among others criticised ardent followers of resource mobilisation the- ory, because they felt they had gone too far in rejecting social-psychological analyses and suggested it should be adapted. At the same time, another ex- planatory theory, based on the political opportunity structure, started to gain ground and popularity. This approach emphasises the political element in all