EXPLAINING DIFFERENTIAL PROTEST PARTICIPATION: NOVICES, RETURNERS, REPEATERS, AND STALWARTS * Clare Saunders, Maria Grasso, Cristiana Olcese, Emily Rainsford, and Christopher Rootes † Protest participation scholarship tends to focus on the special characteristics of novices and the highly committed, underplaying the significance of those in between. In this article, we fill a lacuna in the literature by refocusing attention on four different types of protesters: novices, returners, repeaters, and stalwarts. Employing data from protest surveys of demonstrations that took place in seven European countries (2009-2010), we test whether these types of pro- testers are differentiated by biographical-structural availability and/or psychological- attitudinal engagement. Our results suggest that biographical availability distinguishes our four groups, but not as a matter of degree. Few indicators of structural availability distinguish between the groups of protesters, and emotional factors do not distinguish between them at all. Some political engagement factors suggest similarity between novices and returners. This confirms the need to avoid treating protesters as a homogenous group and reinforces the importance of assessing the contributions of diverse factors to sustaining “protest politics.” Patterns of political participation among Western publics have changed significantly in recent decades. One frequently cited change is the rise of participation in public demonstrations. While the number of people engaged in protest is not necessarily growing year by year (Stoker, Mason, McGrew, Armstrong, Owen, Smith, Banya, McGhee, and Saunders 2011: 54-56), since the mid- 1970s there has been a dramatic rise in the number of people claiming to have engaged in protest (Dalton, van Sickle, and Weldon 2010; Dalton 2008: 51; Inglehart and Catterberg 2002). This has led many scholars to proclaim what has been variously called a “demonstration democracy” (Etzioni 1970), “social movement society” (Meyer and Tarrow 1998; Soule and Earl 2005), or “protest politics” (Inglehart and Catterberg 2002). Whilst protest is now quite justifiably understood as a relatively routine form of political participation in democratic states (cf., Barnes, Kaase et al. 1979), the questions asked in large- scale, cross-national surveys of political participation—which are extensively invoked to sustain claims about “protest politics”—have resulted in relatively little attention being devoted to understanding the differences among those who protest more and less intensely and/or persistently. The European Social Survey (ESS), for example, asks people only whether they have participated in a demonstration in the last twelve months, and the World Values Survey (WVS) only asks people whether they have ever participated in a demonstration. Thus, these surveys allow us only to compare those who have demonstrated (either in their lifetimes or _______________________________ * This article is the result of a truly collaborative effort. All authors contributed to the framework and writing of the piece during intensive group work, but each also had a specific responsibility. Clare Saunders led the research team, Maria Grasso conducted the data analysis, Cristiana Olcese led early versions of the literature review, Emily Rainsford co-ordinated meetings and the bibliography and Christopher Rootes carefully edited the article. † Clare Saunders is Senior Lecturer (RCUK Academic Fellow) at the Centre for Citizenship, Globalisation and Gover- nance at the University of Southampton. Maria Grasso is Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield. Cristiana Olcese is Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Citizenship, Globalisation and Governance at the University of Southampton. Emily Rainsford is a post-graduate research student at the Centre for Citizenship, Globalisation and Governance at the University of Southampton. Christopher Rootes is Professor of Environmental Politics and Political Sociology in the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Research at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. Please direct all correspondence to Clare Saunders at c.e.saunders@soton.ac.uk. © 2012 Mobilization: An International Journal 17(3): 263-280