Ideology and Social Movements. A Comparative Analysis of the 2013 Protests in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania Diana Margarit Alexandru Ioan Cuza University The 2013 protests in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania embodied the discontent and the disapproval of the citizens in the streets, against the domestic political authorities. Due to their similar recent histories and their geographical proximities, I propose a comparative analysis of the 2013 wave of uprisings in the three countries. Which are the ideological resources of the relative synchronicity of these protests? Are the ideological stakes of these uprisings ”imported” from the simultaneous Western ones or the direct response to the domestic politics? The aim of my paper consists in answering to these questions and thus, highlighting the proportion in which on one hand, there are certain ideological recurrences (e.g. the Occupy movements) in the social movements from Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania and on the other, the domestic context shaped their specific deployment. From a methodological point of view, I structured my paper in order to stress out, in a comparative manner, the elements which characterized the 2013 protests in the two countries which share a common border with Romania, on the Western and the Southern sides. Thus, the first part concentrates on a so-called presentation of the facts by determining the recent historical framework of their evolution, while the second underlines the ideological stakes of the protests in respect to two dimensions: a) an external one - the similarities between them and the Occupy movement; b) an internal one – their response to the domestic political opportunity structure. The analysis uses secondary sources, more precisely online articles and posts appeared in international coverage journals and national websites in English related to Bulgaria and Hungary. I tried to be consistent with similar sources also in the Romanian case, with few exceptions, the cases where it was almost impossible to find the necessary information in any other language than Romanian. 1. The 2013 protests in their national contexts By analyzing the online coverage of the protests in the international journals, I intend to highlight the domestic evolution of the events in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. The purpose of this rather descriptive part of the paper consists in familiarizing the reader with the general deployment of the protests and the presentation of the political context which faced the public revolt and resistance.