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This book provides a novel approach to unemployment as a contested political field in six European countries. Combining two theoretical traditions that so far have followed quite separate tracks (the literature on social movements and contentious politics and the literature on the comparative political economy of the welfare state), it provides evidence about the impact of welfare state regimes, conceived as political opportunity structures specific to this field, on public debates and collective mobilizations in unemployment politics. Using original data from an EU-funded research project, the various contributions show how the prevailing national models of the welfare state influence the contentious politics of unemployment, both in its visible side as claim-making in the public domain and in its less visible side as intervention within policy networks. In addition to national debates and mobilizations, the book also addresses political contention over unemployment at the European level.

The origin of peace movements can be traced back to the early nineteenth century, with the foundation of the first peace societies in the Anglo-Saxon world. Issues addressed by the movements include the general fight against war and promotion of peace (including internationalism), antiwar mobilization, nuclear disarmament (including nuclear test ban), mobilization against military infrastructures, and for civil service. Different phases can be discerned in the Western context: the rise of pacifism as a collective and public issue during the nineteenth and early twentieth century; the Cold War era; peace movements as part of the new social movements from the late 1960s to the late 1980s; and the post-Cold War era. The strength and specific features of peace movements vary both across time and across space depending on the specific features of each national context. Today, peace movements are seen as part of the broader family of the new social movements. Scholarly works have characterized the profile of participants in these movements as being rooted in the new middle class, displaying left-libertarian values, and sharing a common concern over social issues, but have also stressed important difference across countries in their social bases. Peace movements find their most important effects at the societal and cultural level rather than at the political level.

Social and political movements have a wide range of effects. The biographical consequences of social movements are one of them. They can be defined as effects on the life-course of individuals who have participated in movement activities, effects that are at least in part due to involvement in those activities (see McAdam 1989; Goldstone & McAdam 2001; Giugni 2004 for reviews). Other types of effects include political and cultural outcomes. Political consequences are those effects of movement activities that alter in some way the movements' political environment. Policy outcomes, a special category of political outcomes consisting of changes in legislation or other policy measures induced by social movements, are among the most often studied. Cultural outcomes are those effects of movement activities that alter in some way the movements' cultural environment. They are perhaps the most difficult to study empirically as they are not easily identified, they depend on a wide range of other actors and events, and often they make themselves felt only in the long run. In addition, one can also imagine the existence of that which some have called spillover effects, that is, effects of movements on each other.

As part of a special journal forum entitled "Swiss Political Sciences Review." Chuck Tilly undoubtedly was the most prominent among those scholars who have made the concept of political opportunities so central to the field during the past thirty to forty years. In this brief essay, the author would like to discuss the use of this concept in the social movement literature as well as stress Tilly's fundamental contribution in its origin and conceptualization. After having recalled Tilly's legacy on this concept, the author will deal with the criticisms it has received. Finally, the author will mention some recent developments that have tried to avoid some of the pitfalls in the use of this concept. Kenneth Ngo

AbstractThis essay reviews recent and less recent literature on the consequences of social movements and protest activities. It focuses on three types of consequences: political, personal and biographical, and cultural. Political consequences and, in particular, policy outcomes receive most attention, as they are those which have been addresses most often by students of social movements. The review of existing work shows that the field is full of valuable works dealing with this crucial issue and is rapidly growing thanks in particular to a new wave of scholars interested in this topic. Further work should pay more attention to the unintended consequences of social movements, look also at other types of impacts, and carry more comparative analyses.

This article follows a revised political opportunity approach to argue that mobilization of underprivileged groups is constrained by the political opportunity structures provided by the institutional context of the country in which they act. Contrary to traditional opportunity theories, it is suggested that their mobilization also depends on a set of opportunities specific to the political or issue field most directly addressed by their claims. I propose to look for these specific opportunities in the institutional approaches to unemployment. I further maintain that such opportunities stem largely from the ways in which a given political or issue field is collectively defined. I apply a theoretical framework stressing both general and specific opportunities as well as the discursive context of claim making to original data on claim making in the unemployment political field in six European countries for the 1995-2002 period. The findings provide some support for the proposed theoretical framework, but also point to its shortcomings, especially in the lack of attention to economic factors.