In person icon New Perspectives on Trust and Social Movements

Abstract

The past decade has been marked by mass protests all over the globe, which were driven by socioeconomic and political grievances. Protest movements included participants from different generational, gender, socioeconomic, ethnic, religious, ideological and political backgrounds. Strategic alliances and coalitions formed across social and political conflict lines. Implicitly we know that contentious action by heterogeneous protest actors requires a minimum level of social trust. This entails the expectation that fellow protesters and allies will honor agreements and not betray the overall mission of their fellow protestors. On the one hand, existing studies suggest that such trust, which makes participation in protest and the emergence of social movements more likely, is based on pre-existing social ties and networks. On the other, participation in movements and protests can also contribute to building trusting relations. Yet, numerous questions remain unanswered: How precisely does the very experience of protesting together as well as the interaction with the state in the context of contentious politics influence levels and forms of trust within social movements? How does (the lack of) political trust – that is, trust in political institutions – affect social trust dynamics during episodes of contention? How does social and political trust mutually shape each other? And how do trust dynamics influence mobilization patterns and the formation of alliances or coalitions? In order to answer these questions, the panel systematically assesses the causes, dynamics and consequences of trust during episodes or cycles of contention. Drawing on cases from different world regions and regime contexts as well as building on different methodological approaches, the contributions to this panel link the literature on trust more thoroughly with social movement studies, to further our understanding of the broader dynamics of social mobilization and contentious action.

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