Is the process of European integration shifting the targets of social movements from their national political systems to the European Union? Alternatively, does the EU remain isolated from the reach of national democratic politics? Or is there a third possibility: that social movements respond to the transnational issues posed by the European Union within the traditional pathways of nation-specific contentious politics? The investigators employ an empirical examination of these questions, drawing on a cross-national, longitudinal, and computer-readable dataset containing reports of some 20,000 political events which occurred in EU member countries between 1983 and 1995. With these data, and with attendant case studies the investigators examine the changing patterns of Western European contentious political action over time. In particular, they look for indicators of three facets of a possible Europeanization of protest: 1) an increasing magnitude of EU-related contentious action within twelve European nations that their research covers; 2) the issues which induce domestic social actors to undertake contentious activity aimed at or stimulated by the European Union; and, 3) the targets domestic social actors choose when their claims are responses to EU policy directives. With the information that the researchers are collecting on these facets of Europeanization, they develop a model of the movement - - if there is one - - towards a transnational realm of contentious politics in Europe. Looking beyond the European case, their investigation offers one of the first comparative assessments of the ways in which private social actors are seeking voice before transnational institutions. Additionally, they explore the uses and the parameters for employing computer-readable coding programs for large on-line datasets in comparative politics as well - - a field which, with few exceptions, has been stubbornly resistant to systematic, cross-national event history analysis.
