Bystander responses and xenophobic mobilization

Students of social movements have long struggled with the question how relatively abstract political opportunities, such as elite divisions, affect unorganized activists without much knowledge of politics. We argue that the relationship between institutional opportunities and decisions to mobilize may take the form of trickle-down politics. In this view activists are affected by political opportunities indirectly through the changes that political developments bring about in the immediate social setting in which they protest. The overall political climate determines the distance between general public opinion and activists’ view on society. The smaller this distance the more likely it becomes that activists receive positive feedback from their immediate environment, which in turn results in further mobilization. In particular, we investigate how extreme right activists are influenced by bystander responses that are evoked by the wider political context. Time-series analysis and event history models indeed indicate that spatiotemporal fluctuations in political opportunities and public sentiments are translated into mobilization after activists receive feedback from local bystanders. This suggests that bystander responses, a research topic that has only received scant scholarly attention, play a crucial role in linking political opportunities to mobilization.