Contentious Politics and Democratization: Comparing the Impact of Social Movements on the Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe

In this paper, I identify and analyze the interaction between two processes ‐ mobilization and bargaining ‐ by which democratic challengers can transform political institutions, bringing together insights from the literatures on social movements, which tends to analyze movement emergence, and democratization, which tends to analyze the design of democratic institutions. I compare the impact of social movements in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, cases that offer a valuable opportunity to extend the literature on contentious politics beyond its origins in the study of Western parliamentary democracies. The analysis directs attention to an under examined arena of political contestation, agenda setting, or the process by which the demands of social movements are translated into issues for governments. The paper argues that the traditional dichotomy between institutional and non‐institutionalized contention has obscured the ways that democratic challengers not only pressure states from the outside but transform them through new forms of political participation. Finally, it considers alternative explanations and suggests new directions for comparative research across different settings and times.