ABSTRACT
In the last 20 years, three relatively distinct peaks have been seen in transnational contentious politics across the globe: the global justice movement beginning from the ‘battle of Seattle’ in 1999; the anti-austerity movements that included the democracy movements in countries of the Middle East and North Africa as well as those in Europe and the US after the financial crisis of 2008 on; and the ‘hot Fall’ of 2019 when contentious politics converged around climate change, justice and calls for democracy. This chapter will discuss how each of these three waves was characterized by different forms of diffusion of ideas and protest repertoires, moving from thicker diffusion via dense organizational networks in the first wave to a thinner version of diffusion via mediated contacts within loose connections in the third. We also explore to what extent the indicated trend toward thinner diffusion was consolidating prior to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Drawing on existing literature on critical junctures and similar watershed moments for contentious politics as well as analyses of contentious politics during the pandemic thus far we offer reflections on how these have impacted on the trend toward thinner diffusion in transnational social movements.
