ABSTRACT
This chapter claims that an important conceptual difference exists between participation and activism. It focuses on the conceptual differences between the two, and develops a new typology of political activism to show the variegated nature of post-communist activism, which goes beyond the original dichotomy of participatory versus transactional activism by Tarrow and Petrova. The chapter defines political activism and develops its new typology based on two dimensions of mobilization and inter-organizational transaction. It describes the data and coding scheme used. The chapter focuses on the most important characteristics of collective action, such as its frequency, size, strategies and expressed demands; the new typology is employed in the analysis of the Czech case. It presents the five modes on the basis of the most important aspects of collective action: the frequency of protest events, their geographical distribution and size, the number of participants, action repertoire, targets, and political demands.
