The article examines how social movements sustain interaction and survive beyond periods of heightened mobilization. Drawing on recent innovations in brokerage theory from organizational sociology, we explore the strategies employed by local brokers to create continued interaction opportunities. Our empirical analysis focuses on pro-refugee mobilization in Germany following the 2015-2016 refugee reception crisis, using 83 qualitative interviews conducted between 2020 and 2022. The interviews with volunteers, activists, and staff from the various collective actors involved in refugee support demonstrate the brokers’ diversified approach to fostering interactions within pro-refugee communities. We identify three sets of interaction opportunities involving contentious and noncontentious actions related to maintaining the core work, policy advocacy, and broadening the issue scope. Trust building with other actors, particularly local state authorities, was crucial for facilitating these opportunities. Overall, the study identifies the mechanisms and conditions necessary for sustaining social interaction in social movements during the postmobilization phase.

Dual engagement, the phenomenon in which party loyalists participate in antisystem protests, emerged as a defining feature of Lebanon's 2019–2021 period of civil unrest. This crosspartisan participation revealed the strategic role that opposition parties play in shaping mass mobilization efforts. To explain this phenomenon, this study investigates both the political conditions and individual-level factors that enabled such seemingly contradictory participation. Using Arab Barometer data, various political participation theories are tested to identify the key predictors of dual engagement. The findings demonstrate that partisan factors are more significant predictors than traditional protest motivations, suggesting that partisans engage in antisystem mobilizations strategically to advance their parties' interests. As a result, opposition parties emerge as the primary drivers of their supporters' protest participation. This dynamic underscores how partisan commitment can strategically redirect protests from an antisystem orientation to an antigovernment focus. These findings have important implications for understanding political behavior in antisystem mobilizations and illuminate the complex interplay between political parties and social movements throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

How and why do youth-led social movement organizations (SMOs) encourage electoral participation? Why might SMOs led by predominantly white youth embrace different electoral approaches than those led by youth of color, and to what effect? We answer these questions through a qualitative study of five youth-led climate justice and gun violence prevention SMOs of diverse racial and socioeconomic profiles in the lead up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election. SMOs led by predominantly white youth placed the most emphasis on electoral organizing as part of their core work. SMOs led by teams of Black or interracial youth preferred strategies such as community empowerment, education, and direct action. However, all groups encouraged electoral participation indirectly through collaborations and pro-voting subcultures. Analysis reveals that electoral approaches were informed by positions and experiences within the racialized stratification system, and findings point to a recursive relationship between organizational whiteness and electoral organizing.

While recent scholarship has increasingly examined social movement coalitions, unanswered questions remain about crossmovement coalitions, which are composed of organizations from various fields. The case study of Unidad Social in Chile enhances our understanding of both the formation and the challenges that crossmovement coalitions face to endure. Unidad Social emerged just months before Chile’s 2019 social uprising, playing a pivotal role in early mobilization efforts before gradually losing influence. Using process tracing and triangulating interviews, press data, and organizational documents, we identify key mechanisms explaining its rise and decline. While coalition brokerage, threat and opportunity attribution, and frame bridging facilitated the creation of Unidad Social and its initial expansion by integrating new SMOs, these mechanisms proved ineffective in sustaining cohesion amid shifting political dynamics. Instead, frame dilution and polarization deepened internal divisions, ultimately leading to the collapse of the coalition. Our mechanism-based approach advances research on the formation and endurance of crossmovement coalitions.

Radical feminists face a difficult choice: remain pure outsiders with limited impact, or risk cooptation by engaging with the very institutions they seek to overthrow. Historically, the Italian feminist movement has maintained a staunchly anti-institutional stance. The Italian state, on the other hand, has exhibited limited institutional support for gender equality as well as a weak development of state feminism. Despite this antagonistic backdrop, feminist movements and institutions do interact through what this study terms “conflictual engagement,” a framework that reveals how anti-institutional movements can work within existing systems while preserving their radical identity. Three key elements define these interactions: antagonist representation, indirect influence, and pragmatic interaction. Drawing on thirty interviews with feminist activists and politicians, the study challenges binary interpretations of movements as either entirely antagonistic or fully aligned with institutions, emphasizing the productive role of conflict in shaping these relationships and enhancing democratic engagement.

This study examines the global spread of antiracist activism following 2020 through a comparative analysis of Black Lives Matter (BLM) movements in Sweden and the UK. Rather than treating nation states as isolated units, as dominant models of transnational diffusion typically do, this study emphasizes the role of supranational political identities and global civil society in shaping movement development. Through discourse analysis of movement texts, the research demonstrates how BLM actors in both countries connect local grievances to shared histories of colonialism, slavery, and racial capitalism, positioning themselves within a global Black political consciousness. The research demonstrates how these movements both draw from and contribute to a transnational repository of Black resistance, circulating ideas and building solidarity through informal digital and diasporic networks. By examining diffusion through the framework of global power structures and diasporic identification, this study provides a more historically grounded and multiscalar understanding of BLM’s international impact.