This document compares the rise and fall of protest movements in Germany and the USA, illuminating the relationship between national political structures and collective action. It analyzes existing approaches to the study of social movements and suggests a paradigm for research in this area.

In the past decades young people, environmentalists, church activists, leftists and others have mobilized against nuclear energy. Antinuclear protest has been especially widespread and vocal in Western Europe and the USA. This document compares the rise and fall of these protest movements, illuminating the relationship between national political structures and collective action. It analyzes existing approaches to the study of social movements and suggests an insightful new paradigm for research in this area. It also proposes a political process perspective that focuses on the interrelationship between the state and social movements, a model that takes into account a variety of forces, including differential state structures, political cultures, movement organizations, and temporal and contextual factors.