How to Quantify the Dynamics of Revolutions, Riots and Protests? The Analysis of Collective Events

Abstract

The article presents one of the traditional methods in the social sciences for the research and explanation of long-term historical processes such as revolutions, riots, uprisings, protest cycles and waves – the analysis of the collective events. The steps in collecting and coding a quantitative database, the types of sources, procedures, techniques and potential biases are discussed. The application of the method in historical science is illustrated by Sidney Tarow's study of the protest cycle in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s. The end of the article contains some of the most popular publicly available databases for collective mobilizations in different historical periods and describes possible directions for historical research.