Social Movement Participation and Social Protest in Georgia

There is a long-lasting debate on reasons and causes of social movement participation. Scholars suggest different explanations from the perspective of one or another theory. However, the theoretical and empirical fact is that there is a dearth of sociological literature on systematic, integrated approach covering multiple factors from different levels of movement participation. To address this problem and contribute to the comprehensive multifactored Model, the objective of this paper is to develop a Model of movement participation, which is based on theoretical and empirical analysis. In the framework of this paper a Model of movement participation is developed which further is tested in Georgian social protests in a particular period. In this way the generated and further developed Model is not only analyzed in context of the corresponding literature but also examined in a practical setting. Due to novelty of the study, qualitative approach has been applied. Overall, research proved theoretical and empirical application of the Model(s). The study is an important contribution to the sociological literature on social movements.