This paper asks whether the norm of nonviolence in protest holds under high affective and ideological polarization, and whether a simple norm reminder can reduce acceptance of escalatory tactics. Conceptually, we link research on nonviolent protest norms with work on motivated reasoning under polarization. The key claim is that polarization can produce “ingroup leniency”: people may judge aggressive protest tactics as acceptable when they are carried out by their own side against the opposing camp. At the same time, a credible, nonpartisan cue may reactivate the nonviolence norm and narrow this leniency. We test these ideas with a survey experiment in Hungary, using a fictive March 15th commemoration in the run-up to the 2026 parliamentary elections. Respondents watch a short, news-style video about a demonstration linked to their political ingroup. The video varies the level of aggression by ingroup demonstrators toward the outgroup in four conditions: (1) control (no aggression), (2) verbal aggression (booing and shouting), (3) property destruction (overturning trash bins), and (4) violence against a person (a close-range scuffle with visible injury). Independently, half of respondents receive an additional prompt: a nonpartisan statement condemning violence, framed as coming from a broad societal coalition. Outcomes are three measures of support and mobilization: (1) support or opposition to the movement, (2) likelihood of joining a similar protest if invited by a friend, and (3) willingness to donate a share of the survey payment to help the movement. We also measure affective and ideological polarization, party preference, protest experience, political interest, authoritarian-populist attitudes, and a verbal aggression scale to examine heterogeneous treatment effects. We expect support to decline as tactics become more violent, but we also expect a high threshold for condemning ingroup aggression among highly polarized respondents, including some tolerance for violence against people. We anticipate asymmetry between Fidesz and Tisza supporters, with higher acceptance among Fidesz constituents. Finally, we expect the nonviolence reminder to reduce support most strongly in the aggressive conditions, indicating that norm cues can still matter even in polarized settings.

Prior research has shown that the infrastructure and logistics of protest camps, including food, sanitation, shelter, and medical services, play a critical role in enabling sustained mobilization under difficult conditions. Yet, while social movement scholarship has extensively examined organizational, discursive, and strategic dimensions of protest camps, their material and logistical foundations remain comparatively understudied. We argue that protest camp logistics are shaped both by internal movement dynamics and by external pressures such as repression and protest-related violence, and that the professionalization of these logistical systems significantly affects participation, resilience, and overall mobilization. Empirically, this study draws on social media images and field observations to examine the scale, quality, and characteristics of logistical support in ten protest camps from 2010 to 2022, with a particular focus on cases in Ukraine and Russia. These examples illustrate how logistical organization adapts to varying degrees of state control, legal restrictions, and violent repression. The analysis provides systematic evidence on the determinants and consequences of protest camp infrastructure, highlighting its strategic and adaptive role in hybrid and authoritarian contexts, and offering new insights into the material foundations of contentious politics in the post-Soviet space.

After the collapse of a train station roof in Novi Sad, which claimed the lives of 16 people, a protest movement began in November 2024, calling for a transparent investigation into the incident, but also for the rule of law and against corruption. The core of the ongoing protest movement is made up of students, who at times occupied all of the country's faculties and were able to build and maintain an unprecedented mobilization of students and support structures from society. Based on field work data and interviews with students and supporters from 2025 this paper aims at understanding the success of the student-led movement to maintain mobilization and the occupation of faculties over an extended period of time. It shows that a strategic interplay of aspects of deservingness, transparency and emotion-management enabled students to maintain mobilization throughout difficult times and transformed long-held beliefs of both participants and supporters.