The Tea Party. The Occupy Movement. Idle No More. Around the world, social movements have taken to new media and the streets to challenge the status quo. At the same time, most democratic countries have witnessed a sharp decline in voter turnout. Protest and Politics examines this seemingly contradictory shift in political participation, as well as the blurring of social movement and mainstream politics, through the lens of the social movement society (SMS) thesis.

Social movement theory suggests that in recent decades contentious politics have become a regular, even...