Protest is the result of complex multilevel processes. It is triggered by contextual factors such as political opportunities or events, it depends on organizations’ mobilizing capacity as well as on the type of people who protest, and it is shaped by the characteristics of the populations they come from. To effectively study the antecedents that operate at various levels, social movement research needs to integrate data from multiple analytical levels and systematically examine the relationships across the various levels. While large N statistical techniques of multilevel modelling are well understood, less is known about applying multilevel analysis research examining small number of cases. The article develops conceptual and methodological tools for multilevel analysis of protests in studies with a small number of cases. First, it demonstrates the empirical requirements associated with analyzing three types of multilevel effects: contextual effects, composition effects, and cross-level interactions. Next, specific multilevel small N designs that can be used to examine the three multilevel effects are presented. The last section uses the multilevel approach to examine the demobilization of anti-Iraq War protests in the United States.

抗议是复杂的多层次过程的结果。它是由政治机会或事件等背景因素引发的，它取决于组织的动员能力以及抗议者的类型，并受其来自人群的特征的影响。为了有效地研究在各个层次上运作的前因，社会运动研究需要整合来自多个分析层次的数据，并系统地检查各个层次之间的关系。虽然大N多层次建模的统计技术是众所周知的，但对应用多层次分析研究检查少量案例知之甚少。本文开发了概念和方法论工具，用于在少数案例的研究中对抗议进行多层次分析。首先，它展示了与分析三种类型的多级效应相关的经验要求：上下文效应、组合效应和跨级交互。接下来，介绍了可用于检查三个多级效应的特定多级小N设计。最后一部分使用多层次方法来考察美国反伊拉克战争抗议活动的复员情况。