Human Rights and Dissent in Hybrid Environments: The Impact of Shifting Rights Regimes

ABSTRACT Research indicates that social movements are shaped by increased opportunities and threats, yet this work rarely examines environments of intersecting opportunity and threat. This article extends the literature on political opportunity theory by explaining how shifting rights regimes influence the political context of movements. Specifically, we analyze how dissent in Communist Czechoslovakia responded to the expansion and contraction of rights across three political periods between 1948 and 1977. Our research delineates three key features of rights regimes and shows how variation across multiple scales creates “hybrid environments” of political opportunity and threat for social movements.