Extreme Right and Populism: A Frame Analysis of Extreme Right Wing Discourses in Italy and Germany. IHS Political Science Series No. 121, July 2010

This paper addresses the interactions between the extreme right and populism, looking at right wing discourses in Italy and Germany, focusing on different types of extreme right organizations (political parties, violent subcultural/young right wing groups, and political movements), and adopting a social movement perspective. Through a frame analysis conducted on several types of organizational documents (newspapers, websites, online guest books and forums, and other forms of publications), covering a period from 2000-2006, for a total of 4000 frames, it explores empirically the aspect of the conceptualization of the populism by the extreme right, showing the bridging of the appeal to the people with some traditional frames of the extreme right, such as nativism and authoritarianism, and stressing how the central populist frames (the people versus the elite) are linked to the extreme right definition of the 'us' and the 'them', when developing diagnoses, prognoses and motivations to action. A political opportunity and discursive approach will be useful in explaining the different configurations of populist frames depending on country and organizational type

Cycles of Protest and the Consolidation of Democracy

Outcomes of democratization paths have been addressed within literature on democratic consolidation as well as on revolution. These approaches have however never been linked with social movement theory that, I argue in this article, can provide new lenses to explain how movements’ characteristics at the time of transition might have an impact on the quality of ensuing democracy. As the same time, looking at effects of social movements in terms of democratization can help broadening social movement studies, that have rarely addressed this type of effects. I am in particular interested in linking reflections (and empirical evidence) on effects of social movements to the typology on paths towards democratization that I have developed in other works. Looking especially at Central Eastern Europe post-1989, I single out the different characteristics of contentious politics in countries that underwent, respectively, eventful democratization, participated pacts and troubled democratization. Protest event analysis as constituted the empirical basis for the analysi

Cycles of Protest and the Consolidation of Democracy

Outcomes of democratization paths have been addressed within literature on democratic consolidation as well as on revolution. These approaches have however never been linked with social movement theory that, I argue in this article, can provide new lenses to explain how movements’ characteristics at the time of transition might have an impact on the quality of ensuing democracy. As the same time, looking at effects of social movements in terms of democratization can help broadening social movement studies, that have rarely addressed this type of effects. I am in particular interested in linking reflections (and empirical evidence) on effects of social movements to the typology on paths towards democratization that I have developed in other works. Looking especially at Central Eastern Europe post-1989, I single out the different characteristics of contentious politics in countries that underwent, respectively, eventful democratization, participated pacts and troubled democratization. Protest event analysis as constituted the empirical basis for the analysi

Notes on Sidney Tarrow's Movements and Parties

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Eventful democratization: why we need methodological pluralism

A keynote for the SCOPE 2014: Science of Politics – International Interdisciplinary Conference of Political Research that took place at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Political Science between 27 and 29 June 2014, this article assesses at theoretical and methodological level the way in which both agency and structure are relevant in social movements, particularly in processes of eventful democratization. Eventful democratization appears as sudden and unexpected, not only to observers or dictators, but also often to the very activists who mobilize against the authoritarian regimes. This difficulty in prediction is linked to agency and contingency: intense protest events are indeed under-determined moments as structural constraints are, if not overcome, at least weakened by the very capacity of mobilization to quickly transform relations. Following the social movement literature, the article focuses particularly on causal mechanisms at collective level, identifying and discussing relational, cognitive, and emotional mechanisms

Notes on Sidney Tarrow's Movements and Parties

For Symposium Absstract is not require

Protests as critical junctures: some reflections towards a momentous approach to social movements

Recent times have been defined as momentous: great transformation, great recession as well as great regression have been frequently used short-cut terms to characterize the period following the financial breakdown of 2008. As for contentious politics in these times, we frequently hear references to crisis as well as eventful protests, as calls for what was expected to be routine protest triggered portentous waves of contentious politics. Reference to moments of change can be found in different approaches addressing social movements from the macro, meso, and micro levels. While neoinstitutional approaches have looked at extraordinary times from a macro perspective, the Chicago School adopted a micro perspective, looking at the sudden breaking of established paths, the reproduction of ruptures, and their stabilization. An emerging concern in social movement studies with \u2018great transformations\u2019 that triggered big mobilizations can also be seen at the meso level Drawing on these perspectives, I argue that some eventful protests trigger critical junctures, producing abrupt changes which develop contingently and become path dependent. While routinized protests proliferate in normal times, under some political opportunities, some protests \u2013 or moments of protest \u2013 act as exogenous shocks, catalyzing intense and massive waves of contention. Referring to the debate on critical junctures, and bridging it with social movement studies, I thematize a sequence of processes of cracking, as the production of sudden ruptures; vibrating, as contingently reproducing those ruptures; and sedimenting, as the stabilization of the legacy of the rupture. With the aim of mapping some relevant questions, rather than providing answers, I refer for illustration to research I carried out on movements in democratic transitions during economic, political, and social crises, as well as their legacy and memory

Movements in Parties: OccupyPD

When the United States activists called for people to Occupy#everywhere, it is unlikely they were thinking of the headquarters of the Italian centre-left party. Parties and movements are often considered to be worlds apart. In reality, parties have been relevant players in movement politics, and movements have influenced parties, often through the double militancy of many of their members. OccupyPD testifies to a continuous fluidity at the movement-party border, but also to a blockage in the party’s interactions with society that started long before the economic crisis but drastically accelerated with it. In this paper we present the OccupyPD Movement as a case of interaction between party politics and social movement politics, and in particular between the base membership of a centre-left party and the broader anti-austerity movement that diffused from the US to Europe adopting similar forms of actions and claims. Second, by locating it within the context of the economic and democratic crisis that erupted in 2007, we understand its emergence as a reaction towards politics in times of crisis of responsibility, by which we mean a drastic drop in the capacity of the government to respond to citizens’ requests. To fulfil this double aim, we bridge social movement studies with research on party change, institutional trust and democratic theory, looking at some political effects of the economic crisis in terms of a specific form of legitimacy crisis, as well as citizens’ responses to it, with a particular focus on the political meaning of recent anti-austerity protests. In this analysis, we refer to both quantitative and qualitative data from secondary liter-ature and original in-depth interviews carried out with a sample of OccupyPD activists

La protesta de la generación precaria en los movimientos antiausteridad en España e Italia

This article focuses on the precarious generation protesting in Spain and Italy in times of crisis and austerity (2010-2012). Their many similarities notwithstanding, the two countries have experienced different types of mobilization against austerity measures. In Spain, a relatively autonomous mobilization –characterized by new collective actors and new forms of action– has made possible the building of a political actor, Podemos, able to seriously challenge the established political parties. In Italy, instead, the mobilization was dominated by established political actors, especially trade unions, did not produce innovative forms of action and has not been able to overcome (so far) the fragmentation of the social movement sector. In both countries, however, the anti-austerity protests have been characterized by a strong presence of what we call hear the “precarious generation”, particularly exposed to the economic crisis and the austerity measures. By relying on data from several surveys conducted in demonstrations on social, economic and labor issues in the two countries from 2010 to 2011, in this article we single out differences and the similarities in terms of presence, social composition, grievances and emotion, collective identity and network embeddedness of the precarious generation. Our findings show that the precarious generation was almost equally present in the selected demonstrations in the two countries, share similar socio-graphic features and similar types of grievance and emotions. Nonetheless, in Spain it seems to have built a more cohesive and radical collective identity based upon a more informal and internet based network integration while in Italy it seems embedded in a more traditional and formal network, which prevented the formation of a strong collective identity. Moreover, while in Spain the differences between the older and the precarious generation reveal that, both have a strong identity based on different networks; more formal the older and more related to informal and online instruments the latter; in Italy, the older generation has a much stronger collective identity based on a organizational network, while the precarious one is less but still integrated in organizational network. We conclude that the more autonomous civil society tradition in Spain, together with the particular political opportunities, under the pressure of a harsher economic crisis, may account for the differences we found.Este artículo se centra en la protesta de la generación precaria en España e Italia en tiempos de crisis y austeridad (2010-2012). A pesar de sus muchas similitudes, los dos países han experimentado diferentes tipos de movilización contra las medidas de austeridad. En España, una movilización relativamente autónoma –caracterizada por nuevos actores colectivos y nuevas formas de acción– ha hecho posible la construcción de un actor político, Podemos, capaz de desafiar seriamente a los partidos políticos establecidos. En Italia, en cambio, la movilización fue dominada por los actores políticos establecidos, especialmente los sindicatos, no produjo formas innovadoras de acción y no ha sido capaz de superar (hasta ahora) la fragmentación de los movimientos sociales. En ambos países, sin embargo, las protestas contra la austeridad se han caracterizado por una fuerte presencia de lo que se ha denominado "generación precaria", particularmente expuesta a la crisis económica y las medidas de austeridad. Basándonos en datos de varias encuestas realizadas en protestas sobre cuestiones sociales, económicas y laborales en los dos países de 2010 a 2011, en este artículo destacamos las diferencias y las similitudes de la generación precaria en términos de presencia, composición social, sentimientos de agravio y emoción, identidad colectiva e integración en las redes. Nuestros resultados muestran que la generación precaria tenía casi la misma presencia en las protestas seleccionadas en los dos países, compartían características sociodemográficas similares y el mismo tipo de agravios y emociones. Sin embargo, en España, parece haberse construido una identidad colectiva más coherente y radical, integrada a partir de unas redes informales y basadas en Internet; mientras que en Italia aparece arraigada a partir de redes más tradicionales y formales, lo que impide la formación de una identidad colectiva fuerte. Por otra parte, mientras que en España las diferencias entre la generación más mayor y la generación precaria revelan que ambas tienen una fuerte identidad en base a las diferentes redes que las sustentan (más formal en la mayor y más relacionada con instrumentos informales y online en la última); en Italia, la generación más mayor tiene una identidad colectiva mucho más fuerte sobre la base de una red organizativa, mientras que en la generación precaria ésta es menor, pero todavía integrada en una red organizativa. Llegamos a la conclusión de que una tradición más autónoma de la sociedad civil en España, junto con las oportunidades políticas particulares, bajo la presión de una crisis económica más severa, pueden dar cuenta de las diferencias encontradas