Creating Critical Citizens? Anti-Austerity Protests and Public Opinion

Creating Critical Citizens? Anti-Austerity Protests and Public Opinion
Author: Vicente Valentim
Publisher:
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

Following the Great Recession, many countries witnessed large protests against the austerity policies their governments implemented. What was their effect on public opinion? I argue that these protests can make citizens more critical of elite performance, by voicing civil society actors instead of elites in the public debate and making such debate more relatable. Taking advantage of a demonstration happening during the fieldwork of the fifth wave of the European Social Survey in Portugal, I find exposure to the protest decreased satisfaction and trust in elites. I find no evidence that the protest made individuals more disengaged from politics. If anything, the protest increased efforts in seeking for information about politics. Supporting the argument regarding the mechanism, the protest increased the number of claims by civil society actors reported in the press and its effect was stronger for individuals worse represented by institutionalized elites. These findings highlight the democratic importance of unconventional forms of participation, and deepen our understanding of their interplay with conventional politics.

Media Representations of Anti-Austerity Protests in the EU

Media Representations of Anti-Austerity Protests in the EU
Author: Tao Papaioannou
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2017-09-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134868863

This book analyzes constructions of injustice, group identification and participation in news and social media in anti-austerity protests within the European Union (EU). Since 2008, EU member-states have witnessed waves of protests and demonstrations against the adoption of austerity measures and alignment of domestic economies with the prevailing global neoliberal order. Understanding how the media represents dissent and how it influences public deliberation is of critical importance. It is accordingly necessary to explore the strategies deployed and role played by news and social media in representing and perhaps acting upon anti-austerity protests in the Eurozone crisis. This volume undertakes such a critical exploration.

Austerity and Protest

Austerity and Protest
Author: Dr Maria Grasso
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2015-12-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1472439201

What is the relationship between economic crises and protest behaviour? Does the experience of austerity, or economic hardship more broadly defined, create a greater potential for protest? With protest movements and events such as the Indignados and the Occupy Movement receiving a great deal of attention in the media and in the popular imaginary in recent times, this path-breaking book offers a rigorously-researched, evidence-based set of chapters on the relationship between austerity and protest. In so doing, it provides a thorough overview of different theories, mechanisms, patterns and trends which will contextualize more recent developments, and provide a pivotal point of reference on the relationship between these two variables. More specifically, this book will speak to three crucial, long-standing debates in scholarship in political sociology, social movement studies, and related fields: The effects of economic hardship on protest and social movements. The role of grievances and opportunities in social movement theory. The distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ movements. The chapters in this book engage with these three key debates and challenge commonly held views of political sociologists and social movement scholars on all three counts, thus allowing us to advance study in the field.

Street Citizens

Street Citizens
Author: Marco Giugni
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2019-04-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108475906

Explains the character of contemporary protest politics through a micro-mobilization analysis of participation in street demonstrations.

Re-imagining Democracy

Re-imagining Democracy
Author: Cristina Flesher Fominaya
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2023-11-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000999424

This interdisciplinary book draws on leading scholarship on one of the most influential and consequential social movements of the past decades: Spain’s 15-M movement. The volume explores the legacy, impact and outcomes of the movement, and the lessons it offers for understanding mobilization in times of crisis. The book opens with a theoretical reconsideration of the positive ways social movements can impact democracy, moving the field forward significantly. It also offers rich case studies to explore a range of areas of interest to social movement scholars. Chapters explore the biographical consequences of participation in social movements; how memories of the movement inspired new mobilizations; the reciprocal influence between the 15-M movement and feminist economics; how urban democracy was transformed by municipalism arising from the movement; how the movement generated a “Caring democracy” in the face of the Covid pandemic; and how it gave rise to a new radical democratic media ecosystem. The book explores the movement’s political economy as well as reflects on one of its unintended consequences: the rise of the penalization of counter-hegemonic protest in contemporary Spain. Although focused on a single emblematic movement, it offers significant insights and lessons for scholarship on contemporary politics and movements. Re-imagining Democracy provides a valuable resource for scholars and students interested in the challenges faced by contemporary democracies, the dynamics of social movements in times of crisis, and the profound impact of social movements on contemporary democracy. The chapters in this book were originally published as a peer-reviewed special issue of Social Movement Studies.

Strike for America

Strike for America
Author: Micah Uetricht
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2014-03-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1781683255

The Chicago Teachers Union strike was the most important domestic labor struggle so far this century—and perhaps for the last forty years—and the strongest challenge to the conservative agenda for restructuring education, which advocates for more charter schools and tying teacher salaries to standardized testing, among other changes. In 2012, Chicago teachers built a grassroots movement through education and engagement of an entire union membership, taking militant action in the face of enormous structural barriers and a hostile Democratic Party leadership. The teachers won massive concessions from the city and have become a new model for school reform led by teachers themselves, rather than by billionaires. Strike for America is the story of this movement, and how it has become the defining struggle for the labor movement today.

The Violence of Austerity

The Violence of Austerity
Author: Vickie Cooper
Publisher:
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2017-05-20
Genre:
ISBN: 9780745337463

Austerity, a response to the aftermath of the financial crisis, continues to devastate contemporary Britain.In The Violence of Austerity, Vickie Cooper and David Whyte bring together the voices of campaigners and academics including Danny Dorling, Mary O'Hara and Rizwaan Sabir to show that rather than stimulating economic growth, austerity policies have led to a dismantling of the social systems that operated as a buffer against economic hardship, exposing austerity to be a form of systematic violence.Covering a range of famous cases of institutional violence in Britain, the book argues that police attacks on the homeless, violent evictions in the rented sector, the risks faced by people on workfare schemes, community violence in Northern Ireland and cuts to the regulation of social protection, are all being driven by reductions in public sector funding. The result is a shocking expos� of the myriad ways in which austerity policies harm people in Britain.

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Greek Politics

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Greek Politics
Author: Kevin Featherstone
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 738
Release: 2020
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198825102

This volume is the authoritative Handbook guide to the development of Greek politics, economy, and society from the period of the fall of the Colonels' Regime (1974) to the present day, including the causes and consequences of the crisis in Greece and the aftermath of the crisis, in comparative and historical perspective.

Economic Crisis and Mass Protest

Economic Crisis and Mass Protest
Author: Jon Gunnar Bernburg
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2016-06-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317146263

Although the triggering effect of economic crises on revolt is a classic sociological topic, crises have until recently mostly triggered large-scale collective action in developing countries. The antigovernment protests that occurred in several European countries in the aftermath of the global financial crisis brought crises to the forefront of collective action research in democratic societies, as well as provide important opportunities for studying how crises can trigger large-scale collective action. This volume focusses on Iceland’s ’Pots and Pans Revolution’, a series of large scale antigovernment protests and riots that took place in Iceland in autumn 2008 and January 2009. The Icelandic case offers a rare opportunity to study processes that can trigger political protest in an affluent, democratic society. The protests took place in the aftermath of a national financial collapse triggered by the global financial crisis in early October 2008. While having almost no tradition of mass protest, Iceland was among the first countries to respond to the global crisis with large-scale protest. The level of public mobilization was exceptionally high (about 25 percent participation rate) and the protests did not stop until they had brought down the ruling government of Iceland. Using qualitative and quantitative data, this volume situates the protest in historical-cultural context and applies social movement theory to explore how the economic crisis ended up triggering the protests, thus providing a step toward understanding why the global financial crisis has triggered public unrest in other countries.

Movement Parties Against Austerity

Movement Parties Against Austerity
Author: Donatella della Porta
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2017-04-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1509511490

The ascendance of austerity policies and the protests they have generated have had a deep impact on the shape of contemporary politics. The stunning electoral successes of SYRIZA in Greece, Podemos in Spain and the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) in Italy, alongside the quest for a more radical left in countries such as the UK and the US, bear witness to a new wave of parties that draws inspiration and strength from social movements. The rise of movement parties challenges simplistic expectations of a growing separation between institutional and contentious politics and the decline of the left. Their return demands attention as a way of understanding both contemporary socio-political dynamics and the fundamentals of political parties and representation. Bridging social movement and party politics studies, within a broad concern with democratic theories, this volume presents new empirical evidence and conceptual insight into these topical socio-political phenomena, within a cross-national comparative perspective.