Economic Crisis and Mass Protest

Economic Crisis and Mass Protest
Author: Joń Gunnar Bernburg
Publisher:
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2016
Genre: Electronic books
ISBN: 9781472425492

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."

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.

Mass Politics in Tough Times

Mass Politics in Tough Times
Author: Nancy Bermeo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2014
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199357501

In Mass Politics in Tough Times, the eminent political scientists Larry Bartels and Nancy Bermeo have gathered a group of leading scholars to analyze the political responses to the Great Recession in the US, Western Europe, and East-Central Europe.

It's Not About the Economy Stupid

It's Not About the Economy Stupid
Author: Olga Onuch
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre:
ISBN:

Over the last decade, protest politics have become an increasingly important element of the political environment of most regions in the world: in the EU (Greece), in MENA (in Egypt, and Israel), in EE (in Serbia, Ukraine, Latvia, and Russia), in Latin America (Argentina, Mexico, and Chile), and in North America. Some of these protest events are coordinated and consist mostly of activists, union and opposition participants and others are truly moments of mass-mobilization when âĨOrdinaryâĨœ people, not only join in but also, make up the broad majority of protesters. Analysts have inferred causal implications of economic crises, in the production of both activist protest-events and mass-mobilization, assuming that deprivation is instrumental in motivating âĨordinaryâĨœ people to join in the protests. This logic has led to expectations of mass-mobilization during times of crisis. Yet, instances of mass-mobilization (as opposed to activist, union and opposition protest events) have not been distributed equally, and have not matched up with economic crises. Although there are multiple and on-going deprivation causing economic crises there are actually relatively few instances of mass-mobilization. Furthermore, there are instances of mass-protest that take place during times of prosperity as noted by Skocpol (1979). The empirical reality simply does not seem to meet our expectations. Thus, this paper asks if economic crises are truly mobilizing factors, that trigger protest reactions or if other variables may be more important. This paper tests longitudinally the relationship between different economic crises as causal variables of mass-mobilization. Using an original data set combining data from the: IMF Systemic Banking and Financial Crisis Project, European Protest and Coercion Project, WVS, and Global Protest Data, the author demonstrates that in the post-WWII era, the relationship between crises and mass-mobilization is weak at best.

Austerity and Protest

Austerity and Protest
Author: Marco Giugni
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2016-04-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317177347

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.

Economic Crisis and Mass Protest

Economic Crisis and Mass Protest
Author: Jon Gunnar Bernburg
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2016-06-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317146255

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.

Free Markets and Food Riots

Free Markets and Food Riots
Author: John K. Walton
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2011-08-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1444399810

This book describes and explains the extraordinary wave of popular protest that swept across the so-called Third World and the countries of the former socialist bloc during the period from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, in response to the mounting debt crisis and the austerity measures widely adopted as part of economic "reform" and "adjustment". Explores this general proposition in a cross-national study of the austerity protests, or the 'IMF Riots' that have affected so many debtor nations since the mid-1970s Argues that modern austerity protests, like the classical "bread riots" in eighteenth-century Europe are political acts aimed at injustice, but acts that are an integral part of the process of international economic and political restructuring Evaluates how modern food riots are most important for what they reveal about global economic transformation and its social, and political, consequences Provides a general framework (drawing on comparative and historical material) and then trace the cycle of uneven development, debt, neo-liberal reform, and protest in Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe Focusses on the role of women in structural adjustment and protest politics and the features of seemingly anomalous cases which qualify the general argument

Contention in Times of Crisis

Contention in Times of Crisis
Author: Hanspeter Kriesi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2020-08-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108890466

This is the first comprehensive overview of the waves of protest mobilization that spread across Europe in the wake of the Great Recession. Documenting the extent of these protests in a study covering thirty countries, including the issues they addressed and the degree to which they replicated each other, this book maps the prevalence and nature of protest across Europe, and explains the interactions between economic and political grievances that lead to protest mobilization. The authors assess a range of claims in the literature on political protest, arguing that they tend both to overstate the importance of anti-austerity sentiments and underestimate the relevance of political grievances in driving the protest. They also integrate a study of the electoral and protest arenas, revealing that electoral mass politics has been heavily influenced protest mobilization, which amplified electoral punishment at the polls.

The End of Protest

The End of Protest
Author: Alasdair Roberts
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2017-07-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1501714430

The United States has just gone through the worst economic crisis in a generation. Why wasn’t there more protest, as there was in other countries? During the United States’ last great era of free-market policies, before World War II, economic crises were always accompanied by unrest. "The history of capitalism," the economist Joseph Schumpeter warned in 1942, "is studded with violent bursts and catastrophes." In The End of Protest, Alasdair Roberts explains how, in the modern age, governments learned to unleash market forces while also avoiding protest about the market’s failures. Roberts argues that in the last three decades, the two countries that led the free-market revolution—the United States and Britain—have invented new strategies for dealing with unrest over free market policies. The organizing capacity of unions has been undermined so that it is harder to mobilize discontent. The mobilizing potential of new information technologies has also been checked. Police forces are bigger and better equipped than ever before. And technocrats in central banks have been given unprecedented power to avoid full-scale economic calamities. Tracing the histories of economic unrest in the United States and Great Britain from the nineteenth century to the present, The End of Protest shows that governments have always been preoccupied with the task of controlling dissent over free market policies. But today’s methods pose a new threat to democratic values. For the moment, advocates of free-market capitalism have found ways of controlling discontent, but the continued effectiveness of these strategies is by no means certain.

Conflicts within the Crisis

Conflicts within the Crisis
Author: Gareth Brown
Publisher: Social Justice
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2013-04-23
Genre:
ISBN:

Nicola Montagna and Sue Mew, eds. This issue of Social Justice investigates some of the most significant cycles of protest that have occurred across the globe since the current financial, economic, and political crisis started in 2007. It covers four Eurozone countries, Greece, Italy, Spain, and the UK, and one Mediterranean country involved in the Arab Spring, Egypt. The financial crisis has resulted in economic collapse (Greece, Spain, and Italy, to mention a few), a crisis of political legitimacy (Egypt and Italy, for example), and has been used as an excuse for further neoliberal restructuring of the welfare system (e.g., in the UK, Greece, and Italy). Contributors offer a historical framework for these events, which are unfolding daily, and discuss the liberatory and social justice strategies of political movements–from Occupy to the Indignados and Egyptian soccer Ultras. Also discussed are changing police tactics in the face of mounting mass protest. - See more at: http://www.socialjusticejournal.org/?product=conflicts-within-the-crisis-vol-391-2011#sthash.iZzRrDaE.dpufThis issue of Social Justice investigates some of the most significant cycles of protest that have occurred across the globe since the current financial, economic, and political crisis started in 2007. It covers four Eurozone countries, Greece, Italy, Spain, and the UK, and one Mediterranean country involved in the Arab Spring, Egypt. The financial crisis has resulted in economic collapse (Greece, Spain, and Italy, to mention a few), a crisis of political legitimacy (Egypt and Italy, for example), and has been used as an excuse for further neoliberal restructuring of the welfare system (e.g., in the UK, Greece, and Italy). Contributors offer a historical framework for these events, which are unfolding daily, and discuss the liberatory and social justice strategies of political movements–from Occupy to the Indignados and Egyptian soccer Ultras. Also discussed are changing police tactics in the face of mounting mass protest.