Contesting Austerity

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiago Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Eurozone Crisis ◽  
Relative Autonomy ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Institutional Actors

Despite the historical and political similarities between Portugal and Spain, the contentious responses to austerity diverged in terms of number, rhythm and players. This book compares the contentious responses to austerity in Portugal and Spain during the Eurozone crisis and the Great Recession between 2008 and 2015. While in Spain a sustained wave of mobilisation lasted for three years, involving various players and leading to a transformation of the party system, in Portugal social movements were only able to mobilise in specific instances, trade unions dominated protest and, by the end of the cycle, institutional change was limited. Contesting Austerity shows that the different trajectories and outcomes in these two countries are connected to the nature and configurations of the players in the mobilisation process. While in Spain actors’ relative autonomy from one another led to deeper political transformation, in Portugal the dominance of the institutional actors limited the extent of that change.

The Impact of the Greek Indignados on Greek Politics

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paris Aslanidis ◽  
Nikos Marantzidis
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Party System ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The Impact

The burden of this paper is to assert the significance of the 2011 movement of the Greek indignados for Greek politics during the Great Recession. Acknowledging the systematically feeble analysis of the nexus between non-institutional and electoral politics in social movement literature, the authors analyze the emergence, development, and heritage of the Greek indignados, focusing squarely on their impact on public opinion and the domestic party system, both at the level of interparty, as well as intraparty dynamics. The authors’ conclusions are drawn mainly from an analysis of political party discourse, public opinion data, and interviews conducted on the field, catering equally for the supply and demand side of the novel political claims that surfaced during the first years of the Greek sovereign debt crisis. The authors point to the crucial contribution of the movement’s discourse in facilitating voter defection from the traditional two-party system that ruled Greece for more than thirty years, and argue that the indignados functioned as a beacon of populist discursive tropes, which cemented the emergence of a new divide in Greek society between pro- and anti-bailout citizens. Conclusively, the authors take the position that the imprint of the indignados on the Greek psyche has had tremendous repercussions in consolidating a new party system, by undermining traditional political forces and legitimizing new, anti-establishment contenders.

Populist Social Movements of the Great Recession*

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paris Aslanidis
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Unified Framework ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The People ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Action Frame

Social movement scholars have thus far failed to give populism its deserved attention and to incorporate it into their field of study. Although sociologists, political scientists, and historians have explored diverse facets of the intersection of populism and social dissent, there has been no concerted effort towards building a comprehensive framework for the study of populist mobilization, despite its growing significance in the past decades. In this article I combine insights from populism studies, social movement scholarship, and social psychology to build a unified framework of analysis for populist social movements. I suggest populism is best understood as a collective action frame employed by movement entrepreneurs to construct a resonant collective identity of “the People” and to challenge elites. I argue that populism depends on the politicization of citizenship, and I apply this framework to the movements of the Great Recession to classify Occupy Wall Street and the European indignados as instances of a populist wave of mobilization, using data from archival material and a set of semistructured interviews with Greek activists.

The Impact of the Great Recession on Child Poverty in Greece

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manos Matsaganis
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Professional Associations ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
The Status ◽  
Effects On Children ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
The Impact

This chapter discusses the impact of the crisis (and of policy responses) on children in Greece. The Great Recession has been far more painful and protracted in that country than elsewhere. While some of its effects on children will take years to unfold, others are visible already. The very fact that the economic crisis was allowed to become a social emergency in the first place implies that policy responses failed to rise to the occasion. The reasons for that failure are to be found in the ‘politics of welfare retrenchment’. Defenders of the status quo, from trade unions to professional associations with good connections to the political establishment, have been relatively successful in resisting austerity cuts. As a result, the burden of fiscal consolidation has fallen on less powerful categories, leaving little space for policies aimed at protecting the real victims of the recession: the unemployed and the poor.

Social Movements

2020 ◽  
pp. 464-478
Author(s):  
Eduardo Romanos
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Model Building ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
National Surveys ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Cross National

According to cross-national surveys, Spaniards are among the Europeans who participate the most in street protests. At the same time, Spanish social movements have been generally understood as deploying a less radical protest repertoire and a relatively weak organizational model. Building upon central concepts in social movement studies, this chapter analyses these and other features of the Spanish activist tradition as compared to other Western countries. An especial attention is paid to the strongest protest cycles in Spanish recent history: the years of the democratic transition and the Great Recession. In doing so, this chapter aims to address the long-term effects of regime transition on domestic collective action and organized protest.

Does Economic and Political Integration Undermine Representative Democracy?

2020 ◽  
pp. 636-654
Author(s):  
Jorge M. Fernandes ◽  
Pedro C. Magalhães
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Political Integration ◽  
Eurozone Crisis ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Citizen Preferences ◽  
Actual Policy

The Great Recession and the Eurozone crisis are frequently treated as having led to a breakdown in democratic representation in Europe, as deeply constrained governments became unable to translate the preferences of citizenry into actual policy. However, after reviewing the available evidence, we find that the crisis seems to have contributed to increasing both the salience of economic policy issues and the ideological differentiation around them, amongst both parties and voters. Furthermore, the composition of governments remained relevant for the policy responses to the crisis, even among those countries that were most deeply affected. To be sure, the picture regarding the extent to which governments remained responsive to changing citizen preferences remains very incomplete. However, the existing evidence warns against underestimating the resilience of the mechanisms that contribute to keep re-election-minded officials in line with the preferences of citizens, even in what concerns supranational policymaking.

Analysis of the Association Between Political Change in Local Government and Municipal Financial Condition in Spain During the Great Recession

2020 ◽  
pp. 105-128
Author(s):  
José L. Zafra-Gómez ◽  
Antonio M. López-Hernández ◽  
Juan Montabes ◽  
Ángel Cazorla
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Financial Condition ◽  
Effective Number Of Parties ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
Constituent Elements ◽  
Gains And Losses

The political influence on the financial condition of local government has been examined in various studies in the academic literature. However, no clear relationship has yet been established between such political factors and the constituent elements of financial condition sustainability in the context of the recent Great Recession. The aim of this study is to evaluate the dimensions of electoral size, defined for the chapter's purposes as the effective number of parties, and of transfer (i.e., how electoral gains and losses are related to the configuration of the party system) using a series of aggregate indices. Once these indicators are obtained, they are related to various indicators of financial condition for five Spanish cities. The results obtained show that financial condition either worsened or presented little change in the different cases considered and that various scenarios of aggregate volatility during the study period were detected.

“JOB-KILLER” BILLS IN TOUGH ECONOMIC TIMES: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND LEAVE-POLICY AGENDAS BEFORE AND AFTER THE GREAT RECESSION*

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-347
Author(s):  
Cassandra Engeman
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Leave Policy ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
Policy Agendas ◽  
Sick Leave Policies

How do economic conditions influence social movements' capacity to set legislative agendas? This research examines multiple efforts to expand family, medical, and sick leave policies in California across almost two decades spanning the Great Recession. Longitudinal analysis in a state with political conditions favorable to leave policy agendas permits close consideration of how varying economic conditions shape social movement influence in the policy process. Drawing from various qualitative sources, this research finds that, after the recession, leave bills were more often held in appropriations committees for their estimated costs to the state and anticipated pressures on funding sources. Weak economic conditions also shifted leave advocates' priorities away from leave policy issues toward maintaining public employment and services. The article advances social movement research by showing the mechanisms by which state fiscal capacity shapes social movement strategies and interacts with political conditions at the early, agenda-setting stages of the legislative process.

scholarly journals Legitimacy and the Paradox of Technocratic Government in Newer European Democracies: The Fischer Administration in the Czech Republic Revisited

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seán Hanley
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Eurozone Crisis ◽  
Weak Basis ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Mass Publics

The creation of technocratic caretaker governments in several European countries in the wake of the Great Recession (2008–2009) and the Eurozone crisis led to renewed academic interest in such administrations. Although such governments are often assumed to be illegitimate and democratically dysfunctional, there has been little empirical consideration of if and how they legitimate themselves to mass publics. This question is particularly acute given that, empirically, caretaker technocrat-led administrations have been clustered in newer, more crisis-prone democracies in Southern and Eastern Europe where high levels of state exploitation by parties suggest a weak basis for any government claiming technocratic impartiality. This article uses Michael Saward’s “representative claims” framework to re-examine the case of one of Europe’s longer-lasting and most popular technocratic administrations, the 2009–2010 Fischer government in the Czech Republic. The article maps representative claims made for Fischer and his government, as well as counterclaims. Claims drew on the electoral mandate of sponsoring parties, the government’s claimed technocratic neutrality, and on Fischer’s “mirroring” of the values and lifestyle of ordinary Czechs (echoing some populist framings of politics). The article argues that the Fischer government benefited from multiple overlapping representative claims, but notes the need for robust methodology to assess the reception claims by their intended constituency. It concludes by considering the implications of actors’ ability to combine populist and technocratic claims, noting similarities in technocratic governments and some types of anti-establishment party.

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