Moving from the Squares to the Ballot Box: Podemos and the Institutionalisation of the Cycle of Anti-austerity Protest

Portos, Martín

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-53405-9_7

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…The mobilisations against austerity policies that characterised, in different ways and with different levels of intensity, the Southern part of the Eurozone (Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece) in the last five years, are at the core of both the public and scholarly debate on collective action. Their analysis has triggered the exploration of several research questions, investigating different aspects: the comeback of materialistic issues in the field of social movement studies (Hetland & Goodwin, 2013), the role of structural economic factors (della Porta, 2015), the radical critique of representative democracy (della Porta, 2012;Flesher Fominaya, 2014a), the crisis of European governance (Kriesi et al, 2013), the relationship between social mobilisation and political representation, the role of social media (Gerbaudo, 2012;Juris, 2012;Sloam 2014), the links with extra-European experiences such as Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring (della Porta & Mattoni, 2014), the forms of organisation experimented in the squares (Maeckelbergh, 2012;Nez & Ganuza, 2013), the return of grievances as an explanatory factor (Portos, 2014) or even the relevance of the generational issue in the configuration of the mobilisations (Hughes, 2011). Nevertheless, this manifold effort has not been free from some of the most common flaws of social movement research.…”

Section: Introduction 1crisis Austerity and Social Movements In South...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dissenting youth: how student and youth struggles helped shape anti-austerity mobilisations in Southern Europe

Zamponi¹,

González²

2019

Resisting Austerity

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Social movements do not appear spontaneously. They are rooted in cultures and contexts and their evolution depends both on macro structural factors and on the action and organisation of pre-existing actors. In particular, the anti-austerity protest events that characterised southern European countries in the last few years cannot be understood through a focus on them as isolated incidents. They need, instead, to be analysed as part of a cycle of protest. Furthermore, some of their components are rooted in the activity and elaboration of pre-existing actors. We contribute to this issue by analysing the role of the student movement in the lead up to the antiausterity mobilisations in Italy and Spain. This analysis allows us to show that a relevant component of the discourse of anti-austerity mobilisation comes from a long-standing trajectory of critique of neoliberalism, and that specific actors in specific fields of action reshaped and recontextualised this heritage in the context of the economic crisis, paving the way, at least from the discursive point of view, for the emergence of antiausterity mobilisations. Our analysis, based on qualitative interviews of Italian and Spanish activists, point outs how student activists acted as initiators of antiausterity mobilisations and as brokers in the adaptation of the anti-neoliberal discourse in the new context, with the goal of addressing a wider audience. We stress that pre-existing political trajectories play a significant role in the development of social movements, we highlight the importance of discursive continuities of cycle of protest and we argue that this role needs to be taken into account, together with structural factors and political processes, in understanding protest. Furthermore, we aim to contribute to the study of social movement continuities and cross-temporal diffusion, pointing out the active role of movements in this process in a dialectic relationship with the structural context.action not as ephemeral explosions, but as the results of dynamic and complex interactions between long-standing trajectories of dissent and contextual changes of opportunities and resources, both at the discursive and at the structural level, is one of the central goals of social movement studies. Thus, we think that looking at genealogies and continuities, focusing on what is reproduced and what changes, between different stages of protest, can produce fruitful analyses and insights. In particular, we claim that the recent anti-austerity protests have been often analysed from, so to speak, too close, and that a deeper understanding of them can be achieved through a historically grounded analysis and a focus on the longer term processes that brought them about. Putting anti-austerity protest in context: theoretical backgroundThis article aims to contribute to this deeper understanding by setting itself two goals: a contingent and a theoretical one. On the contingent level, we aim to contribute to the debate on the recent wave of anti-austerity protest, proposing an ana...

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Section: Introduction 1crisis Austerity and Social Movements In South...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dissenting youth: how student and youth struggles helped shape anti-austerity mobilisations in Southern Europe

Zamponi¹,

González²

2019

Resisting Austerity

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“…Model 1 (sociodemographic controls) shows that age and education level are associated with our dependent variable: Older individuals, and those with higher educational levels, are more prone to being a Podemos supporter. These results are in line with previous observations regarding the party's supporters (e.g.,Lobera, 2017;Portos, 2021;Ramiro & Symmetric measures between Podemos's supporters (DV) and predictors…”

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confidence: 99%

A nationalist party with non‐nationalistic voters? Discussing the limits of nationalism in party categorisation

Lobera

Roch

2022

Nations and Nationalism

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Are populism and nationalism two inseparable dimensions? The controversial argument is that both exclusionary and inclusionary populism draw on nationalist representations and traditions to construct their political discourse. In the case of Podemos, several scholars have argued that this party presents a nationalistic character based on its invocation of the ‘patria’ and a demarcated, imagined political community. This article relies on an original data set in order to test this hypothesis related to Podemos's supply and demand. With regard to supply, we explore four party manifestos to elucidate how Podemos refers to the nation, Spanish identity, sovereignty and immigration. To evaluate demand, we analyse the party's supporters' political attitudes and values regarding the nation, assimilation of immigrants and national preferentialism. Our results show that Podemos's supporters express lower levels of national identification than the remainder of the population. Similarly, the former analysis reveals a pro‐immigration position and a tendency of the party Podemos to avoid issues related to national identity. Departing from these results, we draw several implications on the use of nationalism for the categorisation of political parties and, in particular, left‐wing populism.

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“…We focus on the organization of two competing YV lists and provide a better understanding of how social movement participants enter the electoral arena and how, in return, elections affect social movements (Blee and Currier 2006). Three elements allow us to renew the analysis of these issues and to question the role and the articulation of political opportunities (Kriesi 2004), ideological cleavages as well as the mobilization of organizational resources and the construction of strong leadership (Portos 2021). First, we focus on a social movement characterized by its great distrust of political representatives and institutions, which therefore appears at first sight as fully averse to an electoral outcome.…”

Section: Contribution To Existing Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

From Yellow Vests street protest to city council: when social movements run for office

Sudda¹,

Gaborit

2022

Fr Polit

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How the Gilets jaunes (Yellow Vests) faced the electoral dilemma? Despite their rejection of political institutions, the French municipal elections of 2020 led some of the participants to embrace conventional politics. Under which circumstances can a social movement lead to political participation and eventually obtain electoral success? Relying on quantitative and qualitative data, this article provides an explanation of the electoral participation of social movement activists and the different outcomes of local elections in Bordeaux, one of the major sites of Yellow Vests' mobilization in 2018-2019. The article contends that far from allowing marginalized groups to enter the political arena, these elections seem to confirm the "iron law of oligarchy". Two lists of candidates both claiming to be part of the Yellow Vests movement competed with each other. While "Démocratie Bordelaise (Bordeaux Democracy)" rejected partisan support failed to stand, "Bordeaux en Luttes (Bordeaux in Struggle") could rely on organizational support and was able to maintain itself and achieved unexpected electoral success with three local councilors.

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Moving from the Squares to the Ballot Box: Podemos and the Institutionalisation of the Cycle of Anti-austerity Protest

Cited by 4 publications

References 65 publications

Dissenting youth: how student and youth struggles helped shape anti-austerity mobilisations in Southern Europe

Dissenting youth: how student and youth struggles helped shape anti-austerity mobilisations in Southern Europe

A nationalist party with non‐nationalistic voters? Discussing the limits of nationalism in party categorisation

From Yellow Vests street protest to city council: when social movements run for office

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