The stunning electoral success of movement parties like Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain and the 5 Star Movement in Italy challenged expectations of an increasing separation of movement and party politics in social movement studies as well as those of a decline of the radical left in studies of political parties.

While the downward trend in party-movement relations had pushed towards expectation of further separation, a new wave of movement parties emerged. This became visible, first, in Latin America since the 1990s with a parallel move in Europe (in particular, in Southern Europe) more than a decade later. From the theoretical point of view, while it has been often noted that parties are important for movements and vice-versa, the literature on relations between the two is at best sparse. Reciprocal indifferences has been further fueled as research on parties moved away from concerns with the relations between parties and society, focusing on parties within institutions, and social movement studies mainly framed them as a social phenomenon, whose political aspects had to be located outside of the political institutions.

A contribution of this conference is in the bridging of concepts and theories developed in two quite successful subfields in the social and political sciences: social movements’ and political parties’ studies. In particular, focusing on relations between parties and movements, we will address the relevant issues of social movement effects as well as literature on party system changes. Bridging both traditions of studies we shall reflect on the transformation of movement/parties relations induced by the neoliberal critical junctures, as well as on the organizational transformation that from social movements spilled over into party politics.

Allegati

Conference Programme