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The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Publications

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How Young Activists Responded to the First Wave of the Covid-19 Crisis in Italy: Variations Across Trajectories of Participation

Journal Article - 2023

Author: Lorenzo Bosi, Anna Lavizzari

This study explores how young activists in Italy responded to the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic using sixteen longitudinal qualitative interviews conducted in 2018 and 2020. Our fieldwork suggests that the Covid-19 crisis did not resonate with any significant shift in the trajectory of participation. At the same time, three major empirical observations with… more

Patterns of adaptation and recontextualisation: The transnational diffusion of Black Lives Matter to Italy and Germany

Journal Article - 2023

Author: Donatella della Porta, Anna Lavizzari, Herbert Reiter, Moritz Sommer, Elias Steinhilper, Folashade Ajayi

Reflective Inclusion: Learning from Activists What Taking a Deliberative Stance Means.

Journal Article - 2023

Author: Andrea Felicetti, Markus Holdo

Researchers are increasingly recognizing that social movements are crucial for realizing deliberative democratic values. However, this raises two important questions: (1) what actions should count as deliberation and (2) whether we should demand more from activists than merely provoking or encouraging deliberation in a society. Building on current research on activists’ actual engagement with deliberation,… more

(Water) Bottles and (Street) Barricades: The Politicisation of Lifestyle-Centred Action in Youth Climate Strike Participation

Journal Article - 2022

Author: Lorenzo Zamponi, Anja Corinne Baukloh, Niccolò Bertuzzi, Daniela Chironi, Donatella della Porta, Martín Portos

In resisting climate change, to what extent can lifestyle forms of activism be considered to be political? What are their determinants and to what extent do they differ from the determinants of other forms of action? What role do generational factors play? Does the centrality of lifestyle changes for young participants translate into a disaffection… more

Casting a new light on the democratic spectator

Journal Article - 2022

Author: Andrea Felicetti

The idea of citizens being mere spectators who “watch” politics is widespread in public and academic debates. Scholarship in relation to democratic theory tends to see spectatorship as a state in which citizens are politically uninterested, isolated, and passive. Although this understanding aptly captures the problems about the idea of spectatorship, it is only a… more

Far right: The significance of an umbrella concept

Journal Article - 2022

Author: Andrea Pirro

This contribution makes the case for a shift in boundaries between the (populist) radical right and the extreme right, arguing for the systematic use of the term ‘far right’. The significance of a deliberately generic but fundamentally meaningful concept such as ‘far right’ is motivated by the growing links between illiberal-democratic (‘radical right’) and anti-democratic… more

Forging, bending, and breaking: Enacting the “illiberal playbook” in Hungary and Poland

Journal Article - 2022

Author: Andrea Pirro & Ben Stanley

In recent years, Central and Eastern Europe have furnished several examples of illiberalism in power. The most prominent and consequential cases are Fidesz, which has ruled in Hungary since 2010, and Law and Justice (PiS), which has ruled in Poland since 2015. In both cases, illiberal governments have embarked upon an extensive project of political… more

Participatory governance in megaprojects: the Lyon–Turin high-speed railway among structure, agency, and democratic participation

Journal Article - 2022

Author: Giovanni Esposito, Andrea Felicetti, Andrea Terlizzi

Megaprojects are increasingly common across countries and attract substantial political attention from a variety of actors. Recent studies have highlighted the need to move from an understanding of megaprojects as linear and rational processes towards a more nuanced approach that accounts for non-linear and conflictual aspects. Participatory governance is often proposed as a valuable resource… more

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Publications

Edited Volume - 2026

Conspiracism and Political Conflict

Manuela Caiani, Marco Solinas, Hans-Jorg Trenz

Monograph - 2025

Free download for "Contentious Politics of Global Health Movements"

Donatella Della Porta, Stella Christou

Journal Article - 2025

Communication creates partial organization: A comparative analysis of the organizing practices of two climate action movements, Youth for Climate and Fridays for Future Italy

Marco Deseriis, Lorenzo Zamponi, Diego Ceccobelli
This article focuses on a neglected aspect of the climate action movement Fridays for Future, namely, the relationship between its mediated communication practices and its early organizational processes. Drawing from a strand of organizational communication that underscores the constitutive dimension of communication to organizing processes, we analyze the significance of mediatized leadership and networked communication for the foundation and early development of two national chapters of Fridays for Future: Youth for Climate (YFC) Belgium and Fridays for Future Italy (FFFI).

Journal Article - 2025

Power resources, territory and labour conflicts in the logistic sector

Donatella Della Porta, Marco Antonelli