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The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Publications

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Life beyond the ballot box: the political participation and non-participation of electoral abstainers

Journal Article - 2020

Author: Martín Portos, Lorenzo Bosi, Lorenzo Zamponi

Drawing on electoral participation and social movement studies, we develop a typologyof abstainers on the basis of their forms of non-electoral participation, and explore thedeterminants that drive belonging to each of these sub-groups. Although there is a positive correlation between electoral turnout and non-electoral participation, throughapplying latent class analyses and regressions we find that there… more

Nationalism and populism on the left: The case of Podemos

Journal Article - 2020

Author: Jacopo Custodi

This article provides an empirical exploration of the relation between nationalism and populism on the left of the political spectrum. The Spanish party Podemos is a key case study for such an analysis, as it is a left‐populist actor that has made extensive use of nationalist rhetoric in its discourse. Through a discourse analysis on… more

On corruption and state capture: The struggle of anti-corruption activism in Hungary

Journal Article - 2020

Author: Andrea Pirro & Donatella della Porta

The article draws on social movement theory to understand collective action against corruption in Hungary. While offering a perspective on anti-corruption activism, the article demonstrates its limits against a set of unfavourable factors. Our enquiry reveals that the political context in which anti-corruption activism develops, that is, Hungary under Viktor Orbán, critically affects its mobilising… more

Paths toward the Same Form of Collective Action: Direct Social Action in Times of Crisis in Italy

Journal Article - 2020

Author: Lorenzo Bosi, Lorenzo Zamponi

Heterogeneous collective actors often select the same form of action, but there is no academic investigation into how and when this happens. This article does so focusing on direct social action, that is, a form of collective action that does not primarily focus upon claiming something from the state but instead focuses upon directly transforming… more

Politicizing support and opposition to migration in France: The EU asylum policy crisis and direct social activism

Journal Article - 2020

Author: Pietro Castelli Gattinara, Lorenzo Zamponi

This article focuses on the migration policy crisis in France to illustrate how social movements contribute to the epistemic construction of ‘crises’ of European Integration. To tackle politicization, we compare the framing and mobilization choices by grassroots actors in solidarity with asylum-seekers and groups aiming to defend national borders from them. Using original Protest Event… more

Populism and the (Italian) crisis: The voters and the context

Journal Article - 2020

Author: Manuela Caiani & Enrico Padoan

This article, focusing on Italy, aims to broaden our understanding of the recent striking electoral fortunes of (differing types of) populism in the country, by locating them within multiple crises (political, economic, migration) that have shocked Europe in the last two decades. By combining individual-level survey data on voters with organizational-level interviews conducted with national… more

Rethinking the digital democratic affordance and its impact on political representation: Toward a new framework

Journal Article - 2020

Author: Marco Deseriis

This article advances a new theory of the digital democratic affordance, a concept first introduced by Lincoln Dahlberg to devise a taxonomy of the democratic capacities of digital media applications. Whereas Dahlberg classifies digital media affordances on the basis of preexisting democratic positions, the article argues that the primary affordance of digital media is to… more

Reverting trajectories? UKIP’s organisational and discursive change after the Brexit referendum

Journal Article - 2020

Author: Ofra Klein & Andrea Pirro

The article focuses on the transformation of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) after the 2016 Brexit referendum. It describes how, after securing its chief political demand, UKIP opened up to grassroots far-right politics and assesses whether this strategy involved a concomitant shift towards a more radical discourse. Against a backdrop of organisational change, the findings… more

Shelter from the Storm: «Virtuous» Systems of Urban Asylum Governance Coping with Italy’s Immigration Crackdown

Journal Article - 2020

Author: Raffaele Bazurli, Francesca Campomori & Mattia Casula

Immigration and asylum became tremendously contested in Italy over the last decade. Especially since 2017, left-leaning executives eroded asylum rights for the sake of competing with their right-wing opponents. The climax was then reached in 2018, when Matteo Salvini – leader of the far-right Lega party and newly appointed Minister of the Interior – authored… more

Social media time, identity narratives and the construction of political biographies

Journal Article - 2020

Author: Veronica Barassi, Lorenzo Zamponi

The question of identity narrative is at the core of the interaction between social movements and temporalities. In this paper, we draw on long-term qualitative research amongst activists engaged in Italian social movements and argue that identity narratives are often the result of a complex mnemonic, contradictory and open-ended process that spans through a life-time… 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