logo

Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

logo

Publications

Type:
Author(s):
Title:
Year:

Transferring Violence? Mafia Killings in Nontraditional Areas. Evidence from Italy

Journal Article - 2017

Author: Francesco N. Moro, Salvatore Sberna

Violence is a key means used by organized crime to assert its control over territory and business. A widespread view is that violence is bound to take place also in the new territories where mafia groups migrate. In this article, we maintain that this view overlooks two important factors. First, criminal organizations acting in nontraditional… more

United in opposition? The populist radical right’s EU-pessimism in times of crisis

Journal Article - 2017

Author: Andrea L. P. Pirro and Stijn van Kessel

Populist radical right (PRR) parties are typically critical of European integration. They deem the EU an elitist project and consider European integration a threat to national sovereignty. In practice, however, PRR parties’ positions on the EU have varied across countries and periods. Our article assesses whether, and how, PRR parties have changed their ‘EU-pessimist’ discourse… more

Voicing outrage unevenly: Democratic dissatisfaction, nonparticipation, and participation frequency in the 15-M campaign

Journal Article - 2017

Author: Martín Portos and Juan Masullo

This article explores frequencies of participation and nonparticipation in the 15-M protest campaign in Spain. Given the nature of this campaign, we focus on democratic dissatisfaction. Our findings suggest that, relative to nonparticipants, democratic dissatisfaction is significantly associated with multiple-time participation, but not with one-time participation. In other words, those who participated only once are… more

Voting for Movement Parties in Southern Europe: The Role of Protest and Digital Information

Journal Article - 2017

Author: Lorenzo Mosca and Mario Quaranta

In recent years ‘movement parties’ such as Syriza in Greece, the Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy, Podemos in Spain and—to a lesser extent—Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal shook national party systems, breaking the consolidated dynamics of political competition. Despite growing interest in movement parties, there has been scant attention to the role of citizens adopting… more
Picture description

Where Did the Revolution Go? Contentious Politics and the Quality of Democracy by Donatella della Porta

Monograph - 2017

Author: Donatella della Porta

Book description Where Did the Revolution Go? considers the apparent disappearance of the large social movements that have contributed to democratization. Revived by recent events of the Arab Spring, this question is once again paramount. Is the disappearance real, given the focus of mass media and scholarship on electoral processes and 'normal politics'? Does it… more

A deliberative case for democracy in firms

Journal Article - 2016

Author: Andrea Felicetti

The increasing centrality of business firms in contemporary societies calls for a renewed attention to the democratization of these actors. This paper sheds new light on the possibility of democratizing business firms by bridging recent scholarship in two fields—deliberative democracy and business ethics. To date, deliberative democracy has largely neglected the role of business firms… more

A Global Movement for Real Democracy? The Resonance of Anti-Austerity Protest from Spain and Greece to Occupy Wall Street

Chapter in edited book - 2016

Author: Leonidas Oikonomakis and Jerome Roos

How do instances of popular protest spread across borders? This question, which has eluded social scientists for decades, appears to have become more salient than ever in the wake of the seemingly unprecedented transnational cycle of struggles that began in 2010-'11. In this chapter, we look at the diffusion of anti-austerity protest between Spain, Greece… more

Alternative Media

Chapter in edited book - 2016

Author: Alice Mattoni

Anti-Islamic PEGIDA Beyond Germany: Explaining Differences in Mobilisation

Journal Article - 2016

Author: Lars Erik Berntzen and Manès Weisskircher

The rise of anti-Islamic PEGIDA (Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes) is one of the latest sustained episodes of radical right mobilisation in Western Europe outside the electoral arena. This study provides a first comparative analysis of PEGIDA beyond Germany and its core region of Saxony. Combining protest event analysis with online data and… more

Del levantamiento zapatista al escándalo NSA: Lecciones aprendidas, debates actuales y futuros desafíos de la resistencia digital

Chapter in edited book - 2016

Author: Emiliano Treré

The chapter scrutinizes the lessons, the current debates and the future challenges of digital resistance from a critical standpoint, emphasizing both continuities and discontinuities from the Zapatista uprising to the NSA scandal

News

01/07/2024

Le basi istituzionali di un panico morale

alt
Attraverso una lunga rassegna di casi concreti, Donatella Della Porta, direttrice di Cosmos, descrive il processo per cui la lotta istituzionale all'antisemitismo in Germania, inizialmente promossa dalla società civile progressista, si è trasformata nella costruzione di un apparato statale e di una struttura di potere ufficiale come strumento di razzializzazione e repressione.

Publications

Journal Article - 2023

Resisting right-wing populism in power: a comparative analysis of the Facebook activities of social movements in Italy and the UK

Niccolò Pennucci
This paper aims to present a comparative study of the civil society reaction to right-wing populism in power through social media, by looking at cases in Italy and the United Kingdom.

Journal Article - 2023

Emotions in Action: the Role of Emotions in Refugee Solidarity Activism

Chiara Milan
This article investigates the different types of emotions that result from participation in refugee solidarity activism, investigating how they change over time and to what extent they explain why individuals remain involved in action in spite of unfavorable circumstances.

Journal Article - 2023

‘Love is over, this is going to be Turkey!’: cathartic resonance between the June 2013 protests in Turkey and Brazil

Batuhan Eren
This study addresses the question of why and how a protest can inspire individuals in distant countries. Taking the June 2013 protests in Turkey and Brazil as cases, it investigates the reasons why the Turkish protests were framed as one of the inspirational benchmarks by some Brazilian protesters.

Journal Article - 2023

Mutual aid and solidarity politics in times of emergency: direct social action and temporality in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic

Lorenzo Zamponi
From the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and the social distancing measures introduced created a series of social problems and needs that were partially addressed in Italy as well as in other countries by grassroots mutual aid initiatives. While many of these initiatives were strongly rooted in the Italian social movement and civil society landscape and the choice to engage in mutual aid activities was the result of long years of reflection and planning, the article shows how strongly the temporality of emergency affected the nature of these initiatives, their development and their outcomes, in particular with regard to the extraordinary number of people who volunteered and their relationship with politicisation processes.

Monograph - 2023

Populism and (Pop) Music

Manuela Caiani, Enrico Padoan
The book provides a detailed account of the links between production of popular culture to the rise of populism and contributes to studies on populism and popular culture in Italy, using a comparative approach and a cultural sociology perspective

Monograph - 2022

Labour conflicts in the digital age

Donatella della Porta, Riccardo Emilio Chesta, Lorenzo Cini
From Deliveroo to Amazon, digital platforms have drastically transformed the way we work. But how are these transformations being received and challenged by workers? This book provides a radical interpretation of the changing nature of worker movements in the digital age, developing an invaluable approach that combines social movement studies and industrial relations. Using case studies taken from Europe and North America, it offers a comparative perspective on the mobilizing trajectories of different platform workers and their distinct organizational forms and action repertoires.

Monograph - 2022

Resisting the Backlash: Street Protest in Italy

Donatella della Porta, Niccolò Bertuzzi, Daniela Chironi, Chiara Milan, Martín Portos & Lorenzo Zamponi
Drawing interview material, together with extensive data from the authors’ original social movement database, this book examines the development of social movements in resistance to perceived political "regression" and a growing right-wing backlash.

Journal Article - 2021

Learning from Democratic Practices: New Perspectives in Institutional Design

Andrea Felicetti
Drawing from literature on democratic practices in social movements and democratic innovations, the article illustrates three ways to advance institutional design in the wake of the systemic turn.

Monograph - 2021

Migrant Protest. Interactive Dynamics in Precarious Mobilizations

Elias Steinhilper
This book explores the interactions and spaces shaping the emergence, trajectory, and fragmentation of migrant protest in unfavorable contexts of marginalization.

Journal Article - 2021

Populism between voting and non-electoral participation

Andrea Pirro & Martín Portos
The article focuses on a neglected aspect of populist mobilisation, i.e. non-electoral participation (NEP), and elaborates on the extent to which populist party voters engage politically outside the polling station. While challenging common understandings of populism as inherently distrustful and apathetic, and protest as an exclusive practice of the left, the study critically places NEP at the heart of populism in general, and populist right politics in particular.