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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Publications

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Populists in power and conspiracy theories

Journal Article - 2022

Author: Andrea Pirro & Paul Taggart

The populist use of tropes such as conspiracy theories plays an increasingly important role in their politics. Populism and conspiracy theories present a number of common traits – Manichaeanism, a sense of victimhood, and an ambivalence towards representative politics – and populists’ use of conspiracy theories is politically purposeful. Targeting a conspiring elite serves to… more
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Resisting the Backlash: Street Protest in Italy

Monograph - 2022

Author: 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. With a focus on Italy and the reaction to increasing inequalities and welfare state retrenchment policies, it examines opposition to the government… more
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Social Movements Prefiguring Political Theory

Chapter in edited book - 2022

Author: Sophia Wathne

Adding to the growing literature on social movements as knowledge and theory creators, this chapter wants more social movement research to focus on the content of the political theories created by social movements, as an outcome of their morality. This chapter argues that prefigurative social movements create political theory through the interplay of their internal… more

Solidarietà, mutualismo, resistenza: l’azione collettiva in Italia dalla crisi economica a quella pandemica

Journal Article - 2022

Author: Lorenzo Bosi, Lorenzo Zamponi

Le molte forme di solidarietà e mutualismo dal basso che si sono manifestate in questi anni, sia nel contesto della crisi economica sia in risposta alla pandemia di Covid-19, dalle grandi organizzazioni sociali alle occupazioni abitative, dai gruppi di acquisto solidale alle fabbriche recuperate, passando per i centri sociali e le sperimentazioni di welfare dal… more

The mobilization for spatial justice in divided societies. Urban commons, trust reconstruction and socialist memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Journal Article - 2022

Author: Chiara Milan

The article contributes to the urban studies literature and the study of social movements in divided societies by disclosing the distinctive features and mobilizing potential that the notion of urban commons retains in a war-torn society with a socialist legacy. Specifically, it investigates how urban space and urban commons are reclaimed in a post-conflict and… more

The Three Faces of Populism in Power: Policy, Policies and Politics

Journal Article - 2022

Author: Manuela Caiani & Paolo Graziano

The article explores the consequences of the increasing presence of both left- and right-wing populist parties in government, critically reflecting on the recent scholarship on the topic, underlining promising venues for future research and outlining a conceptual framework which constitutes the background of this special issue entitled ‘Populism in Power and its Consequences’. Our main… more

The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements, 2nd Edition

Edited Volume - 2022

Author: David A. Snow, Donatella della Porta, Doug McAdam, Bert Klandermans (eds.)

Anti-nationalist Europeans and pro-European nativists on the streets: visions of Europe from the left to the far right

Journal Article - 2021

Author: Manuela Caiani & Manès Weisskircher

For many left-wing and liberal social movement activists, support for ‘Europe’ and opposition to a ‘nationalist’ turn has become a key motivation for their activism. Paradoxically, however, their opponents at the other end of the political spectrum, far-right activists, also positively identify as European. This article analyses one of the key developments in the contemporary… more

Between real and virtual: strategies of mobilisation of the radical right in Eastern Europe

Journal Article - 2021

Author: Manuela Caiani

In this article, we explore radical right mobilisation beyond the electoral arena, looking at its characteristics and forms, as well as intensity and related factors (such as the preferred targets and issues). Within a comparative study of four country cases in Central and Eastern Europe the analysis is carried out by drawing on two novel… more

Candidate Selection, Personalization and Different Logics of Centralization in New Southern European Populism: The Cases of Podemos and the M5S

Journal Article - 2021

Author: Manuela Caiani & Enrico Padoan & Bruno Marino

Journal Government and Opposition (OnLineFirst) Abstract In this article, we focus on the candidate selection processes of Podemos in Spain and the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S – Five Star Movement) in Italy, processes which are related to intra-party democracy. With a mixed-methods approach (including novel data from the expert survey PoPES, 31 semi-structured interviews with… more

News

03/05/2025

Regole e mercato del lavoro, flexicurity, reddito dagli anni 90 a oggi
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24/04/2025

Reclaiming narrative: understanding Palestinian politics with Palestinian voices
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11/04/2025

Politics of Exclusion: Repressing Protests on US Campus
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08/04/2025

Protest politics and democratic struggle: Greece
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07/04/2025

Break free. La migrazione oltre il carcere e la repressione
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31/03/2025

Education as a form of democratic resistance: the FIERCE co-creation labs and the Manual for self-defense 
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Publications

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 - 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.

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.
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Faculty of Political and Social Sciences Scuola Normale Superiore Palazzo Strozzi Piazza degli Strozzi 50123 Firenze Italy
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