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The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Contentious Migrant Solidarity. Shrinking Spaces and Civil Society Contestation

Edited Volume - 2021

Author: Donatella della Porta & Elias Steinhilper

In the context of both the financial crisis and the crisis of European migration politics, the notion of solidarity has gained renewed prominence and - as this book argues - its practice has become increasingly contentious. Intersecting crises have sharpened social and political polarization and have contracted simultaneously the space for migrant and minority rights… more

European populism before the pandemic: ideology, Euroscepticism, electoral performance, and government participation of 63 parties in 30 countries

Journal Article - 2021

Author: Paul Taggart & Andrea Pirro

This contribution is conceived as a resource on the state of European populist parties before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. It reports on cross-national comparative findings generated by data collected from 30 European countries as to the state of populist parties in one calendar year (2019) and provides an extensive qualitative overview of the… more

Far-right protest mobilisation in Europe: Grievances, opportunities and resources

Journal Article - 2021

Author: Pietro Castelli Gattinara, Caterina Froio & Andrea Pirro

What explains far-right mobilisation in the protest arena? After decades of growing electoral support and policy influence, the far right is experiencing an increase in grassroots mobilisation. Scholars of social movements and political parties have devoted little attention to the determinants of far-right protest mobilisation in Europe. In this article, we bridge previous research on… more

Learning from Democratic Practices: New Perspectives in Institutional Design

Journal Article - 2021

Author: Andrea Felicetti

Contemporary democracies feature an increasingly diverse and complex variety of democratic practices. The systematic observation of these practices offers a valuable yet neglected source of insight for current debates on democratic systems and for institutional design. Taking democratic practices as the starting point for theorization counters the tendency to think that democracy has some sort… more
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Migrant Protest. Interactive Dynamics in Precarious Mobilizations

Monograph - 2021

Author: Elias Steinhilper

Over the past two decades, migrant protest has proliferated worldwide, explicitly posing questions of identity, rights, and equality in a globalized world. Nonetheless, such mobilizations are often considered anomalies in social movement studies and political sociology more broadly, due to "weak interests" and a particularly disadvantageous position of "outsiders" to claim rights connected to citizenship.… more

Online Hate Speech and the Radical Right in Times of Pandemic: The Italian and English Cases

Journal Article - 2021

Author: Manuela Caiani & Benedetta Carlotti & Enrico Padoan

Social media is considered a particularly conducive arena for hate speech, a form of communication often linked to the radical right. The goal of this study is to offer an empirical contribution that comparatively explores the presence and features of hate speech in the social media discourse of the radical right (leaders and parties) in… more

Populism between voting and non-electoral participation

Journal Article - 2021

Author: 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. The study addresses the question that populist parties and movements of the left and right originate from distinctive political experiences, and drive different forms of… more

The use of religion by populist parties: the case of Italy and its broader implications

Journal Article - 2021

Author: Manuela Caiani & Tiago Carvalho

The rise of populist parties in Europe and the increasing salience of religion in political discourse are two relevant, sometimes discussed as interrelated, phenomena of recent decades. While most analysis focuses on right-wing populism, this does not exhaust all possible relationships. This study addresses the role of religion in populist parties by focusing on the… more
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Varieties of Populism in Europe in Times of Crises

Edited Volume - 2021

Author: Manuela Caiani & Paolo Graziano

The volume, composed of eight chapters, investigates how different populist parties in the European Union have been affected by the various crises, disentangling the role of the Great Recession vis-à-vis other factors (such as political and party system factors, but also structural social changes or cultural opportunities) in the growing strength of populist parties in… more

Anti-Neoliberal Populisms in Comparative Perspective. A Latinamericanisation of Southern Europe?

Monograph - 2020

Author: Enrico Padoan

In this book, Enrico Padoan proposes an original middle-range theory to explain the emergence and the internal organisation of anti-neoliberal populist parties in Latin America and Southern Europe, and the relationships between these parties and the organised working class. Padoan begins by tracing the diverging evolution of the electoral Lefts in Latin America and Southern… 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