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The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Publications

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‘Why don't Italians Occupy?’ Hypotheses on a Failed Mobilisation

Journal Article - 2012

Author: Lorenzo Zamponi

Italy was the birthplace of the first mobilisation targeting the crisis-related austerity measures: in 2008, students protesting against the governmental cuts chanted ‘We won't pay for the crisis’. After that, Italy appeared unable to play a significant role in European anti-austerity mobilisation. The waves of protest of the last three years seem much less influential,… more

Desperately Seeking Politics: Political attitudes of participants in three demonstrations for worker's rights in Italy

Journal Article - 2012

Authors: Donatella della Porta; Herbert Reiter

Social conflicts tend to take different forms. This article compares three demonstrations on issues of social justice in Italy: a traditional Labor Day demonstration, a march supporting a general strike called by the largest trade union CGIL (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro, Italian General Confederation of Labour), and the EuroMayDay parade, representing a "new" type… more

Guest Editorial: Processes of radicalization and de-radicalization

Journal Article - 2012

Authors: Donatella della Porta; Gery Lafree

The study of radicalization and de-radicalization, understood as processes leading towards the increased or decreased use of political violence, is central to the question of how political violence emerges, how it can be prevented, and how it can be contained. The focus section of this issue of the International Journal of Conflict and Violence addresses… more

Interactive Diffusion: The coevolution of police and protest behavior with an application to transnational contention

Journal Article - 2012

Authors: Donatella della Porta; Sydney Tarrow

In this article, the authors focus attention on a poorly understood aspect of contentious politics: the interaction between the transnational diffusion of new forms of protest behavior and police practices in response to them. Studies of diffusion are usually limited to the diffusion of one kind of innovation by one set of actors to another,… more

Micro-Mobilization into Armed Groups: ideological, instrumental and solidaristic paths

Journal Article - 2012

Authors: Lorenzo Bosi; Donatella della Porta

Based on biographical materials of armed militants of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and Red Brigades, this article analyses variation within the micromobilization that leads to armed groups. Three general paths are singled out: the ideological path, the instrumental path and the solidaristic path. Each of these is characterized by complex interactions between the individual… more

Patterns of Radicalization in Political Activism: An introduction

Journal Article - 2012

Author: Donatella della Porta, Heinz-Gerhard Haupt

Research on political violence occurs in waves, generally corresponding to the successive swells of violence that in many ways define modern society. Critically, this violence is characterized as much by diversity as by uniformity. As each new spate in research on political violence has shown us, rarely can we generalize about either the aims or… more

Presentación. Desafíos metodológicos en la investigación de la participación

Journal Article - 2012

Authors: Joan Font; Donatella della Porta; Yves Sintomer

Participation is a well-established subject in the social sciences. Individual participation, non-governmental organizations, interest groups, and social movements have all been important fields of research for years, at least among sociologists and political scientists. Each of these areas has also developed its own methodological traditions and debates, permitting new researchers entering the field to have… more

Soziale Bewegungen für eine »andere« Demokratie

Journal Article - 2012

Author: Donatella della Porta

Der Aufstand der Zivilgesellschaft begann mit dem Arabischen Frühling. Dies könnte man als weiteren Beleg dafür nehmen, dass die Demokratie eben doch die »einzige Möglichkeit« ist. Den Arabischen Frühling aber als bloße Forderung nach repräsentativen Institutionen zu interpretieren, wäre irreführend. Vielmehr geht es den aktuellen Bewegungen ganz konkret um eine partizipative und deliberative Form von… more

News

22/02/2023

15 fully funded PhD positions

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The Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy is pleased to announce 15 PhD fellowships beginning on November 1, 2023. The deadline for applications is April 13, 2023.

16/02/2023

Applications now open! Fourth Edition of the ECPR-COSMOS Summer School on Methods for the Study of Political Participation and Mobilisation

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Applicants must send their application materials no later than March the 17th 2023.

10/01/2022

SNS announces 14 fully-funded PhD positions

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The Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy is pleased to announce 14 PhD fellowships beginning on November 1, 2022.

16/07/2021

Prof. della Porta to lead VolkswagenStiftung-funded ECSEuro project

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Reflecting the European challenge of transnational cooperation and multiple crises, this project asks how local political initiatives across Europe enact citizenship and solidarity and contribute to the vision of a more democratic Europe from below.

09/07/2021

SNS announces 7 fully-funded PhD positions

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The Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore announces 7 fully-funded PhD positions. Deadline for applications: 21 August 2021.

28/09/2020

Four post-doctoral research positions on the pandemic

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The Scuola Normale Superiore announces four post-doctoral positions to be activated as part of the research project “After the coronavirus pandemic: The effects of the health emergency on society and knowledge.” 

Publications

Journal Article - 2023

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

Andrea Felicetti, Markus Holdo
We propose to adopt a principle we call “reflective inclusion,” which allows us to engage abductively with new actions that might expand and deepen our understanding of what deliberation may look like.

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 - 2022

Populists in power and conspiracy theories

Andrea Pirro & Paul Taggart
Looking at three cases of populists in government – Orbán in Hungary, Trump in the United States, and Chávez in Venezuela – we examine the definition of conspiring elites (who), the circumstances under which conspiracy theories are propagated (when), and the ultimate purpose of conspiratorial framing (why).

Journal Article - 2022

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

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.

Journal Article - 2022

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

Lorenzo Zamponi, Anja Corinne Baukloh, Niccolò Bertuzzi, Daniela Chironi, Donatella della Porta, Martín Portos
This article explores the forms of action adopted by participants in two Fridays For Future (FFF) strikes, focusing on the repertoires of action of (young) climate justice protesters. Drawing on protest survey data, it shows demonstrated that young protesters do not participate less in claim-based action than older cohorts. Furthermore, a process of politicisation can be seen to be unfolding that leads to increased commitment in both lifestyle and political forms of participation – at least among active milieus.

Journal Article - 2022

Performing (during) the Coronavirus crisis: The Italian populist radical right between national opposition and subnational government

Andrea Pirro
The first year of COVID-19 confirmed the standing of the populist radical right in Italy. While sitting in opposition at the national level, Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy and Matteo Salvini's League shared common criticism of the Conte II government but experienced diverging trajectories in terms of popularity. These changes can be partly attributed to the different agency of their leaderships. Overall and collectively considered, the Italian populist radical right broke even during the first year of COVID-19, but the crisis exposed the first cracks in Salvini's leadership.

Journal Article - 2021

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

Pietro Castelli Gattinara, Caterina Froio & Andrea Pirro
In this article, we bridge previous research on the far right and social movements to advance hypotheses on the drivers of far-right protest mobilisation based on grievances, opportunities and resource mobilisation models. We use an original dataset combining novel data on 4,845 far-right protest events in 11 East and West European countries (2008–2018), with existing measures accounting for the (political, economic and cultural) context of mobilisation.

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.

Edited Volume - 2021

Contentious Migrant Solidarity. Shrinking Spaces and Civil Society Contestation

Donatella della Porta & Elias Steinhilper
Building upon social movement and migration studies, this book maps the two sides of ‘contentious solidarity’: a shrinking civic space and its contestation by civil society.

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.