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

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: Journal Government and Opposition (OnLineFirst) Abstract In this article, we focus on the candidate selection processes of Podemos in Spain and the...

Varieties of Populism in Europe in Times of Crises

Edited Volume -

Author(s):

Description: 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...

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

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: 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 ...

Crook!: The impact of perceived corruption on non-electoral forms of political behaviour

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Author(s):

Description: Anti-corruption claims have been at the core of many mass mobilizations worldwide. However, the nexus between corruption and collective action is often overlooked. Bridging social movement and...

How “Urban” Is Urban Policy Making?

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: Contemporary cities are both creators and receptors of global-scale collective problems. City-dwellers must cope with such far-reaching transformations that affect their communities and yet lie...

The Contentious Politics of Expertise. Experts, activism and grassroots environmentalism

Monograph -

Author(s):

Description: Based on mixed-methods research and ethnographic fieldwork at various sites in Italy, this book examines the relationship between expertise and activism in grassroots environmentalism. Presenting...

Chicha-Coronavirus: 1-0. On trust, natural disasters, and pandemics in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: Sarayaku is an Amazonian Kichwa community on the shores of Río Bobonaza, Ecuador. There is no road connecting it to the rest of the country no electricity and no telephone network. I happened to be...

We protect the forest beings, and the forest beings protect us: Cultural resistance in the Ecuadorian Amazonia

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: Sarayaku is an Amazonian Kichwa community on the shores of Rio Bobonaza, Ecuador. Ten years ago, Sarayaku hit international headlines because it managed to expel the Argentinean CGC oil company from...

Migrant Protest. Interactive Dynamics in Precarious Mobilizations

Monograph -

Author(s):

Description: 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...

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

Monograph -

Author(s):

Description: 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,...

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

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Author(s):

Description: 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...

CasaPound Italia: Contempory Extreme Right Politics

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Author(s):

Description: In 2003, the occupation of a state-owned building in Rome led to the emergence of a new extreme-right youth movement: CasaPound Italia (CPI). Its members described themselves as 'Fascists of the...

Nationalism and populism on the left: The case of Podemos

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: 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...

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

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Author(s):

Description: 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...

Systemic Unsustainability as a Threat to Democracy

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Author(s):

Description: Resilient socioeconomic unsustainability poses a threat to democracy whose importance has yet to be fully acknowledged. As the prospect of sustainability transition wanes, so does perceived...

Discursive Turns and Critical Junctures: Debating Citizenship after the Charlie Hebdo Attacks

Monograph -

Author(s):

Description: This volume focuses on the debate that developed in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom after the terrorist attacks against Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket, in January 2015. The...

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

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Author(s):

Description: 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...

Filling the Gaps in Populism Studies

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Author(s):

Description: This article introduces the conceptual and analytical framework for the special issue, which explores the cultural side of populism: the relationships between politics, emotions, music, and...

The Cultural Side of Populism: Politics, Emotions, Music and Subcultures in Populist Times

Special Issue -

Author(s):

Description: This special issue addresses different cultural and symbolic elements of politics and populism, including music, emotions, narratives, discourses and frames, and visual symbols repertoires from...

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

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: 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...

Populism between voting and non-electoral participation

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Author(s):

Description: 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...

Close ever, distant never? Integrating protest event and social network approaches into the transformation of the Hungarian far right

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: In this article, we extend our understanding of fringe politics to include relational and thematic elements, namely, the relationship of far-right collective actors with their broader network and the ...

Don’t Call it Climate Populism: On Greta Thunberg’s Technocratic Ecocentrism

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: The growing popularity of Greta Thunberg has led an increasing number of pundits and scholars to consider her message to be an instance of ‘climate’ or ‘environmental’ populism. Following a...

Social Mobilization beyond Ethnicity. Civic Activism and Grassroots Movements in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Monograph -

Author(s):

Description: This book offers an in-depth investigation of the emergence and spread of social mobilizations that transcend ethnicity in societies violently divided along ethno-national lines. Using Bosnia...

Another Brick in the Wall? Young people, Protest and Nonprotest Claims Making in Nine European Countries

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Author(s):

Description: The implementation of austerity and neoliberal policies has disrupted everyday life for a significant number of Europeans, especially among young people. Rising tuition fees, labor market reforms,...

Alliance building and eventful protests: comparing Spanish and Portuguese trajectories under the Great Recession

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Author(s):

Description:

Social movement research has shed light on the relationship between processes...

Tokens or Stakeholders in Global Migration Governance? The Role of Affected Communities and Civil Society in the Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: Focussing on the inclusion of those primarily affected as stakeholders (refugees and other migrants), this article addresses a key ambition of the compacts themselves. We employ an...

Dynamiques de protestation politique des exilés afghans à Berlin: entre «silence» et «prise de parole»

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Author(s):

Description: En Allemagne, l’« été des migrations » de l’année 2015 a entraîné une série de restrictions de la loi sur le droit d’asile et provoqué un débat public de plus en plus hostile...

Digital movement parties: a comparative analysis of the technopolitical cultures and the participation platforms of the Movimento 5 Stelle and the Piratenpartei

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: The Pirate Party of Germany (PPG) and the Italian 5-Star Movement (5SM) are two digital movement parties that share several ideological features, including their roots in anti-establishment...

Local Governments and Social Movements in the ‘Refugee Crisis’: Milan and Barcelona as ‘Cities of Welcome’

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: Amid the so-called ‘refugee crisis’, South European cities have experienced far-reaching societal transformations, magnified by flaws in multi-level governance. How can urban actors cope with...

Resistere alla crisi. I percorsi dell'azione sociale diretta

Monograph -

Author(s):

Description:

L’Italia della crisi appare schiacciata tra apatia e risentimento. Ma guardando in basso, si possono vedere forme di resistenza che raramente emergono sulla scena pubblica, e che...

The Modern Prince and the Sociological Imagination

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: In this conversation, Michael Burawoy discusses how he discovered the sociology of Gramsci in radically diverse contexts — from a vibrant post-colonial Zambia to Analytical Marxism in Chicago. The...

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

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Author(s):

Description: Drawing on electoral participation and social...

Contentious subjects: Spatial and relational perspectives on refugee mobilizations in Europe

Chapter in edited book -

Author(s):

Description: Political protest by ‘refugees’ has proliferated worldwide, yet has only received marginal attention in social movement studies. According to dominant movement theories, migrants are unlikely...

From the Rainy Place to the Burnt Palace: How Social Movements Form their Political Strategies. The Case of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: How do social movements form their political strategies? The relevant theory pays considerable attention to structure, and argues that when political opportunities are open, movements are more likely ...

Ballots and barricades enhanced: far‐right ‘movement parties’ and movement‐electoral interactions

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: Far‐right organisations offer an ideal common ground to bridge the scholarships on social movements and party politics. Indeed, they can be often interpreted as ‘movement parties’, i.e. hybrid...

I post, you rally, she tweets…and we all occupy. The challenges of hybrid spatiality in the Occupy Wall Street mobilizations

Chapter in edited book -

Author(s):

Description: After the Occupy Wall Street mobilizations in the USA and other countries across the world, many scholars emphasized the importance of protest camps and social media platforms for these protests....

A situated understanding of digital technologies in social movements: Media ecology and media practice approaches

Chapter in edited book -

Author(s):

Description: The chapter tackles two main aspects related to the interaction between social movements and digital technologies. First, it reflects on the need to include and combine different theoretical...

The Contentious Politics of Higher Education. Struggles and Power Relations within English and Italian Universities

Monograph -

Author(s):

Description: Drawing on neo-institutionalist and social movement approaches, this book analyses the impact that recent student mobilizations have brought about within Italian and English universities in terms of...

Political Strategies and Social Movements in Latin America. The Zapatistas and Bolivian Cocaleros

Monograph -

Author(s):

Description: This book investigates how social movements form their political strategies in their quest for social change and -when they shift from one strategy to another- why and how that happens. The author...

Movement parties of the far right: The organization and strategies of nativist collective actors

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: The scholarship on the far right has often interpreted nativist organizations as straddling the conceptual space between party and movement. These groups contest elections in order to...

Politics, Participation and Big Data. Introductory Reflections on the Ontological, Epistemological, and Methodological Aspects of a Complex Relationship

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: This editorial defines big data as an inherently political object and then briefly discusses its ontological, epistemological, and methodological implications in the social sciences. Furthermore, it...

Comparing hybrid media systems in the digital age: A theoretical framework for analysis

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Author(s):

Description: The relationship between media and politics today is deeply entrenched in the wide use of information and communication technologies to the point that scholars speak about the emergence of hybrid...

The polyvalent populism of the 5 Star Movement

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: Widely recognised as a populist party within a context of mutating populism, ideational approaches have taken only a marginal role in the analysis of the issues of the Movimento 5 Stelle (5 Star...

Mobilizing in transnational contentious spaces: linking relations, emotions and space in migrant activism

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: Despite proliferation of political protest by migrants in recent years, analyses from a social movement perspective remain scarce. This lacuna is not coincidental, but theoretically grounded....

The far right as social movement

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Author(s):

Description: The literature on the far right is trying to connect with social movement studies. Scholars from different social scientific backgrounds are increasingly acknowledging that extra-parliamentary...

New Technologies as a Neglected Social Movement Outcome: The Case of Activism against Animal Experimentation

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: Recently, scholars have focused on a growing number of social movement consequences. However, one important type of intended outcome has been neglected: the development of new technologies....

The populist politics of Euroscepticism in times of crisis: Comparative conclusions

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: This article offers comparative findings of the nature of populist Euroscepticism in political parties in contemporary Europe in the face of the Great Recession, migrant crisis, and Brexit. Drawing...

Far-right activism in Hungary: Youth participation in Jobbik and its network

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: The Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik) qualifies as one of the most successful far-right organisations in contemporary Europe. Through its swift rise in popularity and entry to parliament, the...

The Passage from Hierarchy to Horizontality: The Self-managed Factory of Vio.Me, Greece

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: The anti-austerity mobilizations that developed after the beginning of the economic crisis brought to the forefront the increase in self-organized, solidarity structures. One of the most popular...

A Contested Crisis: Policy Narratives and Empirical Evidence on Border Deaths in the Mediterranean

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: Death and suffering of migrants at Europe’s Mediterranean Sea border has become one of the defining moral and political issues of our time. While humanitarian organizations argue that deaths result ...

Populist Eurosceptic trajectories in Italy and the Netherlands during the European crises

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

Multiple crises shook the European Union (EU) during the past decade. First, the economic and financial crises that unfolded since 2008 shook the foundations of the...

The populist politics of Euroscepticism in times of crisis: A framework for analysis

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

The European Union has been recently exposed to the multiple shocks of the Great Recession, the migrant crisis, and Brexit. Populist parties have been, either directly ...

Sociology and its public. Craig Calhoun in conversation with Riccardo Emilio Chesta

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

In this interview, Craig Calhoun retraces his peculiar trajectory that, from his first interests in realist cinema and anthropology, brought him to become one of the...

I movimenti animalisti in Italia. Strategie, politiche e pratiche di attivismo.

Monograph -

Author(s):

Description: In Italia, l’attenzione verso gli animali è in costante crescita, come si evince dall’interesse di opinione pubblica e partiti politici, e dall’emergere di stili di vita che promuovono una...

Solidarity Mobilizations in the ‘Refugee Crisis’. Contentious Moves

Edited Volume -

Author(s):

Description: This edited collection introduces conceptual innovations that critically engage with understanding refugee movements as part of the broader category of ‘poor people’s movements’. The empirical...

Screaming at a wall: Societal accountability from below in Bulgaria and Hungary

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

The article investigates engagement in anti-corruption activism in Bulgaria and Hungary. Since the late 2000s, protest events occurred in greater numbers in the two...

Anti-Corruption from Below. Social Movements Against Corruption in Late Neoliberalism

Special Issue -

Author(s):

Description:

In the last decades, a growing awareness has emerged in progressive social movements about the relevance of corruption as a hidden factor that negatively influences...

The No Ombrina/No Triv protests in Abruzzo: organisational models and scales of action.

Working Paper -

Author(s):

Description: This article discusses in detail the evolution of the complex no oil mobilisation in Abruzzo, observing the mechanisms that allowed the inclusion of a long lasting regional protest in a series of...

Scales and forms of action in the partial demobilisation of the Italian Forum of Water Movements

Working Paper -

Author(s):

Description: On the 12th and 13th June 2011, about 26 million citizens blocked in Italy a major attempt to privatise the water and sewage networks of the country, approving two referendums that cancelled the main ...

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

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

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...

Reshaping Citizenship through Collective Action: Performative and Prefigurative Practices in the 2013–2014 Cycle of Contention in Bosnia & Hercegovina

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

This essay analyses the strategic practices adopted by social movement actors during the 2013 and 2014 mobilisations in Bosnia & Hercegovina. By bridging critical...

Keeping dissent alive under the Great Recession: no-radicalisation and protest in Spain after the eventful 15M/indignados campaign

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

Traditional theories of collective action would predict that, after a triggering event, the trajectory of a wave...

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

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

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...

Radicalization patterns and modes of attack planning and preparation among lone-actor terrorists: an exploratory analysis

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

This article explores the link between radicalization patterns and modes of attack planning and preparation among lone-actor terrorists. Building on theorized patterns ...

’Solidarietà sconvenienti’. Reti online di estrema destra contro e per la riforma dell’Europa

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: In spite of an increasing interest for how ICTs entwine with collective participation dynamics, the ways in which their relational and communicational potential is exploited by extreme right...

Repertoires of knowledge practices: Social movements in times of crisis

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Author(s):

Description: Starting from the assumption that knowledge becomes all the more important for movements in times of crisis, as old structures are challenged and new ones envisaged and proved feasible, the purpose...

The Myth of Apolitical Volunteering for Refugees: German Welcome Culture and a New Dispositif of Helping

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

During the so-called “refugee crisis”, the notion of an unparalleled German hospitality toward asylum seekers circulated within the (inter)national public sphere,...

The Refugee Crisis as a Crisis of Legitimacy

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Author(s):

Description:

The so-called ‘refugee crisis’ marks a crucial juncture in Italian politics. Tapping into the crisis of legitimacy of contemporary European politics, the...

Framing exclusion in the public sphere: Far-right mobilization and the debate on Charlie Hebdo in Italy

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

While the January 2015 Paris terrorist attacks presented a crucial opportunity for far-right mobilisation, the focus on liberal democratic values and Charlie Hebdo’s ...

Digital Capitalism and the End of Politics: The Case of the Italian Five Star Movement

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

In the Italian national elections in 2013, the Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Star Movement, M5S), founded just four years earlier, gained 25 percent of votes, ...

The Politics of Media Gender Equality. Lessons learned and struggles for change twenty years after the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women

Special Issue -

Author(s):

Description: With the aim of contributing to a better understanding of persisting inequalities and emerging challenges, this special issue of ComPol brings together articles that reflect the diversity...

Global diffusion of protest. Riding the Protest Wave in the Neoliberal Crisis

Edited Volume -

Author(s):

Description:

What happens when a wave of protest, which starts in a homogeneous area, affects other countries in its long ebb? Or, at least, when results in other countries are...

Social movements and referendums from below. Direct democracy in the neoliberal crisis

Monograph -

Author(s):

Description:

Over recent years, social movements formed in response to European neoliberal austerity measures have played an increasingly important role in referendums. This is the ...

PKK Violence against Civilians: Beyond the Individual Understanding Collective Targeting

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

This article examines the logic of civilian targeting in the Turkish-Kurdish civil war. It analyzes two instances of PKK violence: against pro-state Village Guards’...

Social Movements and Civil War : When Protests for Democratization Fail

Monograph -

Author(s):

Description: This book investigates the origins of civil wars which emerge from failed attempts at democratization. The main aim of this volume is to develop a theoretical explanation of the conditions under...

Digital Innovation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Epochal Social Changes?

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

ITC technologies have come to comprehensively represent images and expectations of the future. Hopes of ongoing progress, economic growth, skill upgrading and possibly ...

Successful student activism in contemporary Italian universities

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Author(s):

Description:

This article assesses the strategies that the Italian student activists adopted in order to influence the revision process of the governance structure of their...

Non-deliberative politics in deliberative democracy: distinct approaches for different actors

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Author(s):

Description:

This article advances one of the most important debates in recent scholarship on democratic theory: the one on deliberative systems. In the wake of the systemic turn...

The Electoral Success of the Radical Left: Explaining the Least Likely Case of the Communist Party in Graz

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

Recently, scholars have shown a growing interest in radical left parties (RLPs). In terms of electoral success, the rise of the KPÖ Graz, the Communist Party in...

Technopopulism: The Emergence of a Discursive Formation

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Author(s):

Description:

This article contends that technopopulism is a discursive formation that emerges from the convergence of two preexisting discourses: populism and...

Comparing Digital Protest Media Imaginaries: Anti-Austerity Movements in Greece, Italy & Spain

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: This article presents findings from an empirical study of repertoires of contention and communication engaged during anti-austerity protests by the Indignados in Spain, the precarious...

Student movements in the age of austerity. The cases of Chile and England

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

Several recent episodes of massive student protests in countries in Europe, Latin America, and Africa, raise the question of whether we are witnessing to a new surge...

Italian Students as a Political Actor. The Policy Impact of the Recent Student Mobilizations in the Field of Higher Education

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

After decades of political passivity, Italian students have massively mobilized in the years 2008 and 2010 to protest the implementation of two political measures...

Reinventare la sinistra. Le basi politiche, culturali e organizzative di Podemos

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

With the worsening of the economic crisis, unemployment and social inequalities in Europe, an analogy spreads between the economic and political crisis of the Thirties ...

Movement parties against austerity

Monograph -

Author(s):

Description:

The ascendance of austerity policies and the protests they have generated have had a deep impact on the shape of contemporary politics. The stunning electoral...

A situated understanding of digital technologies in social movements. Media ecology and media practice approaches

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

The article tackles two main aspects related to the interaction between social movements and digital technologies. First, it reflects on the need to include and...

Distorsiones tecnopolíticas: represión y resistencia algorítmica del activismo ciudadano en la era del big data

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

Several strands of literature on social engagement, digital media and big data conceive digital platforms as a shortcut to government accountability and citizen...

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

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

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...

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

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

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...

Participations 2016/2 (N° 15) - Special Issue "Participer aux États-Unis : les town meetings"

Edited Volume -

Author(s):

Description: Paula Cossart, Andrea Felicetti, James Kloppenberg Introduction. Les town meetings, mythe fondateur de la démocratie américaine Xavier Blandin Note de traduction Caroline...

Les town meetings, mythe fondateur de la démocratie américaine

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: L’analyse historique a marqué la naissance et le développement des réflexions sur la démocratie participative et délibérative1. Outre le travail fondateur de Jürgen Habermas (1978)...

Deliberative Democracy and Social Movements. Transition Initiatives in the Public Sphere

Monograph -

Author(s):

Description:

Deliberative democracy is increasingly central in democratic theory and its concepts are employed in a growing number of fields, including social movement studies and...

The integrative power of online collective action networks beyond protest. Exploring social media use in the process of institutionalization

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: In this article, we aim at expanding the event-based and protest-centered perspective that is typically adopted to study the nexus between social media and movements. To this aim, we propose a...

Vite di Lotta Armata. Storie di attivismo nella Provisional IRA

Monograph -

Author(s):

Description: Quali sono i percorsi che portano alcune donne e uomini ad abbracciare la lotta armata? Qual è la loro esperienza e cosa sostiene il loro impegno all'interno dei gruppi armati, anche a fronte di...

Democracy in neoliberalism?

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

The article is based upon a round table, in which Colin Crouch, Wolfgang Streeck, and Donatella della Porta participated, organized in the framework of the Marxism(s)...

Why the refugee crisis is not a refugee crisis

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

In the context of the European research project "Collective action and the refugee crisis", I have spent several months interviewing activists who work on the...

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

Monograph -

Author(s):

Description:

Book description

Student Struggles and Power Relations in Contemporary Universities. The Cases of Italy and England

Chapter in edited book -

Author(s):

Description:

Social movement scholars have generally disregarded the study of mobilizations within institutions. Even less well-studied are the effects that such mobilizations...

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

Chapter in edited book -

Author(s):

Description: 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...

Involving Communities as Skilled Learners: The STRAP Framework

Chapter in edited book -

Author(s):

Description:

Conducting research in the field of communication for social change typically entails working closely with communities and grassroots groups. Whereas substantial...

Gramsci’s Political Thought and the Contemporary Crisis of Politics

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

In the context of the worsening economic crisis analogies tend to be drawn between the economic and political crisis in Europe of the 1920s and 1930s and the current...

Anti-Islamic PEGIDA Beyond Germany: Explaining Differences in Mobilisation

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

The rise of anti-Islamic PEGIDA (Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes) is one of the latest sustained episodes of radical right mobilisation...

Hardly ever relevant? An appraisal of nativist economics through the Hungarian case

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

Populist radical right parties place selective emphasis on immigration or minority issues, generally garnering support on the basis of their exclusionary agenda....

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

Chapter in edited book -

Author(s):

Description:

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 ...

The Consequences of Social Movements: Policies, People and Institutions

Edited Volume -

Author(s):

Description:

Social movements have attracted much attention in recent years, both from scholars and among the wider public. This book examines the consequences of social movements, ...

Political Violence in Context. Time, Space and Milieu

Edited Volume -

Author(s):

Description:

Context is crucial to understanding the causes of political violence and the form it takes. This book examines how time, space and supportive milieux...

A deliberative case for democracy in firms

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: 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...

The Oxford Handbook of Social Movements

Edited Volume -

Author(s):

Description: The Oxford Handbook of Social Movements is an innovative volume that presents a comprehensive exploration of social movement studies, mapping the field and expanding it to examine the recent ...

Alternative Media

Chapter in edited book -

Author(s):

Media ecologies and protest movements: main perspectives and key lessons

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: Studies adopting the media ecology metaphor to investigate social movements form a promising strand of literature that has emerged in the last years to overcome the communicative reductionism...

Protest in Social Movements

Chapter in edited book -

Author(s):

Mobilizing for democracy : social movements in democratization processes

Chapter in edited book -

Author(s):

Description: In this chapter we review the main perspectives on democratization and then propose an analytic organization of the different roles that social movements, trade unions, advocacy ...

Political Conflict in Western Europe

Edited Volume -

Author(s):

Description:

What are the consequences of globalization for the structure of political conflicts in Western Europe? How are political conflicts organized and...

Media Practices and Protest Politics: How precarious workers mobilise

Monograph - 2012

Author(s): Alice Mattoni

Description:

How do precarious workers employed in call-centres, universities, the fashion industry and many other labour markets organise, struggle and...

Mediation and protest movements

Edited Volume -

Author(s):

Description:

Over the past year, international and national media have been full of stories about protest movements and tumultuous social upheaval from Tunisia to...

LGBT activism and the making of Europe : a rainbow Europe?

Edited Volume -

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Description:

Europe has long been regarded as a unique place for the promotion and furthering of LGBT rights. This important and compelling study investigates the...

Can democracy be saved? Participation, deliberation and social movements

Monograph -

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Financial crisis, economic globalization and the strengthening of neoliberal policies present stark challenges to traditional conceptions of...

Enfoques y metodologías en las ciencias sociales : una perspectiva pluralista

Monograph -

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Description: Este es un nuevo y revolucionario manual que ofrece a profesores y estudiantes de ciclos superiores los principales enfoques y metodologías de investigación en el campo de las ciencias sociales....

Meeting democracy : power and deliberation in global justice movements

Edited Volume -

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The concepts of power and democracy have been extensively studied at the global, national and local levels and within institutions including states,...

Mobilizing on the Extreme Right: Germany, Italy, and the United States

Monograph -

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Research on the extreme right is rare, and the extreme right has even more rarely been analysed as a social movement. In this volume, the extreme...

The Hidden Order of Corruption: An institutional approach

Monograph -

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Description:

The Hidden Order of Corruption investigates the hidden order of corruption, looking at the invisible codes and mechanisms that govern and stabilize...

The Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of social and political movements

Edited Volume -

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Description: Non-institutionalized collective action is such a conspicuous feature of today’s social landscape, exemplified by recent events in the Arab world, that a day rarely goes by in which the news does...

Social movements in times of austerity : bringing capitalism back into protest analysis

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Recent years have seen an enormous increase in protests across the world in which citizens have challenged what they see as a deterioration of...

Common EU policies on authorised immigration : past, present and future

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Description: Since the early 1990s, one metaphor has dominated the debates on the construction of a common EU immigration policy: ‘Fortress Europe’. The gradual adoption of a set of common rules on the entry, ...

Institutionalizations compared : implementing the EU’s 2008 wine reform

Journal Article -

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Description: In 2008 the European Union adopted an apparently radical reform of its wine policy. However, whether this policy change actually reinstitutionalizes the regulation of this industry is dependent on...

The second wave of incorporation in Latin America : a conceptualization of the quest for inclusion applied to Argentina

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Description: Between 1996 and 2009, a process of struggle for and (after 2002) partial achievement of the second incorporation of the popular sectors took place in Argentina. This process involved a combination...

Protesting for justice and democracy: Italian indignados?

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Description: This article analyses anti-austerity protest in Italy as a sort of ‘functional equivalent’ of the Indignados movements in other countries. While the typical forms of action of these movements,...

Bringing the 'new wars' debate back on track : building on critiques, identifying opportunities, and moving forward

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description:

This article analyses anti-austerity protest in Italy as a sort of ‘functional equivalent’ of the Indignados movements in other countries. While the typical forms of...

With arms wide shut: threat perception, norm reception and mobilized resistance to LGBT rights

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: This article utilizes original survey and interview data to explore why norms governing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights mobilize an active resistance in some cases and not in...

Contested norms in new-adopter states : international determinants of LGBT rights legislation.

Journal Article -

Author(s):

Description: European Journal of International Relations, 2014, OnlineFirst...

Grassroots Groups and Civil Society Actors in Pro-Democratic Transitions in Poland

Working Paper -

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Description: The transition to democracy in 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe is said to be the achievement of the dissident sector. In Poland the biggest power in the democratization process was the...

Reluctant Rulers and the Negotiated Transition: Mobilizing for democracy in Hungary

Working Paper -

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Description: Among the Eastern European democratization processes of the 1989 period, Hungary stands out as the least dramatic transition in the region. Whereas other countries experienced massive demonstrations...

The Elite Coup: The transition to democracy in Bulgaria

Working Paper -

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Description: The transition to democracy in Bulgaria is commonly defined as a coup d'état carried out by the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) elites against the long-standing dictator Todor Zhivkov. The Bulgarian ...

The Unintended Consequence of the Struggle for Independence: The transition to democracy in the Baltic Countries

Working Paper -

Author(s):

Description: The Baltic countries' struggle was for independence more than any other thing. The achievement of democracy was a by-product of the secessionist project of increasing autonomy from Moscow. A possible ...

Tunisia: Surprise, change and continuity. Relating actors, structures and mobilization opportunities around the 14 January 2011 revolution

Working Paper -

Author(s):

Description: The following report provides an in-depth and empirically focused overview of collective mobilization before, during and after the breakdown of the Tunisian authoritarian regime in 2010-11. It...

From the Coup to the Escalation of Violence: The transition to democracy in Romania

Working Paper -

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Description: Romania was the only example of violent regime change in the central and south eastern European milieu, with massive mobilizations both in favour and against change and the execution of the dictator. ...

Bread, Freedom, Human Dignity: Tales of an unfinished revolution in Egypt

Working Paper -

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Description: When at the height of the 'Arab Spring' Egyptians from all walks of life took to the streets to oust one of the Arab world's most long-standing dictators, it took both Egyptians and outside observers ...

No Way Back: Actors, structures and mobilization opportunities in the 2011-2013 Syrian uprising

Working Paper -

Author(s):

Description: The following report provides an in-depth, empirically focused, overview of contentious mobilization dynamics before and during the Syrian Uprising. The report describes the period between the...

Controlling corruption in Europe

Edited Volume -

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Description: This book - the first policy report from ANTICORRP - shows the multiple consequences of corruption in EU Member States. Including an analysis on fiscal deficit, vulnerable employment, gender...

Clandestine Political Violence

Edited Volume -

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Description:

'Clandestine Political Violence' compares four types of clandestine political violence: left-wing (in Italy and Germany), right-wing (in Italy),...

The Many Frames of Precarious Condition. Some Insights from Italian Mobilization against Precarity

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Description: This chapter analyses the different frames that emerged during the mobilizations of precarious workers that occurred in Italy in the early 2000s, involving hundreds of thousands of protesters all...

Social networking sites in pro-democracy and anti-austerity protests. Some thoughts from a social movement perspective

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Triangulation in Social Movement Research

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Description:  ...

Challenging borders : imagining Europe : transnational LGBT activism in a New Europe

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Description:  ...

Comment on organizing in the crowd

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Description: This short article comments on Bennet's and Segerberg's work on connecting action. After singling out some conditions which, according to social movement studies, would make an aggregating logic and...

Italy and Greece, before and after the crisis : between mobilization and resistance against precarity

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Media Practices, Mediation Processes, and Mediatization in the Study of Social Movements

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Description: The aim of this article is to explore the use of 3 concepts of media studies—media practices, mediation, and mediatization—in order to build a conceptual framework to study social movements and...

Framing-Prozesse in der Klimabewegung : vom Klimawandel zur Klimagerechtigkeit

Chapter in edited book -

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Description:  ...

Corruzione : la chiamano democrazia ma non lo è

Chapter in edited book -

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Putting protest in place : contested and liberated spaces in three campaigns

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Description:  ...

Bridging research on democracy, social movements and communication

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Description: ...

Partecipazione e Movimenti Sociali

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Description:  ...

Repertoires of Communication in Social Movement Processes

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Description:  ...

La comunicazione e i referendum sull'acqua : nuove strategie tra rete e territori

Chapter in edited book -

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Description: Cernison investigates the 2011 online communication campaign that lead to the victory of the Italian referendum against water privatization. In particular, the chapter evidences ...

Advances in the visual analysis of social movements

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Description:

This special issue of Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change highlights the importance of visuals in the current study of social...

Protest and policing on October 15th, global day of action : the Italian case

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Description: Fifteenth October 2011, a global day of anti-austerity action called for by the Spanish indignados, saw hundreds of thousands of protestors converging on Rome for a national march. One of the...

Neoliberalismo amoral y protestas morales : movimientos sociales en tiempos de crisis

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What we can do with visual analysis in social movement studies : some (self) reflections

Journal Article -

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Political Corruption

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Description: This entry reviews social science literature on political corruption, privileging an institutionalist approach. In doing so, it looks at resources and mechanisms of hidden...

Os movimientos sociales e a sociedade civil

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Description:  ...

Social Movement Studies and Political Violence

Chapter in edited book -

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Description:  ...

Global Movements in Local Struggles: Findings on the Social Forum Process in Italy

Chapter in edited book -

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Description: This chapter addresses the developments of local social forums in Italy. It looks especially at their network structures, framing and repertoires of action, as well as their...

Percorsi di micromobilitazione verso la lotta armata

Chapter in edited book -

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Description: The chapter analyses, on the basis of life histories and other biographical materials, different paths of micro-mobilization into the armed struggle. Linking networks and...

The Riots. A dynamic View

Chapter in edited book -

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Description: Most social science concepts are contested—but some more so. This is the case for riot, that (as terrorism or Nimby), derives from everyday language, and is used in a stigmatizing way to single out ...

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

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Social conflicts tend to take different forms. This article compares three demonstrations on issues of social justice in Italy: a traditional Labor...

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

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In this article, the authors focus attention on a poorly understood aspect of contentious politics: the interaction between the transnational...

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

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Description: 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....

Guest Editorial: Processes of radicalization and de-radicalization

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Description: 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...

Presentación. Desafíos metodológicos en la investigación de la participación

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Description: 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...

Soziale Bewegungen für eine »andere« Demokratie

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Description: 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...

Patterns of Radicalization in Political Activism: An introduction

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Description: 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...

Mobilizing against the Crisis, Mobilizing for 'Another Democracy': Comparing two global waves of protest

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Mobilizing for Democracy: A research project

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Description: The project addresses the role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in democratization processes, bridging social science approaches to social movements and democracy. The project starts by...

Mass Migration, Student Protests and the Intelligentsia Popullore in the Albanian Transition to Democracy

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Description: After decades under a Stalinist regime, the latecomer transition in Albania began thanks to the large-scale exodus of hundreds of young people which stimulated the mobilization of university...

Nationalism and Transitions: Mobilizing for democracy in Yugoslavia

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Description: The Yugoslav transition(s) to democracy is perhaps the most complex of all the Eastern European cases. It can be argued that Yugoslavia enjoyed the most favorable initial conditions of any country in ...

Libya's Violent Revolution

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Description:

Libya is unlike other states in North Africa mainly because of the distinctive arrangement of different socio-economic and political features it...

Civil Society and the Velvet Revolution: Mobilizing for democracy in Czechoslovakia

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Description: In the late 1980s Czechoslovakia was considered one of the most repressive countries in Eastern Europe and a staunch Soviet ally. In the aftermath of the 'Prague Spring' of 1968, repressed with...

Civil Society and the Paralyzed State: Mobilizing for democracy in East Germany

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Description:

Among cases of transition to democracy from below, the East German one constitutes a particularly challenging puzzle. Whereas social movements taking...

Whose Democratization? Periods of transition and voices from below in Turkey

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Description: Turkey's experience with democracy, at least in its procedural terms, is one which has been discontinuous thanks to repeated military interruptions to civilian rule. Since 1946, Turkey has...

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News

24/06/2025

Usare la legge per colpire lo Stato di diritto

24/06/2025

Using the law to weaken the rule of law

23/06/2025

A prize for the research on organised crime penetration in Italian ports

13/06/2025

Call for papers: Memory and social movements in democratic crises

29/05/2025

Labor conflicts, the findings of the second International Strike Report

28/05/2025

Serbia, from a tragic incident to a mass movement

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.

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