Contention in Times of Crisis Recession and Political Protest in Thirty European Countries

This is the first comprehensive overview of the waves of protest mobilization that spread across Europe in the wake of the Great Recession. Documenting the extent of these protests in a study covering thirty countries, including the issues they addressed and the degree to which they replicated each other, this book maps the prevalence and nature of protest across Europe, and explains the interactions between economic and political grievances that lead to protest mobilization. The authors assess a range of claims in the literature on political protest, arguing that they tend both to overstate the importance of anti-austerity sentiments and underestimate the relevance of political grievances in driving the protest. They also integrate a study of the electoral and protest arenas, revealing that electoral mass politics has been heavily influenced protest mobilization, which amplified electoral punishment at the polls.

Part I. A Study of Protest in 30 European Countries: 1. Introduction Hanspeter Kriesi, Silja Häusermann and Jasmine Lorenzini; 2. Design and methods of the semi-automated protest event analysis Jasmine Lorenzini, Peter Makarov and Bruno Wüest; 3. External validation of the protest event analysis Bruno Wüest and Jasmine Lorenzini; Part II. Trends in Protest in the Great Recession: 4. Overall trends of protest in the Great Recession Hanspeter Kriesi; 5. All quiet on the protest scene? Repertoires of contention and protest actors during the Great Recession Sophia Hunger and Jasmine Lorenzini; 6. The return of the economy? Issue contention in the protest arena Theresa Gessler and Julia Schulte-Cloos; Part III. Sources of Protest: 7. Economic grievances, political grievances and protest Hanspeter Kriesi, Chendi Wang, Silja Häusermann and Thomas Kurer; 8. Bailouts and protest: representative democracy and policy-making in times of austerity Argyrios Altiparmakis and Jasmine Lorenzini; 9. Diffusion of protest Bruno Wüest and Matthias Enggist; Part IV. Interaction between Convention and Contention: 10. Electoral punishment and protest politics in times of crisis Björn Bremer, Swen Hutter and Hanspeter Kriesi; 11. Are political parties recapturing the streets? A cross-regional study of party protests in the Great Recession Endre Borbath and Swen Hutter; 12. Conclusion Hanspeter Kriesi and Bruno Wueest.

Hanspeter Kriesi holds the Stein Rokkan Chair in Comparative Politics at the European University Institute, Florence.
Jasmine Lorenzini is a research fellow at the Institute of Citizenship Studies, University of Geneva.
Bruno Wüest works at the research center Sotomo in Zurich. He was postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Political Science of the University Zurich.
Silja Häusermann is Professor of Swiss Politics and Comparative Political Economy at the Institute for Political Science of the University Zurich.