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

Description

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.

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 Wuest works at the research center Sotomo in Zurich. He was postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Political Science of the University Zurich. Silja Hausermann is Professor of Swiss Politics and Comparative Political Economy at the Institute for Political Science of the University Zurich.