1,721,589 research outputs found
Surveying protestors : why and how
No full textThe chapter addresses the surveying of social movement activists. The chapter starts with the observation that, some 15 years after select scholars argued that a “strange lacuna” in social movement studies—the paucity of research based on surveys—was over: activists’ characteristics and motivations are more and more often investigated within international projects thanks to the use of surveys during protest events. Originally thought of as a methodological device to capture the degree of overlap between the ideological themes of the movement and the individual beliefs of demonstrators, the survey has since been used for a larger number of research questions concerning individuals getting involved in collective action, becoming an established methodology. The chapter aims at addressing some of the main challenges in the use of the (very established) survey method during protest events. It discusses problems and solutions referring to bias in the implementation of random sampling, ways to control response bias, main trade-offs in the preparation of the questionnaires, as well as main caveats in the analysis of results. The authors’ own use of surveys in research on the global justice movement at the beginning of the millennium as well as during protests in times of austerity are referred to by way of illustration
Comments on Dieter Rucht’s “Social Movements: A Theoretical Approach”
No full textThis review is part of Global Perspectives Review Symposium on Dieter Rucht, Social Movements: A Theoretical Approach
Communication in progressive movement parties: against populism and beyond digitalism
Full text linkIn this article, I discuss the conceptualization of movement parties and bridge it with that of communication practices. In particular, I show how the analysis of communication practices within movement parties allows going beyond the technological determinism implicit in concepts such as online populism or digital parties. At different moments in history, social movements entered institutions by forming political parties. When this happened with progressive movements, movement parties were characterized by an appeal to broaden participation through the inclusion of new groups among the population within representative institutions. This general trend is to be kept in mind when addressing the latest wave of movement parties, in particular, the progressive ones, that build upon the history of left-wing party families. Based on these reflections, I critique analyses that, with a specific focus on the core subject of this special issue, have addressed communication strategies, depicting movement parties–including those on the Left–as online populist parties or digital parties. Considering alternative (less technological and more political) explanations, I suggest instead that the effects of the technology are filtered through activists’ agency, the movement parties’ evolution being influenced by movements’ dynamics and competition in the party system. In particular, the concept of communication practices, as developed in social movement studies, will be referred to in order to move beyond some stereotypes coming from either mass media or digital media studies, and so allowing for an historical account of the evolution of movement parties’ communication
Still the resurgence of class conflict? New identities, new interests, new worker mobilisations in the work of Alessandro Pizzorno
No full textAfter the 1970s, on one side industrial relations studies have paid decreasing attention to institutions than to mobilisation, and on the other sides social movement studies, given the perceived decline of the labor movement, had turned their focus away from economic conflicts and their structural determinants. Yet recently issues such as social struggles for global justice and against austerity, point to the importance of the social bases of protest. The study of these developments calls for the integration of these approaches. Alessandro Pizzorno’s analysis of the emergence and re-emergence of social struggles for recognition in the 1960s and 1970s was an example of such integrated approach than could be useful today as it was for the study of the Hot Autumn in Italy (Pizzorno et al 1973). In particular, from that research program we can learn how to combine attention to the transformation of the class bases of conflicts with consideration of class organizational tradition and innovation, the evolution of the repertoire of action, and the emergence of class consciousness among emerging social groups. The article first addresses the concept of struggles of recognition as a central concept in Pizzorno’s theorization, the cyclical transformation in the modes of representation and the emergence of a class struggle «in action» as they are presented in the work of Alessandro Pizzorno and his collaborators at that time
Social Movements and Public Administration: citzens' sponateous comittees in Florence
No full textanalysis of the interactions between local civil society organizations and local public administration
Social movements in times of inequalities: Struggling against austerity in Europe
No full textThis article focuses on changing patterns in labor mobilization in the shadow of the Great Recession. While the Great Recession has produced a return of the movements in the streets and the squares of many European countries, labor has mobilized in very different forms in different countries and circumstances. During the crisis, protests took forms resonant with Polanyi-like countermovements but also with Wallerstein-like antisystemic movements, with the latter spreading especially where the disruption of the quotidian was stronger. The article addresses anti-austerity protests, with particular attention to the development of the labor movements in light of the 2008 financial crisis, looking at some quantitative indicators of unions’ strength/weakness and industrial conflict in European countries, but also at qualitative evidence on the role unions have played in the struggles against austerity and increasing inequalities, particularly in the European periphery that suffered the recession's consequences
Corruzione politica e amministrazione pubblica. Risorse, attori, meccanismi
No full textIl volume collega lo studio della pubblica amministrazione a uno dei temi cruciali del dibattito politico italiano. la corruzione politica. Muovendo da un approccio di tipo economico e politologico, sono portati alla luce le radici profonde della corruzione italiana, i suoi nessi con le reti di scambi occulti che hanno condizionato il sistema politico ed economico, nonché il funzionamento della pubblica amministrazione. Utilizzando un'ampia gamma di materiale giudiziario, sono analizzate le risorse che entrano in gioco negli scambi corrotti, i meccanismi decisionali che permettono la diffusione progressiva del fenomeno, gli attori pubblici e privati che da essa si traggono vantaggi diretti e indiretti
- …
