Protest in ‘post-crisis’ Southern Europe: Sustained Activism or Demobilization and Disengagement?, Panel proposal, ECPR General Conference 2020,  Innsbruck, 26 – 28 August 2020. 

Section: Continuity and Change in Southern European Politics
Panel Chairs: Marilena Simiti (Associate Professor of Political Sociology, Department of International and European Studies, University of Piraeus)
Co-Chair: Kostas Kanellopoulos (Adjunct Faculty, Department of Political Science;
International Relations, University of Peloponnese)

Following the onset of the global financial crisis, European anti-austerity and pro democracy movements marked the beginning of a new cycle of protest. Accordingly, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain experienced a notable increase in the levels of protest. Similarities have been more pronounced in the cases of Spain and Greece, which saw the significant expansion of protest (across social groups and sectors) and the intensification of conflict. Moreover, in both countries collective mobilizations were followed by the electoral rise of left-wing ‘movement parties’ (Syriza and Podemos). There has been an impressive amount of literature analyzing the emergence and escalation of anti-austerity and pro-democracy movements in Southern Europe. However, there is a lack of academic research concerning the de-escalation and ultimately demobilization of anti-austerity movements.

This panel aims to explore the current state of protest in Southern European countries, focusing especially on the process of demobilization. The notion of demobilization covers a plurality of phenomena ranging from individual disengagement to the political demobilization of an entire social movement sector. The panel invites papers focusing on the macro- and meso-level of collective demobilization as well as on the micro- level of individual disengagement. It especially welcomes papers adopting an integrative approach that links contexts, processes and actors. Papers may cover the region comparatively or focus on single-country case studies.

Applicants are invited to submit paper title, keywords (max. 8) and an abstract up to
500 words to marilena.simiti@gmail.com by 15 February 2020. The full panel with

the selected papers will then be submitted to ECPR on 19 February 2020.

Download the call for paper here.