Abstract
Traditional theories of collective action would predict that, after a triggering event, the trajectory of a wave of protest is determined by the institutionalisation–radicalisation tandem. Based on the Spanish cycle of anti-austerity and against the political status quo protest in the shadow of the Great Recession, this article contends with this approach, as a clear trend towards radicalisation is never observed as the cycle unfolds. An alternative interpretative framework is developed to understand protest trajectories when collaborative inter-organisational strategies prevail. The eventful 15M campaign triggered in 2011 represents the most remarkable turning point in the Spanish socio-political mobilisation scene in recent years and had a transformative capacity over subsequent protest endeavours. Specifically, after the 15M campaign, the combination of downward scale shift and coalition building shaped the trajectory of mobilisation, and allowed for the peak of protest to persist until late 2013, when institutionalisation took over. Data from an original Protest Event Analysis dataset are used to illustrate the main arguments.
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Source data retrieved from my PEA, El País (N = 2002). Own collection and elaboration
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Notes
A protest cycle or wave often consists of a set of interrelated campaigns. A protest campaign is the series of thematically interconnected interactions and public claim-making performances for a common aim (della Porta and Diani 2006, pp. 188–189).
15 M stands for 15 May 2011. Participants tend to adopt this neutral label to the detriment of other terms to refer to this campaign and its activists such as indignados (“the outraged”)—Romanos (2016).
The list of keywords—introduced separately in Spanish—was as follows: protesta, manifestación, escrache, 15M, indignados, marea, movilización, marcha, acampada, sentada, boicot. I ran a mini-test with the Spanish El Mundo to control for possible biases in the primary newspaper source, comparing 2 months, pre- and post-15M (April 2009 and November 2013). No substantial differences regarding event coverage were found—overlap between protest events in El País and El Mundo was higher than 90%.
As the printed media is a crucial arena for public claims-making, and most actors use it to make their views public, I used newspaper (daily) records. Following Beissinger (2002, p. 14), the units of analysis in my PEA, events, are defined as “contentious and potentially subversive acts that challenge normalised practices, modes of causation, or systems of authority”. No sampling strategies were implemented: information about size was coded regardless of the kind and size of the event, collecting data neither exclusively on the largest events nor on those strictly associated with the recession, austerity, labour issues and the political status quo. Following Kriesi et al. (1995), opinion and editorial sections were omitted.
Calculating the number of protesters in a given event is problematic. Quality of information reported usually depends on the newspaper source and is scant and partial. To tackle this issue, I have gathered information on the three main sources of information on the size of challengers separately (when available). These three continuous indicators are the number of participants reported by (1) the police or official authorities, (2) El País newspaper and (3) the organisers. As police records usually underestimate the number of participants and organisers overestimate them, a coefficient that measures average, over or underestimation was calculated for each variable. Weighted coefficients are extrapolated from cases with full information (N′ = 45) for all categories to those that only have partial data, and then arithmetic weighted means are calculated on the basis of the values for the (1-to-3) sources available. An additional indicator captures estimations and vague cues on event size (e.g. some hundreds, several thousands, etc.). It was transformed into a 1–10 interval-level scale following the procedures specified in the codebook for Dynamics of Collective Action (N″ = 505; see http://web.stanford.edu/group/collectiveaction/cgi-bin/drupal/node/17).
Tarrow (2011, p. 207) defines institutionalisation as “a movement away from extreme ideologies and/or the adoption of a more conventional and less disruptive forms of contention”.
Following Karapin (2007), I distinguish among (1) semi-conventional strategies (if using or promoting routine forms of participation in order to bargain and compromise with opponents), (2) mild or (3) severe disruptive strategies (if disrupting political-economic routines in non-violent ways through more moderate—e.g. rallying—or more disruptive repertories—e.g. occupations—) and (4) militant strategies (if using intimidation and coercion by threatening opponents or engaging in violence).
Protesters’ violence is a dummy that captures whether protesters resorted to violent tactics of any kind (weapons, physical, other, etc.). Coercion is measured on a 0–3 scale: (0) no known coercion, (1) low-level coercion (sporadic arrests and/or injuries, defined as less than ten), (2) substantial coercion (defined as 10–75 arrests or 10–40 injuries), (3) major violence by authorities (defined as more than 75 arrests or more than 40 injuries). Overall violence takes into account human and property damage inflicted by coercion and demonstrators’ violence. A five-point interval scale adapted from Spilerman (1976) is used—the maximum category of violence is selected provided at least two of the described items apply: (0) no violence, (1) low intensity (bottle throwing, some fighting, little property damage, crowd size < 125, arrests < 15, injuries < 8); (2) moderate violence (rock and bottle throwing, fighting, looting, serious property damage, some arson, 75–250 crowd size, 10–30 arrests; 5–15 injuries; (3) substantial violence (looting, arson and property destruction, 200–500 crowd size, 25–75 arrests, 10–40 injuries); (4) high-intensity major violence (defined as bloodshed and destruction, +400 crowd size, +65 arrests, +35 injuries). See Table 2 in “Appendix”.
The picture on repression and violence in the subsample of anti-political status quo, labour, crisis-related and anti-austerity events only do not change substantially (not reported here).
Relational mechanisms are those that “alter connections among people, groups, and interpersonal networks” (McAdam et al. 2001, p. 26).
Although downward scale shift might increase in contentious performances through direct social action and solidarity initiatives, such as cooperatives, markets, etc. (Bosi and Zamponi 2015), consistent with available literature on cycles and my PEA dataset, I emphasise the protest dimension throughout.
Note that the terms “coalitions” and “alliances” are used interchangeably throughout.
Note that joining a coalition may also engender risks and costs for organisations (e.g. loss of autonomy, potential conflict with partners, alteration of strategic choices, compromise identity, etc.), as Heaney and Rojas (2008) argue.
This bill was heavily contested by different actors on the grounds of individual schools’ loss of autonomy, change in the university access system, discrimination of minority languages, etc.
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Portos, M. Keeping dissent alive under the Great Recession: no-radicalisation and protest in Spain after the eventful 15M/indignados campaign. Acta Polit 54, 45–74 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-017-0074-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-017-0074-9