Abstract
The recent economic crisis has witnessed a surge in demonstrations and other protest actions all over Europe, while in the most affected countries—such as Greece—the use of personal violence and damage of property became an everyday phenomenon. What are the drivers of violent political action in times of crisis? How do these drivers interact? And to what extent does context matter? These questions are examined in the light of a new and original survey data set carried out across nine European countries, all affected to different degrees by the financial crisis. Four theoretical paradigms from social movement research that account for violent political action are examined. This study looks beyond the staple explanations of relative deprivation and resource mobilisation, expands the analysis to include a relational approach—namely, conflictual irrelevance—and explores the soundness of an integrative approach that attempts to reconcile the traditional divide between grievance and resource-based models. By measuring actual behaviour rather than merely intention, the article furthermore contributes to the discussion over the participation of individuals in violent activism and gives empirical support to the dual-pathways model of collective action for the understanding of violent political action during times of crisis.
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Notes
Wright et al. (1990) distinguished between normative and non-normative participation; the former includes all political actions that conform to the norms (e.g. laws and regulations) of a given society (e.g. voting, trade unions, peaceful protest), whilst the latter violates the dominant rules of the society (e.g. violence, property destruction, terrorism).
We understand violent political action as the episodic social interaction that immediately inflicts physical damage (light or severe) on objects, includes the threat and use of physical violence against persons and occurs as a by-product and/or in conjunction with non-violent protest (Diani 2012; Seferiades and Johnston 2012).
Grievances are the material and ideational constituted claims of unfair treatment that may motivate individuals and groups to protest action (Simmons 2014).
Transgressive organisations are those that employ an innovative repertoire of collective action, as they employ claims and tactics that are unprecedented, confrontational and even unauthorised within a political regime (Tilly 2000; Gillham and Noakes 2007). In contrast, constrained movements use an institutionalised or routinised tactical repertoire that respects the dominant norms of a given regime.
The survey included a total N of approximately 18,000 respondents with approximately 2000 N per country.
For each country, the per cent engaging in one or more of these activities is as follows: France (4.66%), Germany (4.43%), Greece (4.58%), Italy (7.49%), Poland (7.20%), Spain (4.13%), Sweden (2.14%), Switzerland (5.07%) and the UK (1.07%).
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the European Commission 7th Framework Programme: project name Living with Hard Times: How European Citizens Deal with Economic Crises and Their Social and Political Consequences (LIVEWHAT) [grant agreement number 613237] coordinated by the University of Geneva (Marco Giugni). The authors are extremely grateful to all the participants at the LIVEWHAT paper workshop in Florence on 3–4 December 2015 for their feedback and in particular to Lorenzo Bosi, Jasmine Lorenzini and Steven Van Hauwaert. We would also like to thank the Editors and the reviewers at Comparative European Politics for their useful comments.
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Karampampas, S., Temple, L. & Grasso, M. Violent political action during the European economic crisis: an empirical investigation of four theoretical paradigms from social movement research. Comp Eur Polit 18, 420–436 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41295-019-00191-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41295-019-00191-4