Late Neoliberalism and its Discontents in the Economic Crisis

"The revealing and detailed country chapters provide fresh comparable data and findings on the conditions affecting the deliberative and participatory movements, the political opportunities and threats as well as their own, internal power. These findings are put in context by a powerful introduction and conclusion aimed to bridge contentious politics with fields such as political economy and point to the importance of socio-structural conditions, world-system position and the crisis of responsibility, linked to power shifts in global capitalism." (Maria Kousis, Professor of Sociology, University of Crete, Greece) "Countries on the European periphery bore the brunt of the region's post-2008 financial crisis, and they have also been among the most severely affected by the political fallout from the crisis. Late Neoliberalism and Its Discontents provides a systematic comparative assessment of the economic crisis, its political management, and its social and political effects in Iceland, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Cyprus. The contributing authors bring the analysis of economic grievances back to the forefront of the study of social movements, focusing on anti-austerity protest movements and the social actors who have taken to the streets and squares across the European periphery. They also explore the forms of electoral protest that have weakened traditional parties and spawned or strengthened new ones in a number of different countries." (Kenneth M. Roberts, Richard J. Schwarz Professor, Cornell University, US) "Late Neoliberalism and Its Discontents argues that while the policy response to the Euro crisis was fundamentally similar across the European periphery, as it involved "internal devaluation," i.e. wage and price cuts, liberalization of labor markets and public sector retrenchment everywhere, the social and political response varied quite a bit across countries: in Greece and Spain it led to the emergence of new repertoires of action and new actors, including new political parties, while in Cyprus, Italy and Portugal there was no major renewal. Based on in-depth case studies of the Mediterranean countries plus Iceland and Ireland, the book explains this variation through careful reconstructions of the socioeconomic impact of the crisis and of the construction of grievances in each country." (Lucio Baccaro, Professor of Macro-Sociology, University of Geneva, Switzerland)"/p>

While social movements have long been considered as children of affluent times - or at least of times of opening opportunities - these protests defy such expectations, developing instead in moments of diminishing opportunities in both the economic and the political realms.

This book analyses protests against the Great Recession in the European periphery. While social movements have long been considered as children of affluent times - or at least of times of opening opportunities - these protests defy such expectations, developing instead in moments of diminishing opportunities in both the economic and the political realms. Can social movement studies still be useful to understanding these movements of troubled times? The authors offer a positive answer to this question, although specify the need to bridge contentious politics with other fields, including political economy. They highlight differences in the social movements’ strength and breadth and attempt to understand them in terms of three sets of dimensions: a) the specific characteristics of the socio-economic crisis and its consequences in terms of mobilization potential; b) the political reactions to it, in what we can define as political opportunities and threats; and c) the social movement cultures and structures that characterize each country. The book discusses these topics through a contextualized analysis of anti-austerity protest in the European periphery.