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Abstract
Anti-austerity mobilisations in Southern Europe since 2010 have been widely debated in recent times. Commentators have emphasised the emergence of new political subjects such as the ‘precariat’ organised into loose, IT-connected movements. To what extent do these portrayals reflect the underlying dynamics of this protest cycle, and how do these movements interact with traditional political actors? Using Portugal as a case study, this article maps the cycle of anti-austerity contention between 2010 and 2013 to reveal a more complex picture, where traditional actors, including labour unions and left-wing political parties, emerge as key actors, facilitating and sustaining the discontinuous mobilisation of new forms of activism, while seeking to gain access to new constituencies through them.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to several colleagues for their helpful advice. In particular we would like to thank John Karamichas, Irene Martín, Tiago Carvalho, Robert Fishman, Leonardo Morlino, Goffredo Adinolfi, Marco Lisi and Rui Branco.
Notes
1. Source: EUROSTAT: Labour Force Survey.
2. 2,500–3,000 demonstrators according to the organisers and approximately 1,000 according to the chief of the Polícia de Segurança Pública (Public Security Police – PSP). Source: Público, 2 June 2013.
3. Our methodology draws on both the PEA and ‘Contentious Politics’ approach, combining the systematic coding of newspaper events with content analysis of the same, as well as a broader contextual sweep of available materials, seeking to map the field of contention, rather than focusing on single actors (see Earl et al. Citation2004; Koopmans and Statham Citation1999; Tilly and Tarrow Citation2007).
4. In respect to the effects of a revolutionary transition on the development of Portuguese civil society see also Fernandes (Citation2014).
5. Data from the European Protest and Coercion Database (EPCD), retrieved from http://web.ku.edu/~ronfrand/data/
6. Source for Figures : Authors’ protest event database from a 3 day per week sample from Diário de Notícias, January 2010–July 2013. Source for Figure : Séries Cronológicas Greves 1986–2007 [Chronological Series: Strikes, 1986–2007]. Ministério do Trabalho e Segurança Social – Gabinete de Estratégia e Planeamento. Lisboa (2007): http://www.gep.msss.gov.pt/estatistica/greves/seriegreves_1986_2007.pdf and Estatísticas em Síntese – Greves [Summary Statistics: Strikes]. Gabinete de Estratégia e Estudos, Ministério da Economia e Emprego, 2010, 2011, 2012.
7. Political elites divisions are frequently at the origin of an opening in the political opportunity structure, which can ‘provide incentives for people to undertake collective action by affecting their expectations of success or failure’ (Tarrow Citation1996: 54).
8. Data from Estatísticas em Síntese – Greves, Gabinete de Estratégia e Estudos, Ministério da Economia e Emprego, 2010, 2011 and 2012. The 2010 figure seems to be the continuation of a pattern, with the proportion of multiple company strikes similar to those observed in 2005, 2006 and 2007 – the closest years for which data is available.
10. According to the ICTWSS Database, reported union density rates have steadily fallen from 60.8 in 1978 to 19.3 in 2010: Jelle Visser, ICTWSS database (Institutional Characteristics of Trade Unions, Wage Setting, State Intervention and Social Pacts, 1960–2010), version 4.0: http://www.uva-aias.net/208
17. We included, in this figure, the 7.15 per cent of votes obtained by the MPT (Partido da Terra – Earth Party) even if its location on the left–right axis is still quite problematic.