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So far, we have mapped what the three stylized actors did in the (more or less) contentious episodes, treating all three actors as unitary entities. This chapter takes the analysis a step further by describing features of the coalitions and actor configurations. In doing so, we answer who the actors involved in the conflicts over austerity and institutional reforms were and how they are typically related to each other. Available protest event studies on the Great Recession indicate at least three organizational features of the recent protest wave in Europe (e.g., Carvalho 2019; Diani and Kousis 2014; Hunger and Lorenzini 2019; Portos 2016, 2017; Portos and Carvalho 2019). First, they highlight the crucial role of institutionalized actors, particularly labor unions, in bringing the masses to the streets early on when the crisis hit the European continent in 2008 and 2009. Second, newly established and loose networks played an essential part in the southern European countries hit hardest by the crisis – the Portuguese Geração à Rasca, Democracia Real, and the Indignados in Spain as well as their Greek counterpart Aganaktismeni are illustrative of this dynamic. Third, the moment of such noninstitutionalized players who entered the protest scene tended to be relatively short lived, but, remarkably, even in Spain, there are indications of a process of institutionalization as formal organizations (trade unions and political parties) became more important in later phases of the protest wave.

On 24 May 2011, in the middle of the parliamentary debate on the so-called mid-term adjustment plan, yet another round of austerity imposed by Greece’s international creditors, a call for a demonstration at Syntagma Square in Athens and at the White Tower in Thessaloniki appeared on Facebook. By the next day at least 20,000 people assembled in the two squares, mostly chanting “thieves, thieves” at parliamentarians and cursing the Parliament. The movement of the Greek Indignados or Aganaktismenoi was born. It would prove to be massive, expansive, and innovative. Immediately after the initial demonstrations, the main squares in the two cities were occupied, and simultaneous protests began in almost all major urban centers of the country. Interest would focus on Syntagma Square, however, where the occupation was symbolically confronting Parliament, juxtaposing the public assembly and the symbolic seat of political power. In the following days, the occupation grew exponentially, eventually reaching almost 400,000 participants on June 5th. In our dataset, there is an event associated with the Aganaktismenoi on almost every single day until the end of the episode on June 30th.

Portugal and Spain were among the countries hardest hit by the global financial crisis that led to the eurozone’s near collapse after the revelation of Greek public debt in late 2009. Both countries experienced a massive economic shock, as revealed by objective and subjective indicators (Chapter 3). Faced with a dire economic situation and increasing European pressure, the mainstream left in government – PS in Portugal and PSOE in Spain – announced severe austerity measures throughout 2009 and 2010 (Bremer and Vidal 2018). Consequently, the two countries saw union-organized protests against the measures early in the crisis (Accornero and Ramos Pinto 2015; Della Porta et al. 2017a; Kriesi et al. 2020; Portos 2019). Both countries experienced a turning point in 2011 when further noninstitutional actors entered the scene: Geração à Rasca [Screwed generation] in March 2011 in Portugal and 15M (named after the first large-scale protests on May 15, 2011) in Spain. According to some estimates, almost 5 percent of the Portuguese population took to the streets on March 12, 2011 (Carvalho 2018: 98). 15M and the battle cry of the central organizing network Democracia Real, Ya! [Real democracy now] led, after the first demonstration with about 20,000 participants on Puertas del Sol, to weeks of mass protests across the country.

Chapter 1 introduces the questions this volume is going to address, the empirical approach it is going to adopt, and the three regions of Europe that are going to serve as a key structuring device in presenting the results. The volume descriptively addresses three claims that have been made in the literature on protest mobilization during the Great Recession: the existence of an internationally interconnected protest wave, the transformation of action repertoires, and the ‘return of the economy’ in the demands of protesters. Second, the volume asks about the drivers of protest mobilization, relying on three key concepts of social movement studies – grievances, resources, and political opportunity structures. More specifically, the chapters assess the role of economic and political grievances in driving protest: Do economic grievances mobilize or de-mobilize protest? They analyze the role of political parties in organizing protest in times of crisis and ask which parties take to the streets in times of crises, and they consider the role of political opportunity structures in moderating the link between economic grievances and protest. Since the distinction between the macro-regions is so important for the presentation of the results, the introduction also provides three sets of arguments why this distinction makes sense as a general grid in the analysis of the data. These three sets of arguments are linked to the same three sets of explanatory factors.pronounced whenever dire economic conditions and dissatisfaction with the political system rose together and reinforced each other.

Chapter 1 introduces the questions this volume is going to address, the empirical approach it is going to adopt, and the three regions of Europe that are going to serve as a key structuring device in presenting the results. The volume descriptively addresses three claims that have been made in the literature on protest mobilization during the Great Recession: the existence of an internationally interconnected protest wave, the transformation of action repertoires, and the ‘return of the economy’ in the demands of protesters. Second, the volume asks about the drivers of protest mobilization, relying on three key concepts of social movement studies – grievances, resources, and political opportunity structures. More specifically, the chapters assess the role of economic and political grievances in driving protest: Do economic grievances mobilize or de-mobilize protest? They analyze the role of political parties in organizing protest in times of crisis and ask which parties take to the streets in times of crises, and they consider the role of political opportunity structures in moderating the link between economic grievances and protest. Since the distinction between the macro-regions is so important for the presentation of the results, the introduction also provides three sets of arguments why this distinction makes sense as a general grid in the analysis of the data. These three sets of arguments are linked to the same three sets of explanatory factors.pronounced whenever dire economic conditions and dissatisfaction with the political system rose together and reinforced each other.

Chapter 1 introduces the questions this volume is going to address, the empirical approach it is going to adopt, and the three regions of Europe that are going to serve as a key structuring device in presenting the results. The volume descriptively addresses three claims that have been made in the literature on protest mobilization during the Great Recession: the existence of an internationally interconnected protest wave, the transformation of action repertoires, and the ‘return of the economy’ in the demands of protesters. Second, the volume asks about the drivers of protest mobilization, relying on three key concepts of social movement studies – grievances, resources, and political opportunity structures. More specifically, the chapters assess the role of economic and political grievances in driving protest: Do economic grievances mobilize or de-mobilize protest? They analyze the role of political parties in organizing protest in times of crisis and ask which parties take to the streets in times of crises, and they consider the role of political opportunity structures in moderating the link between economic grievances and protest. Since the distinction between the macro-regions is so important for the presentation of the results, the introduction also provides three sets of arguments why this distinction makes sense as a general grid in the analysis of the data. These three sets of arguments are linked to the same three sets of explanatory factors.pronounced whenever dire economic conditions and dissatisfaction with the political system rose together and reinforced each other.

Chapter 1 introduces the questions this volume is going to address, the empirical approach it is going to adopt, and the three regions of Europe that are going to serve as a key structuring device in presenting the results. The volume descriptively addresses three claims that have been made in the literature on protest mobilization during the Great Recession: the existence of an internationally interconnected protest wave, the transformation of action repertoires, and the ‘return of the economy’ in the demands of protesters. Second, the volume asks about the drivers of protest mobilization, relying on three key concepts of social movement studies – grievances, resources, and political opportunity structures. More specifically, the chapters assess the role of economic and political grievances in driving protest: Do economic grievances mobilize or de-mobilize protest? They analyze the role of political parties in organizing protest in times of crisis and ask which parties take to the streets in times of crises, and they consider the role of political opportunity structures in moderating the link between economic grievances and protest. Since the distinction between the macro-regions is so important for the presentation of the results, the introduction also provides three sets of arguments why this distinction makes sense as a general grid in the analysis of the data. These three sets of arguments are linked to the same three sets of explanatory factors.pronounced whenever dire economic conditions and dissatisfaction with the political system rose together and reinforced each other.

This chapter contains a study of diffusion among political protests in Europe. We start from a theoretical perspective that assumes protests as inherently interdependent across countries. Hence, we link geographical proximity to the likelihood of protests and we apply a spatial panel data analysis to study this link at the European, regional and cross-border level as well as for different time periods and forms of protests. The results show that spin-off movements across the continent learn from or emulate initiator movements in many instances, but that this diffusion is largely confined to the cross-border level. As a consequence, we did not find sustained protest waves that capture the majority of European countries at once. Similarly, cross-border diffusion is also only relevant for some regions and during some time periods but not universally. It seems that the grievances and opportunity structures in different European countries are varying too much in order to support widespread and long-ranging waves of protest.

Since the 1970s, the focus of contentious protest, as well as of the corresponding research, has increasingly moved from economic issues to the cultural issues associated with the new social movements. With Europe experiencing the most severe economic crisis in decades, we ask if the return of hard times has changed the distribution of contention over the different policy domains. Drawing on a dataset covering more than 30.000 protest events in thirty European countries from 2000 to 2015 and the issues and actors involved in each event, we analyse how the salience of cultural, political, and economic issues in the protest arena changes over time across countries and regions. We find evidence for a reinvigoration of economic protest particularly in southern Europe, a region that was strongly affected by the economic crisis. However, the varying crisis experiences also served to channel economic grievances into other issues: Governments deflected blame for austerity packages onto international institutions and right-wing challengers mobilized economic fears by promising more exclusive welfare benefits. Hence, the economic crisis was also addressed in political and cultural terms. Finally, we show that when the Euro-crisis ended, the migration crisis began to affect the protest arena.

The chapter establishes that economic and political grievances matter for economic protest in general and public economic protest in particular. In addition, it shows that, during the period covered, political grievances have been strongly influenced by economic grievances across Europe, but most clearly in southern Europe. While the rapid recovery of the countries of north-western Europe and the pain tolerance in the countries of central and eastern Europe probably served to limit the impact of the economic grievances on political dissatisfaction, the fact that the southern European countries not only were hard hit by the economic crisis, but also experienced a relative decline with regard to the other parts of Europe, most likely enhanced the impact of economic on political grievances in this part of Europe. Moreover, it is also above all in southern Europe that the effect of economic on political grievances was conditioned by state capacity and IMF interventions: while weak state capacity enhanced the effect of the former on the latter, IMF interventions attenuated it. Finally, a core finding of this chapter is that economic protest was most heavily influenced by the joint effect of economic and political grievances. Protest mobilization was particularly pronounced whenever dire economic conditions and dissatisfaction with the political system rose together and reinforced each other.

Chapter 1 introduces the questions this volume is going to address, the empirical approach it is going to adopt, and the three regions of Europe that are going to serve as a key structuring device in presenting the results. The volume descriptively addresses three claims that have been made in the literature on protest mobilization during the Great Recession: the existence of an internationally interconnected protest wave, the transformation of action repertoires, and the ‘return of the economy’ in the demands of protesters. Second, the volume asks about the drivers of protest mobilization, relying on three key concepts of social movement studies – grievances, resources, and political opportunity structures. More specifically, the chapters assess the role of economic and political grievances in driving protest: Do economic grievances mobilize or de-mobilize protest? They analyze the role of political parties in organizing protest in times of crisis and ask which parties take to the streets in times of crises, and they consider the role of political opportunity structures in moderating the link between economic grievances and protest. Since the distinction between the macro-regions is so important for the presentation of the results, the introduction also provides three sets of arguments why this distinction makes sense as a general grid in the analysis of the data. These three sets of arguments are linked to the same three sets of explanatory factors.pronounced whenever dire economic conditions and dissatisfaction with the political system rose together and reinforced each other.

Mit dem Internet wurden nicht nur Verbesserungen in der politischen Kommunikation versprochen, es wurden auch Verheissungen gemacht: Dank Internet ein besserer Zugang zu Informationen, mehr Transparenz, vielfältige und neue Möglichkeiten der Partizipation, mehr Demokratie im Sinne einer Beteiligung vieler, durch Schwarmintelligenz im Netz (Weisheit der Vielen) bessere Entscheidungen. Das ist nicht eingetreten. Ernüchterung macht sich breit: Die politische Beteiligung vieler blieb aus, stattdessen macht man sich Sorgen um Manipulation bei Wahlen und Abstimmungen durch Trolle wie Social Bots. Zwar haben sich die Möglichkeiten zur Beteiligung verändert, aber in einer gänzlich anderen als der versprochenen Weise und mit gegenteiligen Effekten.

Zwischen 1998 und 2018 ist der Stimmenanteil für links- und rechtspopulistische Parteien quer durch Europa von durchschnittlich 7 Prozent auf 27 Prozent gestiegen. Zwar blieb bei der Europawahl 2019 das von manchen befürchtete populistische Erdbeben aus, aber dennoch gehörten Nigel Farages Brexit Party, Matteo Salvinis Lega und Marine le Pens Rassemblement National mit Wähleranteilen von 33 bis 23 Prozent zu den Wahlsiegern. Auch die deutsch AfS (11%) und österreichische FPÖ (17%) äusserten sich zufrieden. Die Gründe für die Popularität populistischer Parteien variieren von Land zu Land. Ein Faktor, der in der bisherigen Debatte über Populismus jedoch erst wenig systematische Aufmerksamkeit erhalten hat, ist die Rolle von Medien und politischer Kommunikation.

Gerät die Welt komplett aus den Fugen? Das vielleicht nicht, doch sie verändert sich in ungeahntem Tempo und in einer Radikalität, die an sich schon beunruhigen: Radikale Protestbewegungen, zahlreiche Kriege und Konflikte; nationale Egoismen, Zweifel an der Demokratie, die Angst vor der Digitalisierung und den Verlust des Arbeitsplatzes; Flucht und Migration, Klimawandel, die Rückkehr offenen Rassismus und Antisemitismus, die Kluft zwischen Reich und Arm. Viele Probleme und Fragen – doch wie lauten die Antworten? Fast 50 Jahre sind vergangen, seit der Club of Rome seinen berühmten Bericht »Die Grenzen des Wachstums« veröffentlichte. Den gegenwärtigen großen politischen und gesellschaftlichen Umbrüchen und Herausforderungen haben sich erneut Wissenschaftler gestellt. Untergangsszenarien wären einfach – und sind oft zu lesen. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes sind anders. Sie zeigen: Wir stehen den Herausforderungen des globalen Umbruchs nicht hilflos gegenüber. Wissen öffnet Perspektiven und bietet Lösungsansätze.

In domestic politics in most developed democracies, political debates are organised along a very small number of dominant dimensions, sometimes even just a single left–right dimension (Kitschelt 1994; Kriesi et al. 2008; Enyedi and Deegan-Krause 2010) and the established actors take more or less stable positions within this political space. Bartolini (2005) and Ferrera (2006) refer to this condition as ‘structuring’. Structure in their understanding is the result of a process whereby political conflicts become institutionalised in the sense that actors form stable, routinised patterns of oppositions and coalitions around a limited set of basic conflicts. Whether such structure also exists in debates on European integration and the form it takes is an open empirical question that we address in this chapter. In particular, we examine the structuring hypothesis as formulated in the first chapter. This holds that politicisation leads to structuring of political contestation over European integration. Thus, the chapter changes the direction of causal explanation. We no longer focus on the factors leading to high levels of politicisation, but now continue to study the consequences of politicisation. More specifically, we address the structuring hypothesis by asking four key questions. Are debates on European integration structured by a limited number of dimensions? If so, which conflicts are reflected in these dimensions? Within this space, what are the dominant actor constellations? And finally, does clarity of structure increase with levels of politicisation? Existing studies provide mixed answers to these questions. Studies focusing on national party competition (Hix 1999; Pennings 2002; Hooghe et al. 2004; Kriesi et al. 2012; Wendler 2013), on the European Parliament (Hix et al. 2003; Gabel and Hix 2004; Thomassen et al. 2004; Hix et al. 2006; McElroy and Benoit 2007; Proksch and Slapin 2010; Benoit and Laver 2012; Costello et al. 2012), on the Council of Ministers or

Political communication is a precondition of democracy, and democracy depends heavily on the infrastructure of the media system. The media and mediated communication are of central relevance for contemporary societies due to their decisive influence on, and consequences for, political institutions, political actors, and individual citizens. Political actors have learnt to accept that their behavior to a significant extent is influenced by the rules of the game set by the mass media. This transformation has been described as a shift to audience democracy (Manin 1995) or media democracy (Jarren 2008a). The idea of media democracy is an extension of the model of representative democracy. It refers to a development that at its beginning aimed to make politics more inclusive and transparent. In the process policy-makers have become accountable to an ever growing volume of interests and demands from the public - not only in the context of elections but in many phases of the policy process. The pressure on policy-makers to be responsive to public opinion in general and special interests in particular has increased the role of the mass media in many ways. Politicians have grown to rely on the mass media for gauging public opinion (using media coverage as a proxy for public sentiments), and for generating attention, acceptance, and legitimation of their actions (using media channels for public presentation of politics).

We define mediatization as the growing intrusion of media logic as an institutional rule into fields where other rules of defining appropriate behavior prevailed. Mediatization can lead to an enhancement, adaptation, obstruction, or even substitution of political functions by the logic of the media system. At its extreme it can lead to a state of ‘mediatized politics’ where politics ‘has lost its autonomy, has become dependent in its central functions on mass media, and is continuously shaped by interactions with mass media’ (Mazzoleni and Schulz 1999: 250). The professional, commercial, and technological production rules of the media - its operating logic - are important requirements which political actors must take into account if they are to receive publicity, public support, and legitimacy. Media logic provides an incentive structure that contextualizes, and often shapes, political processes - particularly those that are dependent on publicity and public support. From this it follows that - contrary to a priori assumptions of a fully transformed ‘media democracy’ - the concept of mediatization does not assume a complete ‘colonialization’ of politics by the media. Rather we expect that some institutions, stages, and activities in the political process will be mediatized more than others, depending on how media-compatible they are (Marcinkowski 2005).