Marco Giugni - Austerity and Protest: Popular Contention in Times of Economic Crisis

Professor Hank Johnston
San Diego State University, USA

Published in conjunction with Mobilization: An International Quarterly, the premier research journal in the field, this series disseminates high quality new research and scholarship in the fields of social movements, protest, and contentious politics. The series is interdisciplinary in focus and publishes monographs and collections of essays by new and established scholars.

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Shifting Paradigms
Alexander Koensler

From Silence to Protest
International Perspectives on Weakly Resourced Groups
Edited by Didier Chabanet and Frdric Royall

The Fight for Ethical Fashion
The Origins and Interactions of the Clean Clothes Campaign
Philip Balsiger

Understanding the Tea Party Movement
Edited by Nella Van Dyke and David S. Meyer

Popular Contention in Times of Economic Crisis

MARCO GIUGNI
University of Geneva, Switzerland

MARIA T. GRASSO
University of Sheffield, UK

First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Copyright 2015 Marco Giugni, Maria T. Grasso and the contributors.

Marco Giugni and Maria T. Grasso have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Austerity and protest : popular contention in times of economic crisis / edited by Marco
Giugni and Maria T. Grasso.

pages cm. (The mobilization series on social movements, protest, and culture)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4724-3918-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-4724-3919-2 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-4724-3920-8 (epub) 1. Economic policy. 2. Financial crises. 3. Social
movementsPolitical aspects. 4. Protest movements. I. Giugni, Marco, editor.
II. Grasso, Maria T. (Maria Teresa), 1984 editor.

HD87.A927 2015

322.4dc23

2015018455

ISBN: 978-1-472-43918-5 (hbk)

Marco Giugni and Maria T. Grasso

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. announced its intention to file a petition under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. While at the time few, if any, observers would have predicted so, that event prefigured what has come to be seen by many as the deepest economic crisis of our time. Emerging in the financial sector at first, the crisis quickly spread to infect the broader economy in countries across the globe. More than seven years later, the effects of what has come to be known as the Great Recession (a term paralleling the one used for the Great Depression of the 1920s) are still ongoing. Some countries have paid the highest price, while others have been lucky enough to avoid its most pernicious repercussions. In particular, the so-called PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) came under close scrutiny within the EU for not being able to sufficiently cope with the crisis. In contrast, countries such as Germany (within the EU) and Switzerland (outside the EU), while not unaffected, have been spared the toughest consequences of the economic recession.

Encouraged by the so-called Troikathe European Commission, the Central European Bank, and the International Monetary FundEuropean governments have reacted to the economic crisis by enacting a series of restrictive policies and measures, in brief, by implementing austerity. This kind of response became the mantra of many European governments. In practice, austerity has meant severe cuts in budgets, most notably spending in the social sector. Unsurprisingly, the effect of these cuts has been felt most directly by the poorest sectors of society. This, however, should not come as a surprise: cuts in government spending tend to harm the poorest sectors disproportionately since these are the sectors of society that are most reliant on social help. However, what is new with the current crisis is that the middle class has also felt the bite of the negative consequences of the crisis. This in turn has contributed to the emergence of anti-austerity movements in a great number of European countries, struggling against the crisis and what is perceived as unjust policy-making targeting the 99 percent of hard-working, law-abiding citizens rather than the one percent of extreme wealth holders and bankers sharing the greatest responsibility for the financial crash.

More broadly, how have European citizens reacted both to the economic crisis and the policies enacted by their governments to face it (see Bermeo and Bartels 2014 for a recent discussion)? Different options were available to them. One option consists in withdrawing into the private sphere and abandoning public or political action. Some, sadly, even withdrew not only from public life, but from life altogether (how not to think of the suicides committed by small company owners and entrepreneurs who found themselves inexorably caught between their debts and a shrinking market for their products). Another option is to engage in alternative forms of resilience, including the strengthening of social and family networks and community practices to foster solidarity in the face of crisis, change of lifestyles towards more sustainable forms of consumption and production, developing new artistic expressions, moving abroad for short or long durations (or on the contrary reducing mobility) (Berkes and Ross 2013; Conill et al. 2012; Forno and Graziano 2014; Kousis and Paschou 2014; Murray and Zautra 2012). Still another is to change their own political attitudes and voting behavior, for example by sanctioning incumbents who are considered as being responsible for the bad economic situation, or at least seen as not being able to effectively counter the negative consequences of the crisis (Bartels 2014).