Suchergebnisse

Oppositional violence and repression are closely related. In fact, repression often produces an escalation of violence rather than controlling it. Bridging social movement studies and research on violence, the article uses a small-N, most-different research design to analyse the working of a specific mechanism at the onset of different types of political violence: escalating policing. In particular, it indicates specific causal mechanisms, related to interactions between social movements and the state, which create the conditions for some splinter groups to move underground. In order to compare left-wing, right-wing, ethno-national and religious violence, the article presents empirical references to the author's own empirical research on Italy and the Basque Country as well as a secondary analysis of the conflicts that preceded the rise of al-Qaeda.

Outcomes of democratization paths have been addressed within literature on democratic consolidation as well as on revolution. These approaches have however never been linked with social movement theory that, I argue in this article, can provide new lenses to explain how movements' characteristics at the time of transition might have an impact on the quality of ensuing democracy. As the same time, looking at effects of social movements in terms of democratization can help broadening social movement studies, that have rarely addressed this type of effects. I am in particular interested in linking reflections (and empirical evidence) on effects of social movements to the typology on paths towards democratization that I have developed in other works. Looking especially at Central Eastern Europe post-1989, I single out the different characteristics of contentious politics in countries that underwent, respectively, eventful democratization, participated pacts and troubled democratization. Protest event analysis as constituted the empirical basis for the analysis

A keynote for the SCOPE 2014: Science of Politics – International Interdisciplinary Conference of Political Research that took place at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Political Science between 27 and 29 June 2014, this article assesses at theoretical and methodological level the way in which both agency and structure are relevant in social movements, particularly in processes of eventful democratization. Eventful democratization appears as sudden and unexpected, not only to observers or dictators, but also often to the very activists who mobilize against the authoritarian regimes. This difficulty in prediction is linked to agency and contingency: intense protest events are indeed under-determined moments as structural constraints are, if not overcome, at least weakened by the very capacity of mobilization to quickly transform relations. Following the social movement literature, the article focuses particularly on causal mechanisms at collective level, identifying and discussing relational, cognitive, and emotional mechanisms.

The project addresses the role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in democratization processes, bridging social science approaches to social movements and democracy. The project starts by revisiting the 'transitology' approach to democratization and the political process approach to social movements, before moving towards more innovative approaches in both areas. From the theoretical point of view, a main innovation will be in addressing both structural preconditions as well as actors' strategies, looking at the intersection of structure and agency. In an historical and comparative perspective, I aim to develop a description and an understanding of the conditions and effects of the participation of civil society organizations in the various stages of democratization processes. Different parts of the research will address different sub-questions linked to the broad question of CSOs' participation in democratization processes: a) under which (external and internal) conditions and through which mechanisms do CSOs support democratization processes? b) Under which conditions and through which mechanisms do they play an important role in democratization processes? c) Under which conditions and through which mechanisms are they successful in triggering democratization processes? d) And, finally, what is the legacy of the participation of civil society during transitions to democracy on the quality of democracy during consolidation? The main empirical focus will be on recent democratization processes in EU member and associated states. The comparative research design will, however, also include selected comparisons with oppositional social movements in authoritarian regimes as well as democratization processes in other historical times and geopolitical regions. From an empirical point of view, a main innovation will lie in the development of mixed method strategies, combining large N and small N analyses, and qualitative comparative analysis with in-depth, structured narratives. ; The research project 'Mobilizing for Democracy: Democratization Processes and the Mobilization of Civil Society' is funded by European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant. (Grant Agreeement no: 269136.)

The recent financial crisis and, especially, anti-austerity policies, reflects and, at the same time, contribute to a crisis of representative democracy. In this article, I discuss which different conceptions of trust (and relations to democracy) have been debated in the social sciences, and in public debates in recent time. The financial crisis has in fact stimulated a hot debate on "whose trust" is relevant for "whose democracy". After locating the role of trust in democratic theory, I continue with some illustrations of a declining political trust in Europe, coming from my own research on social movements, but also of the emergence, in theory and practices, of other conceptions of democracy and democratic spaces, where critical trust develops. Indignados' movements in Spain and Greece as well as the Occupying Wall Street protest in the US are just the most visible reaction of a widespread dissatisfaction with the declining quality of democratic regimes. They testify for the declining legitimacy of traditional conceptions of democracy, as well as for the declining trust in representative institutions. At the same time, however, these movements conceptualize and practice different democratic models that emphasize participation over delegation and deliberation over majority voting. In doing this, they present a potential for reconstructing social and political trust from below.

Pierre Rosanvallon is one of the most important political theorists writing in French. Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust is a book about the limits of conventional understandings of democracy. Rosanvallon argues that while most theories of democracy focus on institutionalized forms of political participation (especially elections), the vitality of democracy rests equally on forms of "counter-democracy" through which citizens dissent, protest, and exert pressure from without on the democratic state. This argument is relevant to the concerns of a broad range of political scientists, most especially students of democratic theory, electoral and party politics, social movements, social capital, and "contentious politics." The goal of this symposium is to invite a number of political scientists who work on these issues to comment on the book from their distinctive disciplinary, methodological, and theoretical perspectives.—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor