Resisting the Backlash: Street Protest in Italy

Drawing interview material, together with extensive data from the authors’ original social movement database, this book examines the development of social movements in resistance to perceived political ＂regression＂ and a growing right-wing backlash. With a focus on Italy and the reaction to increasing inequalities and welfare state retrenchment policies, it examines opposition to the government and state authorities on a number of issues. Triangulating different types of data, it sheds light on the ability of citizens to organise in the streets and addresses crucial matters in social movement research, including the significance to political mobilization of grievances, class, gender and generational differences, as well as considering the network dynamics of micro-mobilization, visions of Europe, and the role of interactions with major political institutions. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and politics with interests in social movements and political mobilization.

Donatella della Porta is Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences and Director of the Centre for Social Movements Studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy. Her recent books include How Social Movements Can Save Democracy: Democratic Innovations from Below; Social Movements: An Introduction; Discursive Turns and Critical Junctures: Debating Citizenship after the Charlie Hebdo Attacks; and Where Did the Revolution Go? Contentious Politics and the Quality of Democracy.

Niccolò Bertuzzi is Postdoctoral Researcher in the School of International Studies at the University of Trento, Italy.

Daniela Chironi is Research Fellow in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy.

Chiara Milan is Research Fellow in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy.

Martín Portos is CONEX-Plus Marie Curie Fellow in the Department of Social Sciences at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain. He is the author of Grievances and Public Protest: Political Mobilisation in Spain in the Age of Austerity.

Lorenzo Zamponi is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy.