Interview
You have conducted research on social movements in the EU for more than a decade. What major trends have you seen?
There have been different waves of protest and I think it is difficult to talk about trends. We have seen moments of intensification of protest and social-movement activities, for instance in the beginning of the 2000s, and then – as is often the case with social movements – some decline. In general there has been increasing attention on the international dimensions of protest in acknowledgement that decisions are more and more taken at the supranational level, and these levels of governance have to be taken into account. At the same time, I refuse to talk about trends, because rather than the increasing cosmopolitanism of protest, what we have seen in our research is that in times of austerity the targeting of the national level has become more important than it was in the beginning of the millennium. The movements of crisis, like the ones we see growing in this period, tend to rise more at the national level following the specific national characteristics of the crisis itself. They also tend to develop more where the crisis is most felt. So we see waves of particularly strong protest in southern Europe but less so in northern or central Europe, where other forms of protest have been stronger in the past – for instance the environmental movement as a social-movement type.
During the European financial crisis, there have been several large protest movements in Europe, including the Indignados in Spain, the protests in Greece and the global Occupy movement. How do you rate their success?
Success is something usually evaluated in longer-term perspective. Often the effects of social movements and protest waves are measured through social, political and cultural changes, which sometimes take time to develop. The success of recent protest has been in sensitising the public to the problematic issues of how to address the financial crisis with a distinct critique of austerity policies. The Indignadós tends to be very popular in public opinion compared with other movements. According to opinion polls, the Indignadós were supported by a very high percentage of the population in countries like Spain or Greece. In Spain, around 75% of the population said they supported the aims and actions of this type of protest. It represented broadly felt grievances. More difficult to assess in the short term is the political effect. In many countries where you had large waves of protest, as in Spain or in Greece, politically the immediate consequences of these movements had been a success for the left. In Greece, there has been the enormous growth of SYRIZA [the Coalition of the Radical Left], which testifies to support for this movement. Still, at the political level, it is difficult to assess which type of success these movements have had. What one could perceive as effects of these movements is that on the political level there is an increasing debate about the risks of addressing the crisis only through cuts and the need to develop economic policies that produce growth rather than just reducing budget deficits. But this is still a long process.
You currently lead a research project called Violent, Extremist, Terrorists Organizations, which focuses on far-right organisations in Italy, Germany and the United States. What effect has the European financial crisis had on these movements?
For the moment, the country in which the crisis has most facilitated a spread of right-wing populism has been Greece, while in other West European countries the response has been mainly in terms of left-wing types of movements and discourse. But there is also a long lasting trend in the development of right-wing populism that we also see in other countries. This does not involve so much the radical right at first, but involves more the moderate right-wing centre types. In Italy, an example thereof is the Lega [Nord or Northern League, a federalist political party] or the Forze Italia [Forward Italy, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s party]. These parties are not extreme-right but they tend to develop a discourse around the crisis which is very exclusive towards migrants or marginal groups of the population. They think that there is a need to focus the resources only on the nationals of a certain country, reducing migrant rights and so on. This is a general trend. We see it also developing in eastern Europe in countries like Hungary, and a serious risk is that the support for these right-wing answers to the crisis tend to increase xenophobia and go in the opposite direction than the cosmopolitan view of the left-wing movements.
The protests are mostly organised on the national level. What needs to happen for European-level protests to be possible? Is this even desirable?
At the beginning of the millennium, a wave of protest developed at the global level. This more recent wave of protest followed the timing and characteristics of the financial crisis in the different national states – so starting from Iceland in 2008 then down to Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy and so on. This protest at the beginning was very much oriented to the national level, for understandable reasons. It is difficult to build up a common movement of, say, Greeks and Germans when the conditions are so different in the two countries. At the same time, what we saw in the most-recent period has been also the attempt to network different protests – for example with the European strikes, which were particularly strong in southern Europe and very weak in central and northern Europe. Still, that presented one of the first examples of European trade unions mobilising together in the street. Another thing that we are seeing is a sort of soft coordination of protest. Not by chance, the protest from Spain migrated to Greece in a few days. There is a process of cross-national diffusion of forms of action, and there are – with less intensity in the beginning of the millennium – growing efforts to coordinate these protests.
You asked, is this desirable? It depends on the objective. I am not giving a normative statement. There is an acknowledgment in the movements we are studying that, if you want to reach your aim, you have to address the transnational level, international organisations. Even the decisions on national economic policies are made by international organisations like IMF or the European Union or troikas of different types. At the same time, it is true that protest at a transnational level is always more difficult to organise, requires more resources and especially requires channels of access to these institutions. And these channels of access to transnational institutions have not been developed yet.
What major lessons have you learnt in your research that would help social movements to be more effective in advocating for change after the financial crisis?
Unfortunately, it is difficult to draw general lessons, because we have noticed that different strategies are effective in different moments, and that sometimes strategies that would be effective are difficult to implement because social movements do not have the material resources. But what social movements have is quite a lot of emotional commitment. I would start with what not to do. One dangerous situation is when you have specialised NGOs that have maybe a broad paper-type of membership-a card membership-and that try to influence the European institutions or the transnational institutions relying exclusively on lobbying. The activists we have interviewed stress the failure of this tendency. I would say social movements have to come to the streets, need to mobilise, cannot rely on weak forms of support. This is very important for social movements, because it is in action, in the streets, that many resources are constructed. While the lobbying effort is based on the idea that you need to collect material resources and invest them in precious lobbying activities and so on, I think a more-fruitful strategy for social movements is to actually mobilise their supporters into forms of more-intense participation. First of all, this is because they need these intense forms of participation to build solidarity ties, to build strong collective identities. And on the other hand, what they also need are ideas, so they need the participation of the people.
How do you see your role in social movements? Are you a dispassionate observer, or are you interested in seeing political change? How does this impact your work?
I am not directly involved in social movements. First of all, I do not have the time for it, sadly. It takes a lot of time. But I think in general if you study forms of political activities, it is always recommendable to keep some distance from specific organisations and groups so that one can keep a more open vision of the movements as a whole. At the same time, I have to say, when I study social movements of the left especially, I know that I am studying groups with whom I often share similar hopes and values. I think that this is very often the case for political scientists. Not that they all are sympathetic to social movements but that they always feel connected to politics, feel an interest in politics which is not just a scientific type of commitment. Scholars of democratisation often have been interested in the topic because they came from democratising countries or because they believe in democracy. So I think it is a common characteristic of political science and sociology that there is a certain degree of social and political commitment about the issues one studies. I also studied political corruption because I thought it was a relevant political problem to address. I think a Max Weber type of perspective is still useful. One can be committed to specific political goals, and this can even lead to study some types of phenomena that one is interested in. What is important, however, is that the research has to be methodologically sound, not biased by the desire to reach some type of conclusion. But also I believe that scientific research can help in understanding our societies and our political systems, and that in order to develop socially-useful knowledge one needs to do good empirical research and to reflect theoretically upon it.
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