Download or read book Podemos and the New Political Cycle written by Óscar García Agustín and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-11-17 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume explores the context in which the Spanish party Podemos operates as both an agent and product of political cycles. It provides an account of the party’s genealogy, ideological environment and relation to other political initiatives in Latin America and Western Europe. The contributors address the multiples dynamics generated by Podemos as a new party developed out of the economic crisis, the structural crisis concerning social democracy and the incarnation of the welfare state project, and, more generally, out of the Left. It will appeal to upper-level students and scholars interested in Spanish politics, history, culture and sociology.
Download or read book Politics in a Time of Crisis written by Pablo Iglesias and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A manifesto for a new, democratic left: a political programme poised to transform Europe Since 2011, Pablo Iglesias has led Podemos, a new radical left party in Spain that is reframing the nature of modern politics. Under his guidance, the party has unmasked the ideological motives behind European austerity, revealing the true nature of this power grab conducted on behalf of elites intent on dismantling the welfare state. Here, Iglesias delineates his political vision. He skewers not only the Spanish establishment, but also the anti-democratic bloc comprising the Troika, corporate interests, and the “Wall Street Party.” Politics in a Time of Crisis—which includes an in-depth interview with Iglesias—is an incisive examination of the current situation in Europe as well as a stirring call for international resistance.
Download or read book Podemos written by Íñigo Errejón and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of Podemos in Spain is part of a wave of European left political initiatives that are putting forward new ideas for change and innovative ways of thinking about politics. The traditional left in Europe has been in difficulties for some time now: the communist tradition is a shadow of its former self, while social democracy seems unable to meet the challenge of the financial crisis. The thinkers and activists of Podemos have been at the forefront of rethinking based on moving away from orthodoxies, bringing new hope to the left. In this book Inigo Errejon of Podemos and political theorist Chantal Mouffe discuss the emergence of these new movements, and in particular of Podemos. They critically engage with both the older traditions and the newly emerging parties and movements. They explore new ways of creating collective identities, and building majorities, while also reflecting on the major political challenges facing the left. The conversation between them is an intervention from two people who are ideally placed to draw on the seminal earlier theoretical work of Mouffe with Ernesto Laclau, and to link it directly into the practice of the new politics. This book is therefore important reading for those interested in the state of the contemporary European left in general, and specifically in the strategic issues facing Podemos in Spain. It makes an essential contribution towards the creation of a new left politics.
Download or read book Performing Populism written by Ruben Perez Hidalgo and published by Vanderbilt University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-20 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether or not it constituted a complete break from the past, the 15-M movement’s most important legacy was a more expansive notion of the popular political, one that recognized cultural representation as a mode of political articulation and as part of a political culture. In an effort to understand the populist cycle inaugurated by 15-M, and to do so beyond a series of narrated events, Performing Populism sets out to explain Spanish populism in relation to the performances of its visual politics. The book's first part examines how the 15-M movement created a new way of seeing that in turn led to a new way of doing politics in Spain. Part Two focuses on the multiple ramifications of that new vision once the people stopped marching and the movement became less visible. From electoral posters to fiction films, documentaries, and internet memes, Performing Populism traces the ways that collective Spanish identities evolved from a period when "the people" seemed to have been willingly subsumed under the apathetic ideation of the middle-class consumer to the moment in 2011 when a crisis of representation forced many into political consciousness. This rude awakening kickstarted the reconstruction of a Spanish "us" that staged exhibitions of popular will on par with and parallel to the Arab Spring, but in a European register that embraced the countercultural through art that disremembered its political past but could not escape the ghostly shadow of its history.
Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Contemporary European Social Movements written by Cristina Flesher Fominaya and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-27 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: European social movements have become increasingly visible in recent years, generating intense public debates. From anti-austerity and pro-democracy movements to right-wing nationalist movements, these movements expose core conflicts around European democracy, identity, politics and society. The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary European Social Movements offers a comprehensive interdisciplinary overview of the analysis of European social movements, helping to orient scholars and students navigating a rapidly evolving field while developing a new agenda for research in the area. The book is divided into eight sections: Visions of Europe; Contemporary models of democracy; Historical evolution of major European movements; Feminism and sexualities; Movement diffusion within and beyond Europe; Anti-austerity movements; Technopolitical and media movements; and Movements, parties and movement-parties. Key theories and empirical trajectories of core movements, their central issues, debates and impacts are covered, with a focus on how these have influenced and been influenced by their European context. Democracy, and how social movements understand it, renew it, or undermine it, forms a core thread that runs through the book. Written in a clear and direct style, the Handbook provides a key resource for students and scholars hoping to understand the key debates and innovations unfolding in the heart of European social movements and how these affect broader debates on such areas as democracy, human rights, the right to the city, feminism, neoliberalism, nationalism, migration and European values, identity and politics. Extensive references and sources will direct readers to areas of further study.
Download or read book The Participation Paradox written by Luke Sinwell and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2023-02-15 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last two decades have ushered in what has become known as a participatory revolution, with consultants, advisors, and non-profits called into communities, classrooms, and corporations alike to listen to ordinary people. With exclusively bureaucratic approaches no longer en vogue, authorities now opt for “open” forums for engagement. In The Participation Paradox Luke Sinwell argues that amplifying the voices of the poor and dispossessed is often a quick fix incapable of delivering concrete and lasting change. The ideology of public consultation and grassroots democracy can be a smokescreen for a cost-effective means by which to implement top-down decisions. As participation has become mainstreamed by governments around the world, so have its radical roots become tamed by neoliberal forces that reinforce existing relationships of power. Drawing from oral testimonies and ethnographic research, Sinwell presents a case study of one of the poorest and most defiant Black informal settlements in Johannesburg, South Africa – Thembelihle, which consists of more than twenty thousand residents – highlighting the promises and pitfalls of participatory approaches to development. Providing a critical lens for understanding grassroots democracy, The Participation Paradox foregrounds alternatives capable of reclaiming participation’s emancipatory potential.
Download or read book The Populist Radical Left in Europe written by Giorgos Katsambekis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-14 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building on a comprehensive theoretical framework that draws on discursive and ideational approaches to populism, this volume offers a comparative mapping of the Populist Radical Left in contemporary Europe. It explores the novel discursive, political and organisational features of several political actors, as well as the conditions of their emergence and success, while being alert to the role of relevant social movements. Chapters feature case studies of the Greek party Syriza, the Spanish Podemos, the German Die Linke, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and France Insoumise, the Dutch Socialist Party and the Slovenian Levica. Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour in the UK and ‘Momentum’, the movement that supports him is also examined. A separate chapter is devoted to recent grassroots social movements that can be seen as instances of progressive populism, such as the ‘squares movement’ in Spain and Greece. This book fills a crucial gap in the literature on radical left politics and populism in Europe, contributing to the rapidly burgeoning field of populism studies.
Download or read book Gezi at Ten written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-02-19 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Upon the tenth anniversary of the Gezi protests, the book takes upon the task of critically re-examining the social uprising of June 2013 in Turkey by compensating for blind spots in the academic corpus hitherto generated. This volume braves into subjects largely neglected by the extant scholarship, in particular, the organizational aspects of the Gezi upheaval, which bear heavily on the course of social and political affairs that has since taken dramatic turns. By delving into the question of political practice, whether on the part of the state, the government or the opposition, the book re-evaluates how the emergent collective momentum was managed by the contesting parties. In other words, the volume concentrates on the multifaceted political organizing of social forces in conflict both during and in the aftermath of the protests. Contributors are: Athina Arampatzi, Gökhan Atılgan, Özgür Balkılıç, Selin Dingiloğlu, Antoine Dolcerocca, Çağlar Dölek, Kürşad Ertuğrul, Ufuk Gürbüzdal, Ezgi Kaya Hayatsever, Eren Karaca, Sebla Ayşe Kazancı, Arca Özçoban, Ezgi Pınar, Sungur Savran, Ozan Siso, Aylin Topal, Fatih Yaşlı and Adem Yeşilyurt.
Download or read book Spanish Politics written by Óscar García Agustín and published by Bloomsbury Academic. This book was released on 2024-05-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, Oscar Garcia Augustin and Paolo Cossarini analyse the recent history of the Spanish body-politic, with special reference to the populism and polarization that have taken over politics in the country since the enormous turbulence of the 2008 global financial crisis. The financial and economic crisis gave birth first to anti-austerity movements and a subsequent left-wing populist party, and then to a series of socio-political ruptures that have reconfigured politics permanently in Europe's fifth largest economy. Topics covered include an assessment of the Catalan march towards independence, the reconfiguration of Spain's party system, the rise of far-right groups, increased feminist and equality activism, municipalism, and a growing environmentalist movement. The authors, both experts on populism as well as Spain's political system, reflect on these aspects of the current Spanish situation in order to provide a comprehensive socio-political overview of 21st century Spain.
Download or read book How Social Movements Can Save Democracy written by Donatella della Porta and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-04-09 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The birth of democracies owes much to the interventions and mobilizations of ordinary people. Yet many feel as though they have inherited democratic institutions which do not deliver for the people – that a rigid democratic process has been imposed from above, with increasing numbers of people feeling left out or left behind. In this well-researched volume, leading political sociologist Donatella della Porta rehabilitates the role social movements have long played in fostering and deepening democracy, particularly focusing on progressive movements of the Left which have sought to broaden the plurality of voices and knowledge in democratic debate. Bridging social movement studies and democratic theory, della Porta investigates contemporary innovations in times of crisis, particularly those in the direction of participatory and deliberative practices – ‘crowd-sourced constitutions’, referendums from below and movement parties – and reflects on the potential and limits of such alternative politics. In a moment in which concerns increase for the potential disruption of a Great Regression led by xenophobic movements and parties, the cases and analyses of resistance in this volume offer important material for students and scholars of political sociology, political science and social movement studies.
Download or read book Capitalism Institutions and Social Orders written by Pedro M. Rey-Araújo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Capitalism, Institutions and Social Orders develops a novel political economy approach by establishing a dialogue between the Social Structures of Accumulation (SSA) theory and Ernesto Laclau’s post-Marxism theory. Using this synthesis, it provides an in-depth analysis of Spain’s recent socio-economic evolution since the early 1990s. The book develops a theoretical framework capable of appraising capitalist dynamics together with their relationship to the institutional environment surrounding and structuring them. This is in order to explore the interrelation between the historical development of the capitalist mode of production, on the one hand, and the various co-existing social processes, social consensuses and political identities, on the other. Contemporary Spain provides an interesting case study: until the onset of the Great Recession, Spain had an impressive macroeconomic record supported by several contradictory social processes, such as a massive real estate bubble, an upsurge in private indebtedness and a deteriorating manufacturing sector. However, the accumulation of internal imbalances during those years led inevitably to the sudden disintegration of this institutional and social environment in the years after 2008, thus resulting into a breakdown of capitalist activity accompanied by widespread social contestation. The book also explores the ensuing political scenario, including the emergence of the ‘indignados’ movement and the anti-austerity party Podemos. This work is of significant interest to critical political economy and discourse-theory scholars, critical theorists in general, and social scientists concerned with the recent Spanish experience.
Download or read book Imagining the Peoples of Europe written by Jan Zienkowski and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The political landscape in Europe is currently going through a phase of rapid change. New actors and movements that claim to represent 'the will of the people' are attracting considerable public attention, with dramatic consequences for election outcomes. This volume explores the new political order with a particular focus on discursive constructions of 'the people' and the category of populism across the spectrum. It shows how a unitary representation of 'the people' is a central element in a vast range of very diverse political discourses today, acting to anchor identities and project antagonisms in a multitude of settings. The chapters in this book explore commonality and contrast in representations of ‘the people’ in both radical and mainstream political movements, looking in depth at recent political discourses in the European sphere. The authors draw on approaches ranging from Essex-style discourse theory over critical discourse studies, corpus analysis and linguistic pragmatics, to investigate how historically situated categories such as the people and populism become fixed through local linguistic, textual and narrative practices as well as through wider ideological and discursive patterns. As of January 2023, this e-book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched.
Download or read book Anti System Politics written by Jonathan Hopkin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-28 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent elections in the advanced western democracies have undermined the basic foundations of political systems that had previously beaten back all challenges -- from both the left and the right. The election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, only months after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, signaled a dramatic shift in the politics of the rich democracies. In Anti-System Politics, Jonathan Hopkin traces the evolution of this shift and argues that it is a long-term result of abandoning the post-war model of egalitarian capitalism in the 1970s. That shift entailed weakening the democratic process in favor of an opaque, technocratic form of governance that allows voters little opportunity to influence policy. With the financial crisis of the late 2000s these arrangements became unsustainable, as incumbent politicians were unable to provide solutions to economic hardship. Electorates demanded change, and it had to come from outside the system. Using a comparative approach, Hopkin explains why different kinds of anti-system politics emerge in different countries and how political and economic factors impact the degree of electoral instability that emerges. Finally, he discusses the implications of these changes, arguing that the only way for mainstream political forces to survive is for them to embrace a more activist role for government in protecting societies from economic turbulence. A historically-grounded analysis of arguably the most important global political phenomenon at present, Anti-System Politics illuminates how and why the world seems upside down.
Download or read book Populist Parties and Democratic Resilience written by Ben Crum and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-02-02 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Populist Parties and Democratic Resilience focuses on populist parties as the main agents of populism and examines when these parties turn anti-democratic and when they remain loyal to the democratic system. Following the Brexit referendum, the election of Donald Trump, and the rise of populist parties around the globe, many observers suggested that democracy was in serious trouble. Nevertheless, while some democratic systems have been seized by populists, most of them have proven resilient. In this volume, the authors identify the conditions under which populist parties become inimical to political and societal pluralism. They offer in-depth analyses of the trajectory of populist parties in eleven European Union countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Spain). The book shows that, reflecting the diversity of national contexts, there are multiple pathways whereby populist parties’ power can remain contained and subject to democratic checks and balances. Moreover, populist parties can — at times voluntarily, at other times by force of external conditions — come to adhere to the democratic rules of the game. On this basis, the volume outlines different ways in which European democracies can successfully accommodate populist parties through strategies that carefully navigate between the extremes of uncritical acceptance and outright ostracization. Drawing on the literature on democratic theory and comparative politics, this book directly contributes to the public debate on the state of democracy in Europe. It will be of interest to researchers of comparative politics, European politics, party politics, democracy, and populism.
Download or read book Understanding Movement Parties Through their Communication written by Dan Mercea and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-21 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many countries, movement parties have swayed large tracts of the electorate. Contributions to this edited book reflect on the place of movement parties in democratic politics through analyses of their communication. Reviewing evidence from several countries including cases from Europe, Australia and India where movement parties have gained ground in politics, this book illuminates the important role that communication has played in their rise as well as the issues surrounding it. Movement parties have expressed greater sensitivity to neglected issues, a commitment to renewing links with marginalized social groups through more direct—chiefly online—communication with them as well as an ambition to overhaul both the party organization and the political system. In doing so, they have signalled a desire to disrupt and reimagine politics. Yet, the critical examination of their efforts—and of the communication environment in which they operate—against questions regarding the quality of democracy—throws into relief a mismatch between a participation-oriented rhetoric and concrete democratic practices. Accordingly, contributions draw attention to disconnections between a professed need for more immediate and greater participation in movement party organization and policymaking, on the one hand, their organizational practices and the communication of parties, leaders, and supporters, on the other. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Information, Communication & Society.
Download or read book Constituency Communication in Changing Times written by Luigi Ceccarini and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-03-21 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume employs a comparative approach to cast light on representation and representative processes from a communications perspective. It focuses on online constituency communication, aiming to provide a perspective from which to empirically study the changes taking place in the relationship between citizens and their representatives. The (hyper)mediatisation of politics and society is here considered a relevant enabling factor, because it creates the conditions leading to change in the nature of democratic processes. The chapters discuss Podemos, the Lega, Law and Justice, and the Five-star Movement as good examples of this phenomenon. Populist and nationalist forces have emerged as bottom-up and top-down entities aiming to embody the will of the people, or to push for democratic processes to be more inclusive. Until now, however, the intersection between populist and nationalist discourses and the related question of representation have been largely ignored. By analysing the transformations that have taken place in MPs’ communication practices in non-election periods, the contributors illuminate how social media is affecting MPs’ communication and examine the strains in the relationship between executives and legislatures that populist and nationalist parties exploit.
Download or read book Anti Neoliberal Populisms in Comparative Perspective written by Enrico Padoan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-15 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Enrico Padoan proposes an original middle-range theory to explain the emergence and the internal organisation of anti-neoliberal populist parties in Latin America and Southern Europe, and the relationships between these parties and the organised working class. Padoan begins by tracing the diverging evolution of the electoral Lefts in Latin America and Southern Europe in the aftermath of economic crises, and during the implementation of austerity measures within many of these nations. A causal typology for interpreting the possible outcomes of the realignments within the electoral Lefts is proposed. Hereafter, the volume features five empirical chapters, four of which focus on the rise of anti-neoliberal populist parties in Bolivia, Argentina, Spain and Italy, while a fifth offers an analysis on four ‘shadow cases’ in Venezuela, Uruguay, Portugal and Greece. Scholars of Latin America and Comparative Politics will find Anti-Neoliberal Populisms in Comparative Perspective a highly valuable resource, offering a distinctive perspective on the impact of different populisms on party systems and on the challenges that such populisms posed to syndicalism and to traditional left-of-centre parties.
