Friday, March 14, 2014
Forum (Omni Shoreham)
This paper analyzes the short term political impact of anti-austerity protests in four countries (Spain, Portugal, Greece, Argentina) which have recently experienced widespread mobilizations in combination with austerity measures and more or less severe political crises. A comparative-historical approach is used first to understand which of these four countries suffered a more severe crisis: this paper argues that Argentina suffered the most severe crisis whilst Greece's was also very significant and far greater in extent than in Spain and Portugal. The next step is to determine which of three sets of indicators relating to the most plausible explanatory factors of crises (economic factors; protest size and characteristics; geopolitical and institutional factors). The paper concludes that economic factors, especially differences in wealth and inequality, mirror most accurately the depths of the crises while movement characteristics-especially mobilization size and diversity of tactics, are also correlated to the extent of the political crisis, but not as strongly as economic factors. However it is still unclear whether, in order to trigger a political crisis, an economic crisis needs to trigger both a large mobilization and the political crisis itself, or whether mobilizations and economic downturns affect political crises independently. Lastly, geopolitical and institutional factors (in particular, Argentina's position outside the EU and its Presidentialism) can have a moderating or deepening effect on political crisis.
