The Financial Crisis in Iceland and the ‘Public' as a Political Agent

Iceland was certainly not the only country that saw mass protests in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, nor the only country to receive an IMF bailout package: Ireland, Greece and Portugal soon followed. What makes the Icelandic case unique is that it is the only country whose government resigned as a result of the financial crisis, and the only country where mass citizen demonstrations had rather significant and tangible results. This paper asks what conditions allowed for successful plural publics to emerge as influential agents in the Icelandic case. It observes public mobilization in Iceland against John Dewey’s and Walter Lippmann’s conceptualizations of the public and illustrates that while the widespread availability and use of new technologies, especially the Internet, made widespread political deliberation possible, an effective public was constructed out of previously passive masses as a result of particular contextual factors, instigating interest and widespread participation in deliberation. The aftermath of Iceland’s 2008 financial crisis brought about two very different manifestations of publics, one emerging from below with citizens coming together as a public, the other constructed from above by the state through various participatory technologies.