This panel aims to analyses the impact of the anti-austerity cycle of protest in the socio-political landscape of Southern Europe and the reasons of continuities and variances in this impact in Portugal, Spain, Greece and Italy. In the context of the economic crisis there has been an increase of social mobilization in almost all European countries and worldwide. According to the European Social Survey of 2012, the percentage of people who stated having participated in at least one demonstration increased significantly between 2008 and 2012, and it is above all the countries of the south that witnessed a greater upsurge of protests. Radical changes occurred in the following years both at level of institutional and grassroots politics, to which the new social movements emerged in the context of the crisis and austerity strongly contributed. Signals of transformation – as the emergence of new parties and the upset of party systems – are manifestly evident. Other processes, less obvious, can be detected in the redefinition and expansion of civil society sphere: as the emergence of more or less institutionalized civic organization or informal groups of citizens. The expansion of Solidarity Purchase Groups are, for instance, evidence of this. In this panel, we consider these different processes of transformation – more or less covered – as strictly interlinked. Different actors interacted during the cycle of protest – as allies or opponents – and this interaction will be considered as the main factor at the basis of social and political transformation.