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7. Paths to the February 15 Protest: Social or Political Determinants?
- University of Minnesota Press
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7 Paths to the February 15 Protest: Social or Political Determinants? Donatella della Porta This chapter analyzes the degrees and forms of participation among February 15 demonstrators. The questions of participants’ previous experiences in antiwar demonstrations is particularly relevant, because of the very characteristics of the peace movements—small nuclei of committed pacifists—and the capacity to at times mobilize very large and heterogeneous networks rooted in various movements; and the involvement of citizens with mainly ethical or religious stances who are not (or not yet) politicized (see chapter 4). The issues of diversity in participants’ backgrounds as well as the presence of large numbers of first-timers were particularly relevant for the 2003 demonstrations against the war in Iraq, which did not confirm the paths of cross-national strengths and weaknesses in mobilization capacity that had emerged in previous waves of political mobilization: for instance, the protest remained weak in the Netherlands (where the protest against the deployment of cruise missiles had been very strong in the early 1980s) but was impressively widespread in Spain, where no previous large mobilization had existed (although the antimilitarist movement was very active). In several countries, the mobilizations against Iraq attracted not only already mobilized activists but also new generations of protestors as well as many “first timers.” Called for by the Assembly of European Social Movements, held at the end of the first European Social Forum, the Global Day of Action was strongly supported by a broad and at that time particularly visible global justice movement (della Porta 2007). An analysis of the social and political backgrounds of demonstrators could help us understand the extraordinary mobilization capacity of that protest (see chapter 2) and also its differential success in mobilizing “on the street.” 119 In this chapter, I will focus on two dependent variables: frequency and action repertoires of previous protest participation. Beyond the description of the February 15 marchers, I also want to examine the various degrees and forms of participation previously engaged in by those citizens who took to the street on the Global Day of Action. In social movement studies, repertoires of protest have usually been explained by political opportunities, either structural or contingent. Cross-nationally, the institutional closure or openness toward challengers as well as toward the coalitions in government are expected to have an impact on the degree and forms of mobilization. In general , the presence of allies in government supports the use of “insiders’ strategies ” (lobbying or codecision) rather than mass protest—unless those allies look for public expressions of support, in particular through contentious collective actions that address an international organization or foreign government . Since the peace demonstrations mobilized different social and political groups in the countries under study (see chapters 5 and 6 in this volume), the cross-national analysis has to be supplemented by an analysis of individual paths of participation. Especially in research on political participation, sociodemographic background and political attitudes are the most often discussed sets of variables. In this analysis, I will single out the individual characteristics of more or less frequent demonstrators, as well as moderate and more radical ones, in terms of their sociodemographic backgrounds and their political attitudes, all of which converge in forming their political identities.1 In what follows, I will observe country characteristics and discuss the extent to which they can be explained by national political opportunities. In this chapter, I shall discuss these hypotheses and also take a step forward , beyond causal explanation of individual choices and toward the analysis of the dynamics of militantism, that is, the presence of long-term paths. After introducing the explanatory model, I will devote a second section to a cross-national comparison of degrees and forms of commitment. I shall then discuss the hypotheses about the socioeconomic centrality of activists, looking mainly at profession, age, gender, and education. In the fourth section, I shall address the hypotheses about the construction of a militant career, looking at the previous experiences of activists, in terms of both participation in organizations and activities promoted by different movements. In the concluding section, I will reflect on the impact of environmental variables , filtered via activists’ experiences, on the specific paths of militancy of different generations. Throughout, I will consider political opportunity structure (measured by the country in which the demonstration was held) as an intervening variable. 120 donatella della porta [18.234.55.154] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:58 GMT) What...