In recent years, social movements on the left have increasingly begun to make themselves felt in referendums. This has been seen throughout Europe: in votes regarding independence in Scotland and Catalonia, on water rights in Italy, on debt repayment in Iceland, and on the financial proposals of the troika in Greece. This book presents case studies of those referendums and more to analyze the ways that social movements formed in the wake of the 2008 crash have affected referendums’ development and outcomes. Looking at general issues of democracy, as well as the political effects of neoliberalism, this book is ideally suited to help us understand some of the issues around Brexit and will be read by a wide audience interested in social movements, referendums, and democratic innovation.
Donatella della Porta is professor of sociology in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute and professor of political science at the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane. Francis O’Connor, Martin Portos, and Anna Subirats Ribas are research associates at the European University Institute.
Donatella della Porta is professor of political science and dean of the Institute for Humanities and the social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, where she directs the Center on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos). She has directed a major ERC project Mobilizing for Democracy, on civil society participation in democratization processes in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. In 2011, she was the recipient of the Mattei Dogan Prize for distinguished achievements in the field of political sociology and PhD honoris causa from the universities of Lausanne, Bucharest and Goteborg. Her main fields of research are social movements, the policing of public order, participatory democracy and political corruption.
Francis O’Connor is Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. He studied Sociology/Politics and Italian at NUI Galway and subsequently completed a Masters on Middle East Politics in SOAS. He defended his PhD thesis "Armed Social Movements and Insurgency. The PKK and its Communities of Support" at the European University Institute in 2014.
Martin Portos is at the European University Institute. He holds a degree in Political Science and Administration from the University of Santiago de Compostela and also gained an MSc in Politics Research (Comparative Government) at the University of Oxford (UK). Since 2012, he has been undertaking a full-time PhD in Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute at Florence (Italy). His main areas of interest are: comparative politics, European comparative politics and governments, social movements, collective action and contentious politics, democratic quality and democratization processes, politics and territorial organization, nationalism and federalism.
Anna Subirats Ribas is at European University Institute. She holds a degree in Geography from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB, Barcelona) and a MSc in Urban Studies from University College London (UCL, London). Prior to becoming a Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Political and Social Science at the European University Institute (EUI, Florence), she worked for three years as a project developer for the metropolitan planning consulting firm Barcelona Regional. Her current research focuses on the themes of urban governance, politics of urban planning, contentious politics in processes of urban transformation and urban social movements.
