Social contention in
the form of strikes, protests, riots and violent acts tends to be an
important characteristic of countries in crisis. Southern European
countries – Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain – are
currently experiencing a dramatic economic slump and fully fledged
austerity measures. Accordingly, the standard of living of the
majority of southern European populaces has fallen significantly
while large social groups find themselves in desperate conditions and
this has led to social unrest and changing political alignments.
Nevertheless, the proliferating dynamics of social contention that
accompany these experiences remain understudied. An important
question is why in certain southern European countries social
contention has increased to unprecedented heights while in others
social upset has not translated into contentious acts? Indeed, how
the economic crisis relates to contentious acts at the level of
society remains a debatable area of scholarly research. Drawing on
the case of Cyprus from a comparative, Southern European perspective,
we seek to explain how the relations between parties and social
groups, as well as within each of these two groups of collective
agents can create the conditions that obstruct open social conflict.
Our analysis has implications for contentious politics. The intensity
and nature of party-society linkages which have their causal roots in
a country's historical trajectory have implications for the
prevailing political culture and can be a sufficient condition for
the absence of strikes and protests, riots and violent acts.
Giorgos
Charalambous and Gregoris Ioannou
paper to be presented at
European
Consortium for Political Research 8th General Conference,
University of Glasgow, September 2014
