Party-society linkages and contentious acts: Cyprus in a comparative, South European perspective

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