Changing Forms of Environmentalism In Italy: The Protest Campaign on The High Speed Railway System

Abstract

This article focuses on a protest campaign against the building of a high-speed railway in Tuscany, a region characterized by a "red" territorial subculture, that is, a dense network of associations and local institutions associated with the main left-wing party. The eight-year long protest campaign involved formal environmental movement organizations as well as parties and local institutional actors that often staged protests. The main actors of the campaign were, however, the local environmental movement organizations that were formed in most of the areas directly menaced by the project. Looking at the historical evolution of protest campaign, the authors investigate cooperation and competition inside the movement between the ideologically "purer" environmental organizations and the more moderate forms of action on the one hand, and the local, single-issue, and sometimes NIMBY groups that were more prone to protest, on the other. Drawing on a political process approach, the dynamics of the protest are explained by reference to a multilevel policy-making process, involving local, national, and even international political institutions. Moreover, a distinction is introduced between political opportunities and policy opportunities, all framed within the local political culture. Protest event analysis allows to relate the different repertoires with the changing set of resources and opportunities for the various actors in the different steps of the policy making process.