Iceland’s Mobilization in the Financial Crisis

Abstract

This chapter examines the wave of mobilization related to the financial crisis in Iceland, which exploded during the autumn of 2008. The Icelandic anti-austerity movement consisted of two distinct, yet interconnected phases: the Popular Protest (2008–2009), during which (after decades of relative inactivity) grassroots entities and activists emerged as key players in the socio-political scene; and the Constitutional Reform (2009–2012), where citizens and a handful of more organized collectives engaged in a direct-democratic process, in order to draft a new, ‘crowd-sourced’ Constitution. Given the relative scarcity of movement-oriented civil society actors in the country, the anti-austerity protesters had largely to reinvent both the organizational formats they adopted and the action repertoire they utilized. Iceland’s protests drew from international experience—but also exercised influence on the anti-austerity mobilizations that were to follow, in Europe and beyond.