The Fighting Irish? Explaining the Temporal Pattern of Social Protest during Ireland’s Fiscal Crisis 2008–2014

Abstract

The fiscal crisis of 2008 led to severe recession and hardship in Ireland, yet there was relatively little civic unrest and public protest until the autumn of 2014 when, paradoxically, economic conditions had improved significantly. Sociologists often explain such patterns by invoking a social mechanism based on perceived ‘relative deprivation’ among a population sub-group. We show that these processes cannot explain the temporal pattern of protest in Ireland and argue instead that events should be understood through the interaction of two different processes: first, the development of an ‘incidental’ grievance which framed popular discontent about the ‘structural’ grievances brought about by the wider fiscal crisis and recession. Second, the early absence of, and later emergence of coordinated political opposition with effective ‘strategies of contention’. We use a mixed methods approach, drawing on seven waves of the European Social Survey combined with qualitative interviews.