The Three Waves of Anti-Austerity Protest in Greece, 2010–2015

Georgios Karyotis,Wolfgang Rüdig

doi:10.1177/1478929916685728

Georgios Karyotis, Wolfgang Rüdig

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929916685728

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Abstract

The apparent ubiquity of protest in recent years and the rise of Occupy movements across the world have fuelled claims that a new style of mobilisation is emerging which is markedly different from previous social movements. Analysing a series of original survey data, this article engages with this debate by providing a panoramic account of how the anti-austerity movement evolved in Greece, comparing the drivers of protest in three distinct protest waves. Contrary to expectations, the rise of the Greek version of the Indignados during 2011 did not decisively transform the anti-austerity movement that emerged in 2010, which mainly displayed characteristics typically associated with ‘old’ social movements. However, elements of the ‘new social movements’ approach featured more prominently in the third wave of protest, beginning in mid-2012 and culminating in January 2015 with victory for SYRIZA, the party which channelled the anti-austerity movement into the political scene. The model developed to study protest in non-electoral arenas also performs well to explain the success of SYRIZA in the electoral arena, highlighting the reciprocal but understudied relationship between mobilisation and electoral politics.

Highlights

The apparent ubiquity of protest in recent years and the rise of Occupy movements across the world have fuelled claims that a new style of mobilisation is emerging which is markedly different from previous social movements
A country severely hit by the economic crisis and experiencing mass protest against unpopular austerity measures, offers an ideal setting to explore how movements evolve and how people mobilise in light of the above debates and of empirical developments
The aims of this article are twofold: first, to explore the extent to which the emergence of the Greek Indignados and the rise of an anti-austerity party changed the nature of anti-austerity mobilisation in Greece compared to 2010; second, to investigate any links that might exist between a protest movement and electoral politics by analysing the extent to which participation in anti-austerity demonstrations was a factor in SYRIZA’s eventual victory in the January 2015 elections

Summary

Introduction

The apparent ubiquity of protest in recent years and the rise of Occupy movements across the world have fuelled claims that a new style of mobilisation is emerging which is markedly different from previous social movements. The rise of opposition against austerity in Southern Europe coincided with major protest in other parts of the world, including the ‘Arab Spring’ and the Occupy movement in the US. This apparent ubiquity of protest in the early 2010s has led some to. (Hessel, 2010) – published in English as Time for Outrage (Hessel, 2011) – the so-called 15M or Indignados movement in Spain attracted mainly young people not connected with any of the established political actors, such as parties of the left and trade unions, but mobilised instead through informal networks (Anduiza et al, 2014). We propose to distinguish between three distinct ‘waves’ of anti-austerity protest in Greece which involve different mobilisation patterns

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