Political reactions to the eurocrisis: cross-national variations and re-scaling issues in elections and popular protests W.P.C. van Gent1, V.D. Mamadouh2 and H.H. van der Wusten3 Universiteit van Amsterdam Please note; a slightly revised and edited version of this paper is published as: Van Gent, W.P.C., V.D. Mamadouh, & H.H. van der Wusten (2013) "Political Reactions to the Euro Crisis: Cross-national Variations and Rescaling Issues in Elections and Popular Protests", Eurasian Geography and Economics, 54 (2), 135-161. Please consult journal for correct page citation.

Abstract In this paper we explore the different political responses to the eurocrisis among European publics since the financial crisis in Europe started in 2008 by concentrating on the two most important organizational vehicles in a democratic polity: political parties and social movements. We examine the political geography of possible shifts in support patterns for competing parties at national elections (in the member states where they have been held) and the geographical distribution of popular protests related to the crisis in 2011-2012. Finally we address the risks of democratic deterioration by comparing current developments with the interwar period. Key words: European Union, eurocrisis, democracy, elections, party politics, collective action, protest Introduction Since the financial crisis in Europe started in earnest immediately after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in September 2008, ruling political parties have often lost votes in elections and seats in national parliaments, and large protest demonstrations have been held in a number of EU member states. The eurocrisis reverberates far beyond the financial sector, its customers, and its supposed rulers and regulators. In this exploratory paper we focus on the political reactions among the populations of the EU member states (Other initial reports on these matters in the scientific literature are Lewis-Beck, Costa Lobo, and Bellucci 2012; Castells 2012). This paper deals with the two most important politically charged popular responses to the crisis: electoral changes and street protests.

The electoral changes resulting from shifts in voter alignments occur within the confines of the democratic institutions of the member states (Lane and Ersson 1999; Lewis and Webb 2003; Kriesi et al. 2008; Perrineau and Rouban 2009) and the EU as a whole. Emergent social movements show up as series of public manifestations, one instance of the far larger category of contentious politics as conceptualized by Tilly and Tarrow (2007). Other instances are various forms of lethal conflict like coups d’état, revolts, and civil wars. They see the different kinds of contentious politics as partially overlapping and with considerable chances of transitions from one kind into another (2007, 16-23).

While Tilly and Tarrow apparently do not consider elections to be part of contentious politics, they recognize the family resemblances of parties and movements and argue that they may dovetail on occasion (Tilly and Tarrow 2007, 132-133). We think that there is indeed ample reason to look at them jointly, particularly under crisis circumstances. In election campaigns, ingredients of a social movement type of contentious politics (e.g. collective claims, repertoire of action forms involving civilized representations by participants [Tilly 2004, 4]), may well show up. Moreover, parties have repeatedly designated themselves as “movements.”

After we finished the data collection for this paper reported in section 2, the Italian parliamentary elections of February 2013 produced an unexpectedly large vote total for Beppe Grillo’s MoVimento 5 Stelle (as well as a lack of popular support for Prime Minister Mario Monti and a partial resurrection of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as a political actor). Grillo’s party/movement is a typical hybrid, and we will briefly comment on its spectacular success in particular in the next section. Italy, highly regionalized and intensely fragmented politically, is of course a key player on the European stage. One of our general interests in this context is in the mutual relations of electoral shifts and movement participation as responses to the eurocrisis. In addition, it remains to be seen if the eurocrisis could become sufficiently deep to open the gates to the even more serious forms of contentious politics that Tilly and Tarrow (2007, 135-162) call ‘lethal’.

Popular politics plays primarily in national political arenas. This is most clearly expressed in elections. National elections (either for parliament or for the presidency) are more important than others. This shows up in more intensive campaigns, greater involvement, and higher turnout. In the European Union, direct elections are also held for the European Parliament (EP). Still other elections play out at smaller scales in local and regional political arenas. Political arenas at different levels are by no means completely separated, but there is a clear sense of the differences between these arenas on the basis of the issues treated, the prescribed roles and competences of relevant actors, and the institutional frameworks that bring these arenas to life. Hierarchically, in popular politics, the national one dominates. For social movements, with some provisos, the same applies (Tilly and Tarrow 2007, 179). One vital issue in the eurocrisis is the pooling of economic competences at the European level. Possible transfers of competences between different levels are obviously debated at all levels simultaneously by some, but in terms of popular politics, this is mostly a series of national debates, if a truly popular debate is conducted at all (De Beus and Mak 2009; Koopmans and Statham 2010).

The formal, constitutionally anchored and treaty-based allocation of competences is one important way in which political arenas get shaped. In the traditional state system, distinctive delimitation and rank ordering of political arenas result (with the national one formally predominant). The European Union has developed into an intricate new political body mixing intergovernmentalism (where, ideally, every Member State retains veto power, thus maintaining the traditional state system order) and supranationalism (where, ideally, a new upper level of authority has final say), leaving the delimitation and hierarchical order of political arenas within its confines much more debatable than in the past. Growing parts of policy-making processes have in fact now been lifted out of strictly separated national political arenas by the merging of different national and supranational policy networks resulting in a European policy arena of sorts (Thomson et al. 2006). Popular politics – in the sense of broad-based awareness and participation in political decision-making and identification with the political arenas in which it takes place - has not followed suit at the same speed, although the sheer existence of the European Parliament and its growing influence

in EU decision making demonstrate that at least some movement in the same direction has occurred. The contradictory and unstable formal allocation of political competences, the limited transparency of actual policy-making, and the different speed in the shift toward the European level of policy-making and popular politics has resulted in EU’s often mentioned but disputed “democratic deficit” (Lord et al. 2008).

At the same time, the emergence of the European Union as a self-constructed but still unfinished political roof for member states (Milward 1992) has given rise to renewed imaginings at the regional level to redraw the political map at smaller than the now common national scales. Could not a political body organized at the scale of the EU be an ally in efforts to deconcentrate more national governmental competences at the current regional level, for instance by restructuring existing unitary states into federations, not to speak of establishing new separate states based on fragments of current states? Such considerations, seemingly tamed and domesticated in the committee of the regions inside the EU framework in 1994, were explored on and off depending on circumstances in different parts of the EU with more or less echo in regionalist parties and movements, e.g. in the UK, France, Spain, Italy, and Belgium (Keating 1998). In sum, the multi-level governance structure of the EU has constantly been confronted with partial processes of rescaling upward and downward from the national level (Hooghe and Marks 2001).

The global financial crisis that became a eurocrisis in Europe may well affect the popular politics of this governance system in two major ways. First of all it foregrounds issues of fiscal rectitude, financial sector regulation, social protection, and economic competitiveness and thus affects political preferences. In popular politics this re-ordering of the salience of political issues could well result in shifts in voter alignments and upsurges of participation in social movements aimed at these issues. In the first case voters might give preference to economic issues over cultural ones in party choice and strike a different balance between national and European issues. In the second case people might mobilize against the economic downturn and policy responses to the crisis. Secondly, the nature of the problems that define the crisis once again question the multi-level governance practice of the EU, possibly even its very existence. As far as the distribution of competences between national and European level is concerned, a highly contentious policy process aimed at further upward reformation is underway. It notably involves far reaching redesigns of fiscal competences, the regulation of the financial sector (“banking union”), and some form of common economic growth policy. As far as the distribution of competences between national and regional level is concerned, the current contentious situation at the upper stories of the edifice invites actors at the lower level to reconsider their options. In terms of popular politics the major question now is how this plays out in the national political arenas in terms of support for parties and movements.

In this paper we will explore the different political responses to the eurocrisis by concentrating on the two most important organizational vehicles in a democratic polity: political parties and social movements. We aim at the possible shifts in support patterns for the competing parties (next section) and at the possible shift in prominence in the use of these kinds of channels between society and politics by way of a relative upsurge in movement participation in the following. This is the empirical heart of the paper. We end in the last section with a few conclusions and suggestions.

Political parties: voice by votes The crisis and its ramifications have had a significant impact on the public mood in the EU member states. This part of the paper looks into the electoral effects of the crisis. We assume three main types of electoral response with some variants for each. These different responses will be analyzed by cross-national electoral analysis on the basis of party labels. First, the crisis may result in more votes for oppositional parties out of dissatisfaction with the government’s management of the crisis. This would normally imply a loss for parties that were in power when the crisis first manifested itself. Moreover, rather than just government coalition parties, the crisis may also result in dissatisfaction with all mainstream parties. This would mean increased support for radical parties, either left- or right-wing, that propagate protest and are strongly anti-establishment. Second, while dissatisfaction with and protest against ruling elites may play a role, shifting electoral patterns in times of crisis may also express a preference for a specific economic agenda. Here, we assume that the crisis and the country’s position therein may induce shifts in support in different directions, towards economic left- or right-wing ideas such as welfare statism, economic protectionism, and free-market liberalism.

Third, as the crisis is unfolding and both the nation-state and international governmental organizations – notably the EU – are asserting themselves through invasive social, economic, and fiscal restructuring policies, we may expect an increasing politics of scale. More specifically, with the crisis, voters may emphatically express support for the European Union or reject it, thus further emphasizing the already predominant national scale. Furthermore, electorates may move away from the nation-state in another direction and support regional autonomy or separatism. These three possible directions of electoral responses to the crisis will be discussed in more detail below. However, it is important to note that each type of response is likely contingent on national economic and institutional contexts, which mediate and impinge upon the effects of the crisis on the electorate (cf. Duch and Stevenson 2010). Relevant contextual variations include the degree to which a country is experiencing economic difficulties, the state’s financial situation in the eurocrisis, and the country’s position within the EU and Eurozone. Depending on these contextual layers, the eurocrisis may have differing effects on electoral shifts. Our aim is to examine crisis-era electoral shifts in the EU as a whole and between and within country groupings which share contextual factors. After discussing our method and some general trends, we will go into the intra-EU variations for each of the three explanations in more detail. Method To gauge the development of voter preferences in the EU zone as the crisis progresses, we have looked at the results of parliamentary elections in 25 out of 27 (soon to be 28, with the addition of Croatia) EU member states between 2004 and November 2012. Italy and Malta were excluded from the general analysis as no elections were held in the course of the global financial crisis up to the point when we closed the data collection, although we will provide some additional comments on the 2013 Italian elections. Our exploratory cross-national, longitudinal analysis is based on the performance of 221 political parties. These parties were attributed several traits based on their ideological roots (economic right or left, or neither), their ideology (liberalism, conservatism, social democracy, or other), whether they belong to the extreme left or right, and their ideological position

on several issues.4 These positions include welfare statism, protectionism, Euro-rejectionism, regionalism or separatism, and their position on immigration. These traits are not necessarily mutually exclusive, which allows us to capture phenomena such as right-wing welfare statism. As each trait may be represented by multiple parties in a country (e.g. multiple parties advocating welfare statism), and each party may promote multiple traits (e.g. one party may be radical, Euro-rejectionist, and support welfare statism), electoral support for each political trait has been aggregated to country level and beyond to country groupings. To analyze voter preferences over time, we have constructed several indices based on results of the last elections before and during the financial crisis. Support at different points in time is based on estimates of absolute numbers of votes cast, derived from the percentages of votes cast, voter turnout, and population for reasons of data availability. As for timing, in addition to the last parliamentary elections before the crisis, we look at crisis election results after the fall of the Lehman Brothers bank in the US (15 September 2008). The effects were quickly felt in Europe, particularly in the financial sector. However, the crisis intensified when in 2010 the European sovereign debt crisis became apparent with the Greek government-debt crisis. Hence, when multiple elections were held after September 2008, we prioritize the eurocrisis phase (from 2 May 2010 forward, when the IMF granted its first loan to Greece). When two elections in the same country were held after May 2010, results were averaged first. With regard to groups of EU countries, the primary distinction is based on full membership of the Economic and Monetary Union (Eurozone countries and non-euro countries).Within the Eurozone, we distinguish between three types of countries. First, we look at countries that have experienced severe economic and financial difficulties as a result of rising unemployment, disinvestment, and dangerously high government debt levels. These are Ireland, Portugal, Greece, and Spain. Italy would also fall in this classification5. In southern countries, party systems have been characterized as weakly institutionalized as voluntary membership associations, with high levels of ideological voting and high levels of political patronage. Second, within the Eurozone countries, we identify four countries whose governments advocate government austerity and price stability to prevent stagnation and inflation in times of recession. These are Austria, Netherlands, Finland, and Germany. Promoting austerity as an EU policy may be partly attributed to economic policy tradition—notably the economic orthodoxy, or “ordoliberalism,” in Germany (Dulien and Guérot 2012). Media outlets, politicians, and political commentators in these countries have broadly portrayed the eurocrisis as a result of corruption and/or laziness by Southern leaders and their populations at Northern expense. Third, there is a diverse group of remaining Eurozone countries (France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Cyprus, and Malta). These countries have also experienced economic and financial strain, but they are so far not so saliently profiled in one of the other two camps.

The non-euro countries have been split in two groups. The first consists of the older member states (Denmark, the UK, and Sweden6) that have opted out of the Euro; the second, of East Central European member states that have joined the EU since 2004 and have not formally qualified yet but are supposed to introduce the euro in due course.

General trends Table 1 pictures the change in electoral success of different groupings of parties in terms of programmatic traits during the crisis for different types of countries and for the EU as a whole. To construct the table, absolute numbers of votes for each party in every country have been estimated and then summed for different traits, groupings of countries, and EU-wide. The figures in the table show the percentage increase or decrease in support for different categories, i.e. +25 means a 25 percent increase; for example from 1,000,000 estimated votes in the pre-crisis elections to 1,250,000 in the crisis-era elections, or from 10,000 to 12,500. Figures thus indicate changes in support, not levels of support. In the figures, changes in the elections of large countries have more weight than in the smaller ones because we are using raw numbers. And we have to be aware that these changes in support depend in fact not only on party attraction but also on the changing size of the electorates and voter turnout. Party trait groupings refer to the performance of parties that were part of the incumbent (coalition) government as the crisis struck; changes in support for radical parties; changes in preferences in economic politics (maintaining current national welfare regimes, protecting a national market); and the urge for a re-scaling of politics (move the current point of gravity in politics at the national level either in the direction of the European level or the regional level below that of the current states). The figures for all EU countries show that the European electorate as a whole has increasingly favored radical parties on the right who often also take anti-immigration stands, parties that promote protectionism, and parties favoring Euro-rejectionism and regionalism or separatism. Welfare statist parties, particularly social democrats, have lost considerable support, and right-wing liberal conservatives,7 who generally support austerity policies, have only lost slightly. Furthermore, the table shows that incumbent government parties have generally lost in the first crisis-era elections. The national electoral debut of the anti-establishment MoVimento 5 Stelle (M5S, Five Star Movement) in the 2013 Italian parliamentary elections provides additional evidence (25.6 percent of the vote). The party was founded in 2009 by activist Beppe Grillo, and springs from a social movement that predates the eurocrisis (see below). The M5S party advocates protectionism, is very critical of the EU, and occasionally seems to endorse anti-immigrant sentiment. However, its main talking point is protesting the current structure and culture of Italian political system. As such, it successfully challenged the incumbent government. At the time of writing, M5S refuses to participate in forming a government. Our general analyses reveal that most of the signaled trends seem to become stronger as the crisis is progressing, a result that the Italian elections underline. However, these trends are not similar for all country groupings. Below we will discuss different types of ideas and parties in more detail.

Table 1. Change in electoral support for different political ideas, movements, and ideologies in 25 EU countries, aggregated to country groupings. Table reflects change (percentage) in crisis period, compared to pre-crisis elections. Eurozone Non-Euro All

Financial Difficulties

Pro-austerity Other Old

member New

members

Incumbency Pre-crisis coalition party -39 -22 -26 -7 -30 -25

Radicalism

Far left and right +91 +28 +63 +53 -22 +39

Far right +301 +58 +67 +57 -16 +52

Anti-immigration +102 +58 +113 +40 +130 +77

Economic politics

Right-wing liberal conservatives +3 +22 -30 +16 0 -2

Social democrats -36 -32 +18 -9 -38 -23

Welfare statism -15 -15 +36 -3 -35 -7

Right-wing welfare statism +15 +44 +86 +29 +3 +55

Protectionism +83 +8 +58 +35 -10 +25

Scale politics

Euro-rejectionism +62 +94 +132 +29 -9 +58

Regionalism/ separatism +75 -16 +46 +20 x +25

Elections ES IE

PT(2) GR(2)

AT DE FI

NL(2)

LU SI

BE CY EE FR SK

DK SE UK

BG CZ

HU LT PL

LV(2)

Sources: Parties and Elections in Europe 2012 (www.parties-and-elections.eu) and European Election Database 2012 (http://www.nsd.uib.no/european_election_database/). AT= Austria, BE= Belgium, BG= Bulgaria, CY= Cyprus, CZ= Czech Republic, DE = Germany, DK= Denmark, EE= Estonia, GR= Greece, ES= Spain, FI=Finland, FR= France, HU= Hungary, IE= Republic of Ireland, LT= Lithuania, LU= Luxemburg, LV= Latvia, NL= Netherlands, PL= Poland, PT= Portugal, RO= Romania, SE= Sweden, SI= Slovenia, SK= Slovakia, UK= United Kingdom.

Opposition, radicalism and anti-immigration We expect a decrease of support for parties in government with the crisis because although most European countries are ruled by coalition governments, it does not necessarily mean that a loss of electoral support means that they are out of office after the elections. Duch and Stevenson (2010) show that Western voters are generally aware of their country’s international economic situation and are able to take into consideration how much “room for maneuver” a government has to affect the economy and consequently bring this into play in their electoral support for the governing party or the governing coalition. Table 1 shows that governing coalition parties general lose support in all country groupings, suffering the greatest losses in countries with economic difficulties. But where do voters shift? In their opposition, voters may choose to opt for more radical parties outside

mainstream politics. These parties may be of radical left or right. Radical leftist parties will be discussed in the economic voting section. Rather than economic policies, radical right-wing parties have emphasized cultural issues in their oppositional politics. Most notably, they have presented themselves as anti-immigration parties. Van der Brug and Fennema (2009) discuss several possible explanations for support of radical right-wing parties, irrespective of the crisis. First, voters may flock to these parties because they are experiencing competition from immigrants in the fields of employment, welfare, or housing. Second, supporters may feel disenfranchisement and anxiety over social changes. Third, like any opposition party, support expresses discontent with established governments and policy (Rydgren 2008). These explanations suggest that, as the crisis is progressing and governments keep struggling with it, the electoral space for these parties will grow. The crisis could well enhance feelings of competition and isolation, and, when governments take unpopular domestic austerity measures, policy protests results. Looking at table 1, we see that support for radical parties has increased in all country groupings except in non-euro new member states. As incumbent governments are losing ground, the crisis seems to have a polarizing effect on the European electorate. This increase is partly due to left-wing radicalism (communist and socialist parties).8 In other words, the success of the far-left in some countries is partly related to economic voting, but our indices show a larger increase for the far right because of the additional importance of socio-cultural issues. Right-wing radical parties are virtually absent in Spain, the Czech Republic, Romania, and the Baltic States and relatively small in Germany, Poland, Portugal and Slovenia. Nevertheless, they have had electoral success in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Great Britain in Western Europe, Bulgaria and Hungary in East Central Europe; and Greece in Southern Europe. The Danish People’s Party is one of the few right-wing parties that has lost support during the crisis. The Dutch Freedom Party saw a large increase in support in the first post-crisis election (from 5.9 percent to 15.5 percent) but lost some of that increase in the second post-crisis election (10.1 percent). The rise of the far right is also reflected in the increased anti-immigration parties (Figure 1), which are mainly, but not exclusively, far right parties (see Kitschelt and McGann 1995; Rydgren 2008; Bustikova 2009; Van der Brug and Fennema 2009).9 In terms of EU-wide trends in Table 1, parties with anti-immigrant positions have made most electoral gains. This implies an increasing unease towards or even resistance against immigration and the presence of immigrant groups in times of economic crisis. In sum, we see a shift towards radical parties, most notably towards anti-immigration and radical right-wing parties. For the latter group, we want to note that the next two sections on economic voting and politics of scale are also of relevance. In several cases, the success of radical right-wing parties is the result of engaging in politics of scale by virulently opposing policy-making at the European level as well as playing into economic voting by advocating welfare statism and protectionism (Lubbers and Scheepers 2005; Bustikova 2009; Buhr 2012; Mudde 2013). (figure 1 about here)

Economic vote: austerity, welfare statism, and protectionism Economic shocks generally have a large effect on voting outcomes, and economic voting can result in such circumstances wherein voters are more inclined to give precedence to their perceived immediate economic interest over other considerations (Lewis-Beck and Paldam 2000). With the crisis, we expect electorates to shift towards parties that advocate social economic policies more in line with the international economic position of the country (austerity or social welfare statism and protectionism, depending on context). In addition, voters express their dissatisfaction with the results of adopted policies by turning away from the incumbents. In the context of the crisis, economic voting is first of all indicated by support for traditional right-wing liberal and social democratic parties and also in the more encompassing groupings of welfare statist and of protectionist parties. Support for these parties represents different concerns related to the economic situation and employment, as well as the future of social welfare and pensions. Right-wing liberal conservative parties tend to have a strong profile on economic matters, placing an emphasis on free-market capitalism and liberalization. These parties are fiscally conservative and economically right-wing and liberal (emphasis on free-market capitalism). Examples are the British Conservative Party, UMP in France, and FDP in Germany. Centrist and Christian Democratic parties are not included as they may support welfare statism and protectionist policies. In times of crisis these parties choose austerity measures and welfare reform over more state expenditures and larger deficits, as this would induce inflation and hamper recovery. Perhaps surprisingly, these parties have not lost much support in all countries with financial difficulties. While Greek liberal conservatives lost, the Spanish and Portuguese Popular Parties and the Irish Fine Gael were successful in opposing the incumbent government and gain electoral support. This apparently had to do with their being in or out of government as the crisis broke. Liberal conservative decline was most prevalent in other Eurozone countries, mostly due to President Sarkozy’s UMP in France and to the Open VLD and Mouvement Réformateur in Belgium. Most gains were made in pro-austerity countries and in non-euro older member states. In these countries, which are under less economic pressure, both the domestic and EU-oriented policies of austerity are supported by the electorate. Conversely, social democratic parties seem to have fared less well during the crisis. Notable exceptions are large social democratic gains in Ireland, Slovakia, the Baltic states, Belgium, France, and Slovenia. Nevertheless, more than half of the social democratic parties have lost support (out of 30 social democratic parties, 2 received equal numbers of votes, 10 saw an increase in support, and 18 lost support in varying degrees), leading to negative overall trends in Table 1. The losses may be related to a weaker economic profile compared to right-wing liberal conservative parties. Electorates have lost confidence in social democratic parties because of their recent orientation towards “social liberalism” by combining liberal economic policies with social welfare state provisions (Arndt 2013). This is particularly relevant for northwestern European countries where social democratic parties were in power in the late 1990s and early 2000s—especially in Germany and the UK (Huo 2009). The European electorate is not necessarily less in favor of welfare statism, as expressed by parties that advocate protection and expansion of social welfare provisions. For all welfare statist parties together (including social democrats), the loss of support is generally smaller than for social democrats alone. The major exception to decline in general is in the diverse category of “other Eurozone countries” where social democratic parties win, and all welfare state parties together win

even more in the second period. When disregarding social democrats, left-wing welfare statist parties have increased support. Here, we see increased support for various left-wing region-based Spanish parties, Front de Gauche in France, Sinn Féin and the Labour Party in Ireland, and SYRIZA in Greece. Support is low and generally decreasing in East Central European states. Here, non-social democrat welfare statist parties are often (former) communist parties, which formed the non-democratic ruling elites before the 1990s. Additionally, we see a large increase in support for so-called right-wing welfare statist parties (Figure 2). This often, but not exclusively, refers to parties that belong to the nationalist, extreme, or radical-right party family. They strongly advocate the provision of social welfare services and benefits, albeit often restricted to native or national groups. While not new, support for these parties has grown tremendously during the crisis, particularly in Eurozone countries. Well-known examples are Freedom Party in the Netherlands, True Finns in Finland, Ataka in Bulgaria, British National Party, and Front National in France. Another well-known party, the Danish People’s Party, lost some support in the 2011 parliamentary election after having given parliamentary backing to the liberal-conservative government for a decade. The Lega Nord in Italy, another example of this party type, was not put to the test during this period in national elections. The party lost considerable support in the 2013 parliamentary elections, but retained its position in the coinciding regional elections.

In addition to welfare statism, some parties favor and promote economic protectionism, particularly in countries with economic difficulties. Protectionism refers to active policies to protect national industries and agriculture against globalization, trade liberalization and financialization (i.e. the growing predominance of finance markets over the economic activities producing goods and services). This is obviously in direct contradiction with the single market of which their countries are a part. Radical and labor-related left-wing parties and certain right nationalist parties promote this. It is particularly prevalent in French politics, where both the extreme left and the extreme right aim at protecting jobs against the delocalization of industrial sites (Bourdieu 1998; Dossier 2005; Tournier 2012). The French government has now a high profile Minister of Industrial Renewal to incorporate this issue in the mainstream of French politics. (figure 2 about here) An absent politics of scale: Euro(pean) government In the national parliamentary elections, parties do not or only very reluctantly put forward a sharp pro-European profile. Campaigns in such elections mobilizing for the approval of far-reaching further transfers of competences to the European level based either on perceived necessity or preference are non-existent. This does not mean that major national politicians have withdrawn their support for, and cooperation in, the European arena. It means that in terms of national popular politics EU issues as politicized points of debate and decision are still largely non-existent. While policy-making has become significantly Europeanized, politics is still very largely national. The point is that major players play both games simultaneously.

Politics of scale: Euro-rejectionism Euro-rejectionism means not supporting and opposing one or more ideas of European integration that underlie the EU and EMU and pessimism about the direction of development (Kopecky and Mudde 2002). Eurosceptism and Euro-rejectionism are only sufficiently appealing to voters when tied to related elements such as national sovereignty, immigration, and economic concerns (Lubbers and Scheepers 2005; Buhr 2012). Hence, it is mostly extremist and radical parties on the left and right that have successfully voiced Euro-rejectionism, because it fits in their “complete package” of anti-establishment, or anti-mainstream, standpoints. This is particularly the case in countries where mainstream politics has been dominated by favorable views on integration. Such parties have benefited from neglected public concerns over further European integration (Buhr 2012, see also Bustikova 2009). In general, Euro-rejectionist parties have done well in crisis era elections (Figure 3). Interestingly, most of the increases in support have occurred in older member states. This is however not the case for Belgium, where radical right-wing party Vlaams Belang has lost voters to the less radical pro-European Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie and Germany, which has no major Euro-critical parties. Northern and Western Europe have seen electoral victories by the True Finns in Finland, Freedom Party in the Netherlands, and the Austrian Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, Front de Gauche and Front National in France, as well as significant gains by the UK Independence party and British National Party in the UK, and Sverigedemokraterna and Miljöpartiet de Gröna in Sweden. Despite financial difficulties, southern countries have only grown modestly Euro-rejectionist. In Portugal the Coligação Democrática Unitária and Partido Nacional Renovador were unable to make significant gains. In Spain, the Left-wing Izquierda Unida grew considerably, but its 2.4 percentage point gain to 5.5 percent was limited compared to the 15.2 point loss of the governing Social Democratic PSOE. In the south, only Greece shows a large growth on both sides of the political spectrum. Public protest against austerity measures showed up in significant gains for the right-wing Golden Dawn and Independent Greeks parties, and the Communist Party, who together got 26.1 percent in the first 2012 elections and 18.9 percent in the second elections. While Euroscepticism and Eurorejectionism exist in East Central Europe (Kopecký and Mudde, 2002), the current crisis has not resulted in more support for Euro-rejectionist parties, or even in decline (Poland, Czech Republic) or absence (Romania). Bulgaria shows an increase with support for the Ataka party, but other research suggests that public opinion is quite optimistic about the EU and its role in dealing with the crisis (Dimitrova 2012). A noteworthy exception is Hungary, where Euro-rejectionism is prevalent in the angry criticism of the majority Fidesz government and the electoral rise of the radical “neo-Turanist” Jobbik party which favors a reorientation on Asia (Hanley 2012). (figure 3 about here)

Politics of scale: regionalism In many member states of the EU regionalism, the politicization of that regionalism in political party formation and the constitution of regional political arenas by decentralization or federalism have been part and parcel of the development of the state. The emergence of the EU itself has challenged the undisputed supremacy of the national state and stimulated the increasing salience of the regional level and more collaborative relations between different levels of governments (Lafont 1993; Jeffery 1997; Keating 1998; Schrijver 2006). Does the crisis create new conditions either further stimulating or inhibiting regionalist political forces? One could imagine either inhibitions from the inclination to look for cover under the most relatively stable-looking roof of the national state or an incentive to emphasize regional identity as a possibly more reliable roof to be constructed compared with the apparently deficient national state that one is now forced to inhabit. This is particularly the case where old, unsuccessful nationalism still lingered (e.g. Catalonia, Scotland) Table 1 shows an increase in support for regionalism. Our analysis of 25 countries included four countries with regionalist parties: Belgium, Spain, Great Britain, and Germany. Compared to the others, the German Christian Social Union (CSU )has traditionally perhaps been least inclined towards regionalist politics and separatism. The CSU lost support in the first post-crisis election; this is unlikely to be related to a change in regionalist sentiments in Bavaria, as the CSU is closely associated with the national conservative party Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and functions de facto as its chapter in Bavaria.

In contrast to the German case, regionalist parties in other countries have actively voiced demands for much longer for (more) identity-based regional autonomy, or even independence in national elections. This is perhaps most relevant in Spain, which has a plethora of region-based parties and where regionalism has resulted in regional governmental autonomy, particularly in Catalonia and the Basque country. In the first Spanish crisis-era election, almost all region-based parties won support. This may be related to popular opposition to President Zapatero’s social democratic government. The loss of the Social Democrats was divided between the only other national party (Partido Popular) and regional parties. The increase in regional support in this parliamentary election can only be partly, or indirectly, attributed to the crisis. However, recently, Iberian separatism seems to resurge in Catalonia and the Basque country. After a mass rally in Barcelona in September 2012, the Catalan parliament pressed the new Catalan government to hold a referendum over Catalan independence after the regional elections in November 2012. To the chagrin of the central government in Madrid, the new Catalan government has committed itself to a referendum in 2014. While European-imposed austerity measures as well as the fiscal relationship with Madrid are related to this move (Stobart 2012), the Catalan independence movement seeks to become a new state “within the European Union,” and sees the EU (on fragile grounds) as a way to overcome central government obstruction (Tremlett 2012). While the Catalan government has scheduled a referendum, the newly installed Basque government led by the Basque Nationalist party has not announced any direct plans as of December 2012. However, as the coalition includes separatist parties, a push towards independence may take shape in the near future. The Catalan case is reminiscent of the Scottish independence movement in the UK. While the Scottish National Party (SNP) only modestly increased its support during the 2010 British

elections, the party obtained an absolute majority in the 2011 Scottish elections under the popular leadership of Alex Salmond (Denver 2012). In October 2012, the SNP government came to an agreement with the UK central government over a referendum to be held in September 2014. While the financial crisis played an important role during the 2010 national and 2011 Scottish elections, it is important to note that the current Scottish independence momentum predates the crisis. Furthermore, like Spain, support for regionalist parties in Scotland may be partly explained by a low approval of the rival national Social Democratic party (McEwen et al. 2012). In Belgium, the Flemish nationalists gained considerable support, while their regionalist counterparts in less-affluent regions remain relatively small and have lost (the Walloon Front National). The rise of the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA) under the popular leadership of Bart de Wever is remarkable because it showed the broad appeal of nationalism in Flanders. Before 2010, the more extremist right-wing Vlaams Belang was the primary Flemish nationalist party. However, in the 2010 elections, with a highly nationalist but less radical right-wing agenda, N-VA was able to appeal to both Vlaams Belang and other voters. Most regional parties are performing well, which has resulted in two scheduled “independence” referenda in 2014 (Scotland and Catalonia). Long existing regionalist and separatist sentiments in comparably affluent regions within older member states are more actively pursued in this crisis. The EU functions more as a far distant utopia than as a concrete part of the current political project; or even as a dystopia to be avoided. Generally, the setting of the crisis apparently favors this kind of re-scaling toward the regional level as the national polity loses credibility and appeal on account of its unwelcome redistributive budgetary claims. A notable exception here is Italy’s Lega Nord (Giordano 2000). While absent in our analysis through lack of a timely post-crisis election, before the crisis the party won considerable adherence in the polls with powerful claims for increasing regional autonomy and its shifting position on Europe from benevolent to highly critical. However, the party’s loss in 2013 indicates that it could not capitalize on its new critical attitude as much as the Five Star Movement had. In addition, the loss was preceded by the resignation of popular leader Umberto Bossi due to a corruption scandal. Shifting electorates in times of crisis While the overall trend suggests an increased importance of radical parties, of the economic vote in terms of the protection of welfare provisions, and of Euro-rejectionism, further analyses show a wide variety of electoral responses across member states. The variegated electoral response seems to mirror the diversity of impacts of the financial crisis in Europe and the EU, but it also reflects the structure of national electoral landscapes. Many electoral shifts are related to economic voting and opposition to the incumbent government (Duch and Stevenson 2010; Lewis-Beck and Nadeau 2012; Stubager 2012). These opposition movements may involve opposing centrist mainstream movements, but the gravity of the crisis seems to have made radical opposition parties more attractive. Except in the majority of non-euro East Central European countries, we have seen that radical parties have gained considerable support during the crisis, particularly on the right. Many of these parties are simultaneously anti-immigration, welfare statist, protectionist, Euro-rejectionist, and sometimes regionalist. More than one particular point in their program, it is likely their collection of anti-establishment standpoints that resonates strongly, particularly in older member state countries.

Shifts towards anti-immigrant radicalism, right-wing welfare statism, and Euro-rejectionism are generally larger in the different parts of the Eurozone than in the other EU member states. This applies to the older member states that have remained outside the Eurozone as well as to the new member states mostly in East Central Europe. It suggests the specificity of the eurocrisis as a crisis of the EMU part of the EU. The near absence of these shifts in new member states (except the anti-immigration upsurge in Hungary) is particularly noteworthy. It is probably also related to below-average external debt per capita and to the diminished “shock effect” in the aftermath of social and economic hardships in the early 1990s which are still vividly remembered (Hanley 2012). Social movements: making a voice by collective action Like electoral politics, collective action and social movements play predominantly in national arenas modeled by a mix of national and transnational influences (Tarrow 1994). Connections between political mobilizations in different countries pertain to their ideologies, their strategies, and their organizational forms. Collaborative efforts and organizational networks are sometimes so tight that one can speak of transnational or European movements. Nevertheless, collective action is still very much locally/regionally or at most nationally organized. The impact of the Europeanization of governance on collective action is limited (Imig and Tarrow 2001; Della Porta and Caiani 2009). It shows up in an increasing share of EU policies as targets of demands, but not in EU institutions targeted as the addresses of protest. Instead, in those cases collective action is organized nationally, asking the national government to change its position in an EU policy-making process, to intervene with the European Commission, to develop policies to alleviate the consequences of EU rules and policies, or to take complementary steps. Consequently, the public space around EU institutions and EU events has only been marginally used to demonstrate dissatisfaction through protests or demands. In the past, some marches on Brussels by angry farmers and the unemployed have been held like the Euromarches against unemployment (in Spring 1997) and the protest activities that surrounded the EU summits in the late 1990s (Amsterdam and Luxemburg 1997; Cardiff and Vienna 1998; Cologne 1999). It should be mentioned in passing that the creation of suitable public space for civic action to underline the significance of a European political community (comparable to the Mall in Washington DC) has been one of the ambitions of architects proposing a new plan for the European Quarter in Brussels (Roggemans 2010). Recent surges of collective action related to the financial and economic crisis are characterized by the virtual absence of a more or less permanent, stable organizational core. It certainly does not mean that they are without any organizational elements at all, but one can perceive them as a constantly mobile set of overlapping personal networks with some nodal points that try simultaneously to call each one’s tune. At the same time, adherents of the movement are impregnated with a preference for direct, egalitarian democratic practice (Hardt and Negri 2011; Castells 2012; Harvey 2012). Like-minded activists are not inclined to organize into formal international organizations, but collaborate bottom up and through networks instead.

The mobilization of this decentered movement has an uneven geography. Southern countries Spain, Greece, and Portugal, followed by Italy and France have witnessed much broader and more sustained series of manifestations than other countries. These southern countries have an established tradition of confrontational politics between grassroots mobilizations (both labor movements and youth movements)10 and the state.. Larger protests started in the first half of 2011 in Greece and in Spain, notably with the Indignados. About six months later, similar events were held

in many countries on October 15, 2011 as part of the Occupy movement. The movement, even if clearly transnational and multiscalar (local and global [Aalbers 2012; Uitermark and Nicholls 2012]), was not a European movement. It was not specifically European in organization or following, and it did not target European policies—not even through national governments. Its main reference was the global financial crisis. It started, at least under this label, as Occupy Wall Street (not The Mall in Washington DC), with a protest initiated by the Canadian activist group Adbusters in Zuccotti Park on Wall Street, the financial district of New York on September 17, 2011. The protesters addressed social and economic inequality, greed, and corruption. The motto of the movement “We are the 99 percent” underlines the concern with growing income inequality and wealth distribution between the wealthiest 1 percent and the rest of the population. The Occupy movement should be understood in light of a tradition of protest events that started in the 1990s against globalization and inequalities. But it differs from its predecessors in the sense that the former protests followed and targeted the summits of global institutions of economic governance, notably the WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle in 1999 (Fannin et al. 2000; Gunnell and Timms 2000; Eagleton-Pierce 2001; Glassman 2001; Watts 2001; McFarlane and Hay 2003), and annual meetings of the World Bank, the G8, the World Economic Forum in Davos, and European summits (Merrifield 2002; Mamadouh 2004; Eschle and Maiguashca 2005; Routledge and Cumbers 2009). The Occupy protests have also been inspired by the Icelandic protests during the 2008-2009 financial crisis when the population successfully protested against the government’s handling of the crisis, and by more recent popular protests in several Arab countries that marked 2011 with the regime change in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya (Verdeil 2011; Fregonese 2013; Ramadan 2013; Staeheli and Nagel 2013). During these events collectively known as the Arab Spring, the occupation of public squares also marked the protests. Castells (2012) has connected the episodes of Iceland, the Arab Spring, the Indignados , and Occupy as instances of activated networks of outrage and hope for the first time mediated in the context of the Internet age. The British quality newspaper The Guardian in November 2011 published an overview of the movement featuring a map of events (Rogers 2011). The map shows almost a thousand cities in 82 countries on all continents. In Europe many large demonstrations were reported on October 15, 2011. The largest were in the Spanish cities of Madrid (500,000), Barcelona (400,000), Rome (200,000), and Valencia (100,000). Substantial events with an acknowledged crowd of over 10,000 according to news reports were organized in Lisbon, Porto, Malaga, Mieres (a small town in the threatened coal mining region of Asturias, Spain), Palma de Mallorca, and Zagreb. Northern metropolises London11, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Paris were far behind except Brussels (8,000). Larger cities in countries deeply affected by the crisis, like Greece and Ireland (Athens, Dublin, and Thessaloniki) scored also in the range between 1,000 and 5,000. The data are based on media reports, and they include doubtful cases and very small gatherings, but also some noteworthy absences, especially in Italy such as Occupy Milan and Occupy Bologna on 11 November 2011. (figure 4 about here) Figure 4 provides an impression of the geography of the October 15 protests. The relative absence of East Central European and Northern European countries is striking. It should also be recalled that many of these gatherings are small. They are dwarfed by social media generated crowds like the Project X-inspired event in Haren (a tiny village near the northern Dutch city of

Groningen) on 21 September 2012, when thousands convened to a birthday party invitation erroneously circulated on Facebook, leading to disturbances. These mobilizations fit in the earlier indicated pattern of collective action: transnational and covering most of Europe but hardly EU-oriented. This applies also to the larger and more national protests in Greece and in Portugal and to movements in Italy and France against austerity policies. Protesters question the role of the political and economic elites and the socialization of the losses of the banks; the chosen priorities (reducing public debt rather than fostering employment); the consequences of the fiscal austerity policies; and more generally, problems linked to the competition of cheap labor elsewhere in the world. These mobilizations also experiment with direct democracy and social media and bring together various existing groups and movements like ¡Democracia Real Ya! and advocacy groups like ATTAC, Anonymous, and NoLesVotes et Juventud Sin Futuro. Occupy is in fact differently known in some places—as the indignadas/os after the Spanish label in Spain and Portuguese, indigné-e-s in French, indignati in Italian, and aganaktismenoi in Greek. In these languages the older indigenous labels have remained attached to the 15 October events, resisting symbolic incorporation into Occupy. The very name of the movement is here inspired by a French manifest Indignez-vous !, published in 2010 by Stéphane Hessel (1917-2013), a Second World War and Buchenwald survivor, former diplomat, and one of the authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The booklet calls for a duty of indignation as the motor to resist global finance, and it gained an unexpectedly wide circulation (4 million-- copies in 34 languages) All these movements are complex and heterogeneous, generally coalescing older alternative movements and a new generation of activists (Aalbers 2012; Uitermark and Nicholls 2012; Douzinas 2013; Taibo 2013; Wallach 2013). In Italy the relative absence of these new movements has often been explained by the longer economic and institutional crisis, with the implosion of the postwar party system in the early 1990s and corruption scandals. Moreover “indignation” was already mobilized in earlier movements organized by Beppe Grillo and Gianroberto Casaleggio from the entertainment and marketing industries, first (since 2005) in Amici di Beppe Grillo (Friends of Beppe Grillo) and since 2008 in Liste Civiche a Cinque Stelle (Civic lists for five stars) (see Wu Ming 2013). The "five stars" refer to five issues: public water, sustainable mobility, development, connectivity, and environmentalism. They do not, however, show up as key issues in the election program for the recent parliamentary elections that foregrounds the state-citizen relation. The MoVimento 5 Stelle shares some characteristics with the protest movements observed elsewhere but is at the same time a centrally organized and orchestrated party that has participated in local regional and national elections since 2010. In Greece, Spain, Portugal, and more recently in Cyprus—the countries with particularly large and long-lasting protests contesting national government policies—protest is more clearly oriented towards the European level proper, targeting European institutions and decision-makers directly. The German chancellor Angela Merkel was the object of protest in Greece in February 2011 when she called for austerity measures as conditional for bailout measures, and in early October 2012 when she visited Athens to show her support for Greek membership of the Eurozone—a visit that necessitated unprecedented security measures. The use of references to World War II and German occupation underlines the ambiguous character of such Europeanization of protests. Likewise, street protests greeted Merkel’s visit to Lisbon in similar circumstances on 12 November 2012. In Spain the indignados have occupied numerous public squares and organized many demonstrations over the past two years (Castells 2012, 110-155); since the first demonstrations on

15 May 2011 in over 50 cities. The movement also organized local and national marches, especially from Spanish cities to Madrid on 23 July 2011 (250,000 at Puerta del Sol) and later in Brussels as part of the 15 October 2011 mobilization across Europe. For the time being, the culmination of Europeanized campaigning against austerity measures was on 14 November 2012, when the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) called for a large-scale European Day of Action and Solidarity. The ETUC is a classic trade union organization that was established in 1973. It consists of over 80 National Trade Union Confederations in over 35 countries (including some non-EU members) and 10 European industry federations. It represents 60 million individual members. The geography of marches and strikes showed again concentrations in the southern part of Europe, especially in Madrid and Lisbon where violent clashes occurred. There were large strikes in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, and also in Belgium. Two symbolic events took place in Brussels led by the ETUC and the Belgian trade unions. Witnessing a timid form of Europeanization of the protest, these rather small events in the EU capital tried to compensate in symbolism. A few hundred trade unionist demonstrators visited the embassies of Cyprus (holding the Council presidency at the time), Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Germany and Greece. They also went to the headquarter of the European Commission at the Berlaymont, where a delegation of the ETUC delivered EU Social Affairs Commissioner László Andor a Nobel Prize for Austerity12(La Libre Belgique 14 novembre 2012). Again among these traditional collective actors, the trade unions of the Southern member states agitated against austerity measures rather than the more officially institutionalized ones in Northern Europe. Collective action linked to the crisis is concentrated in Southern European countries and features both protests against the democratic shortcomings of the political systems and the austerity measures taken by national governments under the guidance of European institutions and international organizations like the IMF. They echo each other in form and content with common moments of protest (e.g. 15 October 2011), but their unfolding is primarily determined by the national calendar of bailout and austerity measures. Europeanization is limited in terms of targeting to occasional actions in Brussels (and Occupy Frankfurt in late Spring 2012 directly outside the European Central Bank [Schultz 2012]), but new is the targeting of the German chancellor as the main symbol of the EU polity and the monetary and fiscal policy of the Eurozone. The protestors are a very diverse multitude combining factions of the old social movement (communists, anarchists), new social movements organizations, antiglobalization activists, and newly mobilized citizens from the groups most directly affected by the crisis and the austerity measures, such as the youth hit by unemployment (Uitermark and Nicholls 2012; Douzinas 2012; Taibo 2012). The specter of fascism Our study of the popular politics during the eurocrisis is necessarily still explorative. Events are still ongoing and the eurocrisis episode is nowhere near its end. But we also have to stress at this point that parties and movements do not make up the whole story. Beyond parties and movements there is still the more seriously divisive form of contentious politics that Tilly and Tarrow (2007, chapter 7) called “lethal conflict.” Much commentary on the possible implications of the eurocrisis turns on the fear or expectation that popular politics during this episode might deteriorate into contentious politics of the lethal kind with reference to the fascism of the interwar period. An early signal event was the burning of a bank building in central Athens after Molotov cocktails had been thrown in during the 5 May 2010 demonstration and three bank employees inside died.

The implied comparison is certainly not completely out of bounds, but it is full of difficulties. The difficulties start with the use of the term “fascism.” The concept is still essentially contested with regard to the interwar years and certainly also with respect to the current period. After all, it initially functioned as a term in the Italian context, then became a general label for a series of political movements and regimes during the interwar years and the Second World War with supposed but also heavily contested family resemblances. Postwar political movements were then similarly categorized. In all this, the term was not only part of a scholarly debate, but from early on it was in use as a general term of abuse and aversion. For tiny groups it has always functioned at the same time as a battle cry and an expression of highly appreciated identity. This diversity of connotations erodes a useful application of the term in a comparative effort. Some historians have even suggested giving it up altogether for such purposes (Allardyce 1979).

Among those proposing to make meaningful comparisons using a pretty-well defined concept of fascism that broadly overlaps with other major writers on the subject is historian Robert Paxton, particularly famous for his studies of Vichy France. In 2003 he published his views on the ongoing debate about the nature of interwar fascism and its precursors and the conditions for its success. He defined fascism functionally as a movement promising to achieve a task that conservatives, liberals, and socialists were unable to achieve: to impose unity, energy, and purity, if necessary by force, on communities that feared division, decline, and foreign influence (Paxton 2003, 357). He thought of each case of fascism in terms of five different phases that it could pass: initial creation of set of ideas, party formation, coming to power, reign, and radicalization or entropy (see Paxton 2003, 338). In his concluding paragraph he wrote:

“The right questions on the subject of current neo- and protofascisms (he had earlier mentioned, e.g. ethnic purification in the Balkans, skinheads across Western Europe, participation of the openly neo-fascist MSI in Berlusconi’s coalitions, and of the Freiheitspartei in the Austrian government) are concerned with the second and third phase of the fascist cycle (party formation and coming to power, that is).… Do we deal with an economic crisis, a political impasse or a national humiliation that the incumbent authorities are apparently unable to solve? ... Answering this type of question may perhaps help us to recognize the functional equivalents of earlier fascism in our time.”(Paxton 2003, 358-359)

Since Paxton’s text was published in 2003, a very serious economic crisis has struck. The number of movements and parties—radical in their urge of national unity—has grown, as has their support, particularly in the EMU area as we have seen. Paxton’s cautious introduction of a comparative approach has become even more urgent; the outcome of such studies potentially more telling. Can we indicate the nature of such comparisons in somewhat more detail and explore potential outcomes on the basis of what we know now?

European interwar fascism has been called a latecomer in the political opportunity space of newly instituted mass politics dominated by ideologically inspired parties (Linz 1980). Its own ideological nature (to urgently re-establish the most radical version of each separate nation’s distinctive character) and the flexibility needed to find a place in an already largely occupied electoral space, made for an unusually broad spectrum of party colors. Merkl (1980) has positioned the different national interwar fascisms in terms of the social profiles of their supporters on a left-right scale (on the basis of sometimes rather sketchy evidence) where they indeed turn up across the continuum.

Interwar fascism came to life as organized movement (Paxton’s second stage) as a result of the economic, social, and political disruptions and disconnects that accompanied the end of World War I, notably in Italy and Germany. Its ideology (Paxton’s first stage) had previously been developed, perhaps most succinctly in France (Sternhell 1978). Fascist movements had a second upsurge at the time of the Great Depression when incumbent governments were unable to solve pressing economic and social problems. Growing fascist movements were successful in jointly establishing parliamentary parties and private militias bringing about unprecedented levels of mobilization of their supporters and engaging in the use of violence when they deemed fit. They could only come to power where they successfully teamed up with conservatives holding the reins of power who were primarily scared by presumed dangers from the left. The state monopoly on the use of violence had by then been effectively undermined. This was a vital intermediate step in the march to power of individual fascist movements.

Currently, Europe has economic problems that might turn out to be of the order of the Great Depression. But they hit societies much richer and better protected than was the case in the 1930s. Nonetheless levels of protection had already diminished for some time and incumbent governments are only slowly coming to grips with the problems. If deep enough, this might perhaps provide a basis for movement formation in the footsteps of earlier fascism. The successful parties we analyzed earlier have programmatic traits that point to a family resemblance with interwar fascism.

At the same time we see important differences. First of all, and perhaps most important, fascism emerged primarily in reaction to the disruptions of the end of World War I, while the Great Depression was an opportunity for re-launch. There is no comparable recent shock in most of Europe. To the extent that the demise of the Soviet empire in East Central and Eastern Europe would count as such (the Yugoslav wars affected only a small portion of the present EU territory directly), political disconnects translated into extremist parties support and movement participation did not show up here in any pronounced degree. The two-part model of a parliamentary party plus a private militia now operates only in Greece and perhaps in Hungary (Golden Dawn and Jobbik). The potential for violent action seems less developed. There is nowhere the continuous capacity of high levels of mobilization for action in public space that Italian and German fascists in Paxton’s second phase so well mastered.

These trends have to be interpreted against a general background where parties are no longer the mass organizations they were at the time and have lost their ideological coherence. Finally, it has to be said that the basic division of a liberal-conservative establishment and a left newly moving to the center of the political domain that characterized the interwar episode is now very much a thing of the past. All in all, this suggests to many that we should avoid the fascist label for these new parties and go for alternatives like “radical right-wing populist parties” (Mudde 2013) or mark these parties and the polarizing, uncompromising, extremist mood they represent as a new phenomenon: “toxic politics.”

According to Tilly and Tarrow (2007, 53), a major condition of the deterioration of contentious politics into lethal conflict in democratic polities is the weakening of the state apparatus. A central attribute of that state apparatus is the monopoly of the use of legitimate force. It deters others from using force. In that way, the emergence of fascist dual organizations is blocked. Paxton suggests that one of the reasons France in the end did not develop a full blown second stage in his scheme was the strong gendarmerie in a centralized state that did not accept serious infringements of the state monopoly of violence (Paxton 2003, 342-343). In their turn, strong democratic institutions should also preclude the illegitimate use of force by the state itself. One

extra risk that the eurocrisis provokes might be the fruit of the reconsideration and possibly weakening of political scales that it necessarily engenders. To the extent that this undermines state strength, Tilly and Tarrow’s arguments imply greater chances for a deterioration of toxic politics into a form of contentious politics with significant fascist participants. How close the relation of reconsideration of political scales and state strength is remains an open question. Conclusions The eurocrisis episode, over four years underway at the time of writing, has seen considerable shifts in parliamentary election results and upsurges in movement participation in the EU. These events can to a large extent be attributed to the financial turmoil, economic difficulties, governance weakness, and nature of the policy responses that are at the heart of the crisis. It is however important to keep in mind that the issues of welfare provision, taxation levels, and fiscal rectitude that are so prominent in party political competition in this period had already been quite important previously in the past three decades. They were at stake with the roll back of the post war welfare states in former Western Europe and two decades of post-communist transition in former Eastern Europe, and had been responsible for earlier shifts in electoral fortunes. As regards the upsurge in movement participation, it is important to recall that one and one-half years before the wave of demonstrations and popular revolt in Athens against the first bailout, a 15-year-old boy was shot dead by two policemen under suspicious circumstances, producing a huge outbreak of popular anger that lasted for four weeks expressed in demonstrations, street fights, and armed attacks on police units. Current electoral shifts and movement activities have histories and even prehistories of recent and more distant episodes of enhanced electoral volatility and/or collective uprisings. These partially just continue in the present or they are used as inspiring examples during the current episode. The current episode does not start from zero.

During the eurocrisis voting, support for radical parties has tended to increase. This applies particularly to the countries in the Eurozone. Sharing the euro has added to the political polarization. These parties mostly have a program with a package of items: protection of welfare state provisions, anti-immigrant policies, and anti-European cooperation. They are more often on the traditional right, but can also be leftist. Solutions of the eurocrisis have repeatedly been discussed in terms of financial transfers between creditor and debtor countries. On both sides of the divide these transfers are the subject of strong disputes, and on both sides, governments are strongly criticized for the policies they implement. Support shifts in creditor countries are generally not very different from those in debtor countries—governing parties of all colors have a particularly hard time everywhere. This also applies to radical parties somehow involved with government. Examples are the Danish case but also the Dutch (in the 2012 elections), where radical parties did not formally govern but had formally agreed to support a governing minority coalition.

Rescaling became more prominent as an issue because radical parties pursued diminishing European cooperation, which is a weakening of the European scale in politics. Regional sentiments tended to gain somewhat in cases where affluent regions more strenuously than before opposed transfers to weaker regions: the discussion about solidarity and transfer between regions replicates the European situation in miniature. While much expert opinion stressed the absolute need of further strengthening the European political level in order to master the eurocrisis, this was hardly politicized in this way in national party politics, where solutions are still framed nationally.

Movements aroused by the eurocrisis were most prominent in the southern part of the Eurozone, most incessantly in Greece and Spain. These are the countries with the worst economic difficulties. But it should be stressed that particularly Ireland—also strongly affected by the eurocrisis—does not show the same level of collective action, nor do the East Central European member states of the EU outside Eurozone, several of whom were also terribly afflicted by the financial crisis. More comparative work on the systematic differences between these polities could provide a welcome addition to current insights.

In the analysis of the practice of movements, the transnational element is more prominent than in the shifting preferences for political parties. Think of the networking for the common cause through social media, the international coordination of demonstration events, and the transfer of a campaign repertoire as first in the indignados movement from Spain to Greece. Consider the Arab uprisings on the other shore of the Mediterranean, and the Occupy movement, as it was launched by Canadian and American protesters in New York and then quickly diffused throughout the US and again to Europe, particularly Southern Europe, but also Britain. This transnationalization is not specifically European or EU-bounded (think again of Occupy). It is also occasionally disputed for its “foreign roots” or just its later arrival as it lands in an already pre-conditioned national political arena (Occupy landing among the indignados, the indignados landing among Movimiento 15-M).

In fact, movement activity has two wings that do not easily coalesce. The first wing is this social-media based set of collective action episodes, largely populated by young activists without many ties with the traditional organizational infrastructure of their respective national societies. These can easily go transnational with the main aim to question the quality of the current national democracies. It is not that they are interested in an alternative territorially based representative democracy. Their utopian aim is a direct democracy that they want to live in their movement as an example of what should be realized at large. The second wing is the manifestation of more traditional organizational parts of civic society, including the local branches of political parties aroused by the crisis as movements. They defend the traditions of their societies, including the acquired rights to the provisions of their respective welfare states against the incursions made by the crisis and the painful ways in which it is managed. Trade unions are a core part of this wing.

The two wings do not coalesce easily because they have different aims but also different social profiles and different practices. The action repertoires of their movements may overlap (e.g. street demonstrations), but only to an extent. Trade unions may occupy sites, but they tend to be work-place sites. Occupy movements occupy public squares. They can be read as two partially different answers to the crisis. The first answer comes from a new generation still not socialized in long-standing political specifications within their respective national societies. Their movements have been triggered by the disjuncture of politics and societies caused by the crisis. Efforts to translate those movements as political parties have so far mostly failed. The mass movements in Spain and Portugal have had no electoral counterparts. In 2012, an Occupy party tried its luck in the Slovakian elections to no avail (1.6 percent). An exception here is Grillo’s MoVimento 5 Stelle, The second answer is the response of some more established parts of populations also hit by the crisis. The response is the transition of traditional organizational vehicles (e.g. trade unions) into movement mold. Both answers occur, often rather disjointed, in some of the most threatened and disconnected countries of the Eurozone: Greece, Spain, Portugal, and also in Italy.

Acknowledgements This study is part of a larger research program aimed at political developments within the EU conducted since 2004 within the Geography Department of the University of Amsterdam. Data on electoral results and protest movements were especially collected for the purpose of this paper. Thanks to Joost van Spanje for his advice on the electoral analysis. Notes

1 AISSR, Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2 AISSR, Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 3 AISSR, Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 4 Traits were attributed based on historical political roots, party programs, media reports, and secondary literature. We were not able to attribute all traits to new or splinter parties in countries that have an unstable party structure. This is particularly the case for small parties in recent elections in Lithuania, Latvia, and Slovenia. 5 Events in 2013 indicate that Cyprus could also be part of this group. However, this was not as apparent when we closed our data collection in 2012. 6 Technically speaking, Sweden may not opt out from the euro because it joined the EU after the adoption of the EMU, but because it has chosen not to follow the procedures to qualify to be allowed into the Eurozone. 7 Liberal conservative parties are right-wing parties combining liberal economic orientations with conservative cultural orientations 8 About 9 percent increase for all countries. Far Left figures not presented in Table 1. 9 Although right-wing parties, such as the UMP in France and VVD in the Netherlands, have adopted anti-immigration discourses and policies, we have not included these parties in our categorization as they may change position in new coalitions (as the liberal conservative VVD has done in the Netherlands). 10 Recent examples include the uprisings in the banlieues of Paris in 2005 and 2007, in Athens in December 2008, or in London in August 2011 (Douzinas 2013). 11 This is not to say that there were no protest against austerity in the UK: a March for the Alternative organized by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in London on 26 March 2011 mobilized between a quarter and half a million people, the largest protest since the 15 February 2003 anti-Iraq War protest and the biggest union rally in over 20 years (Davis and Evans 2011). 12 Referring to the fact that the EU has been awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize.

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Figure captions

Figure 1. Change in electoral support for anti-immigration parties after eurocrisis (change indexed at 100).

Figure 2. Change in electoral support for right-wing welfare statist parties after eurocrisis (change indexed at 100).

Figure 3. Change in electoral support for Euro-rejectionist parties after eurocrisis (change indexed at 100).

Figure 4. Attendance Occupy Protests in Europe, Autumn 2011