Neoliberalism and Its Discontents in Italy: Protests Without Movement?

The still ongoing economic crisis has triggered widespread protest, especially against the Italian governments’ austerity measures. In this chapter, I single out the main characteristics of Italian anti-austerity mobilization from 2009 to 2014, making use of different types of sources and integrating qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis. The aims of this chapter are, first, to contextualize the Italian anti-austerity mobilization in its economic, social and political context; second, to describe its main characteristics; and, finally, to provide an explanation for the comparative weakness of such mobilization in terms of political outcomes. The empirical findings of this chapter reveal the importance of the political opportunity structure, which operated as a filter between ‘threats’ or ‘grievances’ and protest mobilization in the Italian social movement tradition.