La inestabilidad política y la debilidad del centro en Francia abren paso a una pugna entre alternativas polarizadas, mientras crece el descontento social y la extrema derecha gana terreno

La inestabilidad política y la debilidad del centro en Francia abren paso a una pugna entre alternativas polarizadas, mientras crece el descontento social y la extrema derecha gana terreno

Social movement scholarship has emphasized that progressive ‘Europeanization from below’ may be a breeding ground for major EU reform and democratization. Empirically, however, activists have found it difficult to make gains when targeting the EU. To understand the challenges that activists face in the context of transnational EU mobilization, our article draws from agency-oriented approaches in social movement studies to propose an ‘EU mobilization package’, comprising three recurring strategic dilemmas that activists encounter: (a) the formulation of goals that both address the transnational level and appeal to national or local constituencies, (b) the building of a transnational political organization that is both inclusive and effective, and (c) whether and how to interact with EU institutions, particularly in the context of European Parliament elections. We apply this framework to the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), an organization founded by Yanis Varoufakis in 2016, which is a key example of social movement dissensus to EU politics. Methodologically, we rely on comprehensive interview data, the analysis of a large corpus of DiEM25 online and offline publications, and participant observation of three public events. A discussion of the group’s strategic challenges provides important general lessons for our understanding of social movement mobilization targeting EU politics as well as transnational activism.

Social movement scholarship has emphasized that progressive ‘Europeanization from below’ may be a breeding ground for major EU reform and democratization. Empirically, however, activists have found it difficult to make gains when targeting the EU. To understand the challenges that activists face in the context of transnational EU mobilization, our article draws from agency-oriented approaches in social movement studies to propose an ‘EU mobilization package’, comprising three recurring strategic dilemmas that activists encounter: (a) the formulation of goals that both address the transnational level and appeal to national or local constituencies, (b) the building of a transnational political organization that is both inclusive and effective, and (c) whether and how to interact with EU institutions, particularly in the context of European Parliament elections. We apply this framework to the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), an organization founded by Yanis Varoufakis in 2016, which is a key example of social movement dissensus to EU politics. Methodologically, we rely on comprehensive interview data, the analysis of a large corpus of DiEM25 online and offline publications, and participant observation of three public events. A discussion of the group’s strategic challenges provides important general lessons for our understanding of social movement mobilization targeting EU politics as well as transnational activism.

Perle Petit, Alvaro Oleart

Introduction: The role of actors in the (co-)regulation of disinformation in the EU Ever since 2016, when the ‘Remain’ camp lost the Brexit referendum campaign in the UK and Trump won the US Presid...

Perle Petit, Alvaro Oleart

Alvaro Oleart, Julia Rone

Perle Petit, Alvaro Oleart

Looking at the nature of AI technology and the contents of the EU AI Act, the external impact of the Act is better understood in terms of experimentalist governance than in terms of the much-cited ‘Br...