Subterranean Politics in Europe

Mary Kaldor, Sabine Selchow, Tamsin Murray-Leach, Mary Kaldor, Sabine Selchow, Tamsin Murray-Leach

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137441478
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The demonstrations and occupations that emerged across Europe in 2011-12 struck a chord in public opinion in a way that has not been true for many years. Based on research carried out across the continent, this volume investigates why this is occurring now and what they tell us about the future of the European project.

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Introduction – In Search of Europe’s Future: Subterranean Politics and the Other Crisis in Europe

Mary Kaldor and Sabine Selchow

Introduction

There is a growing body of research and commentary on the current global crisis and its social and political consequences. The majority of these studies take ‘the crisis’ to be a financial crisis that has been unfolding since 2007,¹ sometimes reading and analysing it as a crisis of capitalism as we know it. The outcome of these analyses is diverse and rich. Yet, they share the assumption that the financial crisis is the context that guides their research in terms of the questions that scholars ask and in terms of how they assess current political activism. In a subtle way, then, the financial crisis has come to serve as a key frame through which current socio-political developments and happenings are explored; socio-political phenomena, such as recent protests like Occupy, are analysed and, not least, evaluated with regard to their relationship to the financial crisis (and its consequences), or as a reaction against or a failure to react to it.

The starting point of this book is that when it comes to contemporary protests and the search for alternatives to existing political practices in Europe, the frame of the financial crisis predetermines analyses in an overly circumscribed way. It ‘tames’ both critical efforts to fully understand what is happening in the streets and squares worldwide, and the search for original ideas within these protests and collective activities that might form the basis for social transformation. A good example of this is the study of the impact of the financial crisis on British politics by Johal et al. (2012). In their study the authors observe that what they perceive as ‘the most profound financial and regulatory crisis in the United Kingdom since before the First World War’ did not have a major impact on the underlying structures that led to the crisis and suggest that there won’t be any substantial change ‘until some means is found of linking programmatic action with civil society discontent’ (ibid. p. 69).

In this book, we put forward an alternative conceptual and analytical frame for the critical exploration and understanding of the developments that are unfolding in Europe. Grounded in observations made within the context of a broader project on the future of Europe, and specifically building on the findings of seven empirical studies of recent protests and manifestations of collective activism across Europe that were conducted within our ‘Subterranean Politics’ project, we propose a shift in scholarly perspective, that is, in how we see and understand what is currently unfolding in Europe. To be clear, this is not a study of what is going wrong in Europe or how we should think about ‘Europe’ per se, rather about how the contemporary crisis is analytically treated and ‘perceived’ in Europe. There are two aspects to this alternative perspective.

First, we argue that the current protests and manifestations of collective activism that we see across Europe can be analysed as ‘subterranean politics’. In this introductory chapter, we summarise the overall findings of our seven case studies and present five important features of subterranean politics: the fact that current protests strike a chord and have specific ‘resonance’ among the public, the relevance of 2.0 culture, the fact that current public displays of subterranean politics are about democracy but not as usual, the observation that Europe is ‘invisible’ and, finally, the fact that protests and other manifestations of collective activism are to be seen, first and foremost, as being concerned about the state of politics and democracy in Europe, rather than simply and solely about austerity.

Second, we suggest that analysts and political decision makers need to understand that there is a crisis currently unfolding in Europe that is overshadowed by (the dominant and naturalised focus on and concern with) the financial crisis. This is the crisis of the legitimacy of political orders and practices across Europe. It is evident in the recent protests and manifestations of collective activism, such as Occupy and the 15-M, but also in the various Wutbuerger protests in Germany. It is this ‘other’ crisis that not only requires critical attention but that needs to be taken as the point of departure for social and political scientific analyses, as well as for the development of policies in the face of the current situation in Europe.

In what follows, we start by outlining the research project on which this book was based. We then describe the five features of subterranean politics in Europe that emerged from our research. Before concluding we summarise the main thrust of each of the case studies.

In search of Europe’s future: Project background and approach

The arguments presented in this chapter arise out of the initial phase of a broader research project, based at the London School of Economics. Its critical interest is the future of Europe. At the heart of this initial phase were seven distinct, commissioned empirical studies that were conducted by European research teams between autumn 2011 and spring 2012. The chapter draws on empirical data from each of these studies.

In the face of the danger of a breaking apart of the European Union (EU), the project set out to investigate whether and which constructive ideas about the future of Europe as a political project are articulated ‘on the ground’. Is there a trans-European movement (in formation) to rescue the (idea of) Europe? Which role does this idea of Europe actually play among those engaged in what might be termed politics from below? The original aim was to identify and analyse existing pro-European initiatives. What became clear from an initial exercise was that there are/were indeed a proliferation of conferences and workshops, appeals and petitions, articles and blogs proposing reform of the EU and a renewal of political Europeanism, but that these initiatives largely stem from what might be called mainstream politics – a trans-European elite that includes politicians and former politicians, think tanks and intellectuals as well as established NGOs and trade unions (see the listings of initiatives at www.subterraneanpolitics.eu). However, these multiple initiatives seemed to bear little relation to what might be described as ‘politics from below’ or, in other words, Europe ‘on the ground’. Importantly, the exercise did not seem to capture a significant development unfolding across Europe.

Once we left this narrow question and adopted a wider vantage point, it became clear that what seemed to be actually happening was a ‘bubbling up’ of various kinds of socio-political phenomena, social mobilisations and collective activities, ranging from the 15-M in Spain, Occupy LSX (London Stock Exchange) in London, the Pirate parties across Europe to the German Wutbuerger. This initial observation led us to conclude that it was valuable to take these ‘bubbling up’ politics as the focus of research in the search for the future of Europe, rather than adopting an approach of focusing solely and narrowly on pro-European initiatives. This, however, seemed to require a novel concept because none of the concepts that are usually employed in studies with similar aims – such as ‘social movement’, ‘(advocacy) networks’ and ‘civil society’, or even the more critical terms like counter-publics or resistance movements – would allow analysts to capture the diversity of politics that are currently ‘bubbling up’. Or rather, most of these terms carry a conceptual history and genealogy that prescribes the kind of research that is undertaken and the choice of research tools employed. Our focus has less to do with the theory of social action and more to do with understanding the current crisis in Europe. Hence we invented the new term ‘subterranean politics’ which could be substantiated as a consequence of the research rather than as a starting point.

It is the above reasoning and stream of initial observations that account for the somewhat unusual experimental and explorative research design of the initial phase of the broader project on the future of Europe in general, and the commissioned case studies that constitute the core of this initial phase in particular. The concept of ‘subterranean politics’ was used as a relatively open frame to guide the empirical studies, and, at the same time, constituted the blank field to be filled with meanings in the self-reflective research process. That is, our ideas about subterranean politics fed into, and also grew out of, our research, positioning the concept of ‘subterranean politics’ in a dynamic relationship with the research about it. Interestingly, the only other application of the term that we have been able to identify is very similar to our approach. Simon Tormey, building on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, suggests that the term ‘rhizomatic’ can be used to describe

‘subterranean’ underground initiatives of this kind. The rhizome makes us to distinguish between the liminal and the subliminal, between what ‘expert’ commentary sees above, and what lurks beneath the surface. Even when ‘nothing seems to be happening’ rhizome-networks can be growing, developing, readying themselves for the next opportunity to push through the surface and emerge in unpredictable ways.

(Tormey 2012: 66)

To start the exploration of ‘subterranean politics’ in Europe in this initial phase of the broader project, seven context-specific studies were commissioned. Four of them focused on national political cultures: Germany, Hungary, Italy and Spain. One analysed London as a global city and two looked at the trans-European context – one focusing on grassroots networks, the other on both alternative European initiatives and trans-European anti-austerity movements. Given the experimental nature of the research project with its explorative conceptual guiding frame of ‘subterranean politics’, the aim of these studies was not to capture a representative picture of protests across Europe but to explore ‘subterranean politics’ and to allow the concept to be filled with meaning through their respective research. The highly explorative and experimental nature of the project demanded that the empirical work had to be done by local research teams who were sufficiently familiar with the local socio-political context in order to be able to determine what were to be considered as public displays of subterranean politics in their specific contexts to begin with. Eventually, each research team engaged with and can be said to have filled in the concept of ‘subterranean politics’ differently. Likewise, each of them applied those social science research methods which they individually considered appropriate in their respective context. These included media content analysis, Protest Event Analysis (PEA), participant observation, surveys, focus group discussions and extensive ethnographic-style interviews with individual subterranean actors across Europe.

The result of this initial phase of the research project on the future of Europe was a set of empirical studies that each present context-specific arguments triggered by the experimental conceptual guiding frame of ‘subterranean politics’ and that, taken together and cross-examined, enabled us to develop broader arguments that contribute in an original way to the understanding of recent developments in and the critical search for where the future of Europe lies. These broader arguments are presented in this chapter. In addition to the observations developed in the project overall and the cross-examination of the data and findings gathered in the individual commissioned studies, it draws on existing data sets such as the survey data from protest demonstrations in seven European countries that the European Collaborative Research Projects (ECRP)-funded Protest Survey Project has been collecting (Protest Survey 2010) and European public opinion and demographics surveys including Eurobarometer (Eurobarometer 2011) and Eurostat (Eurostat 2011).

Five features of subterranean politics in Europe

What emerged from the research were five features of current protests and other manifestations of collective activism across Europe that seemed to be significant in terms of understanding the character of the European crisis. First, we noted that even though these political initiatives may not be new, what is new is the way that they strike a chord and have a particular kind of ‘resonance’ in the wider publics. This observation motivated us to conceptualise them as current displays of subterranean politics that have been ‘bubbling up’ to the surface. Second, we stressed the relevance of 2.0 culture. We suggested that 2.0 culture is at the heart of the changing nature of political activism. Third, we demonstrated that current public displays of subterranean politics are about democracy but not as usual; the prefigurative character of public displays of subterranean politics all have to do with emerging conceptions of democracy. Fourth, we observed that Europe is largely ‘invisible’ in current displays of subterranean politics. We suggested that it is oscillating between three poles: a widespread European cultural identity, especially among young people; an opposition to what is perceived as a neo-liberal bureaucracy; and a sense that the EU is abstract and remote. Finally, we argued that current protests and other manifestations of collective activism across Europe are to be seen, first and foremost, as being concerned about the state of politics and democracy in Europe, rather than simply and solely about austerity. In the following we will reflect on each of them in turn.

The ‘bubbling up’ of subterranean politics in Europe

On 15 May 2011 between 0.8 and 1.5 million people demonstrated all over Spain under the slogan ‘Real Democracy Now’. Inspired by the Arab Spring, the demonstrations led to the idea of occupying squares in Spain, Greece and later cities across Europe, as well as in the United States, Israel and Chile. On 11 February 2012, Europe saw mass protests against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), an international legal agreement seen to threaten Internet freedom and communication privacy. Numerous small and larger protests against austerity in the UK and Greece took place during 2011. In Greece, these protests appeared to be dominated by traditional social actors – the trade unions and far-left parties – but, as anecdotal evidence suggests, they also involved many people who called themselves Aganaktismenoi (indignant citizens). In the UK, new groups sprang up that distanced themselves from organised civil society groups such as trade unions or the National Union of Students, as well as from far-left parties. They included the student movement, which reacted against the Coalition government’s decision to raise student fees, and UK Uncut (www.ukuncut.org.uk), which campaigns for alternatives to austerity using direct action or civil disobedience. In the German city of Stuttgart, citizens from all walks of life and ages demonstrated against a large-scale train station development project that had been in planning since the 1990s and which was officially launched in 2009. Italy, too, has seen protests against infrastructure projects during recent years, such as opposition to the high-speed train in Val Susa (No TAV), along with work protests and campaigns against cuts in education. In Hungary, both right and left took to the streets and the airwaves in unprecedented numbers: the largest include Jobbik, the new far-right party (see further Bartlett et al. 2012), Milla, which campaigns for freedom of the press and had almost 100,000 Facebook supporters at that time, and the Two-Tailed Dog Party, a mock political party that made fun of mainstream politics and had some 80,000 Facebook followers (see Chapter 6, p. 151). And during the same period national incarnations of the Pirate Party – standing for the strengthening of civil rights, direct democracy and participation (in the form of what they call ‘liquid democracy’ or delegated voting), reform of copyright and patent law, free sharing of knowledge, data privacy, transparency and freedom of information – conquered parliamentary seats across Europe (Appelrath et al. 2012).

Social mobilisations and manifestations of collective activism of the kind we are witnessing in Europe at the moment are, of course, not new. The entire past decade has been one of large-scale social mobilisation worldwide (see the Global Civil Society Knowledgebase and Kaldor et al. 2012). The anti-Iraq war protests in 2003 brought some 11 million people to the streets (see Kaldor et al. 2003: 26–27). The social forums, the main focal point of the alter-globalisation movement, have spread worldwide, and particularly in Europe, in the years since 2001, regularly mobilising hundreds of thousands of participants around issues of social and economic justice, labour rights, environmental sustainability and participatory democracy (Pianta 2002; Glasius and Timms 2005). Environmental campaigns like the Climate Change Action camps in the UK, Belgium, France, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and elsewhere took place during this period (see further Newell 2006), as did a blossoming of all sorts of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Boxes, Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction – In Search of Europe’s Future: Subterranean Politics and the Other Crisis in Europe
• 2. In Search of European Alternatives: Anti-Austerity Protests in Europe
• 3. 2011: Subterranean Politics and Visible Protest on Social Justice in Italy
• 4. The ‘Swarm Intelligence’ and Occupy: Recent Subterranean Politics in Germany
• 5. The 15-M: A Bet for Radical Democracy
• 6. Hungary at the Vanguard of Europe’s Rearguard? Emerging Subterranean Politics and Civil Dissent
• 7. Political Blockage and the Absence of Europe: Subterranean Politics in London
• 8. Alter-Europe: Progressive Activists and Europe
• Conclusion: Towards a European Spring?
• Index