Party Responses to Social Movements : Challenges and Opportunities

Across the West, the explosion of social movement activity since the late 1960s has constituted a “participatory revolution” that has posed profound challenges for formal political parties. Through an analysis of new interviews, institutional documents, and a host of other largely unexploited sources, Daniela R. Piccio provides a rich and empirically grounded exploration of the wide-ranging responses to these movements. Focusing on Italy and the Netherlands since the 1970s, Party Responses to Social Movements demonstrates how political parties have incorporated the demands of movements to a surprising extent, even as both have grappled with fundamental and inevitable tensions between their respective roles and aims.

Daniela R. Piccio is post-doctoral fellow at the University of Torino. She studied political science at the Università degli Studi di Roma Tre and Leiden University, and she received her doctorate from the European University Institute in Florence. Her main research interests include political representation, political parties, and their relationship with the citizens and the state.