European Social Movements and the Transnationalization of Public Spheres

Anti-austerity and pro-democracy mobilisation from the national to the global

Angela Bourne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138495142
• eBook ISBN: 9781351024525
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Many contemporary social movements observe, copy, learn from, coordinate and cooperate with other movements abroad, and some mobilise to influence processes of global governance. Can these transnational dimensions of mobilization transform the territorial scale of political debate on issues of common concern in public spheres? In contrast to many existing studies, which focus on the media as carriers of public sphere transnationalisation, this book presents a theoretical and empirical exploration of the role of social movements in such processes. As 'arenas' or subaltern counterpublics in themselves, social movements may provide a setting in which activists come to frame claims in a comparative manner, interact with activists from other countries, frame problems as matters of transnational concerns or consider themselves members of transnational communities. As 'actors' social movements may contribute to the transnational transformation of public spheres by directing claims to political authorities beyond the state, claiming to represent transnational constituencies, and focus on similar issues and use similar frames of reference as movements abroad. The book's case studies addressing efforts to build transnational social movements and transnational dimensions of anti-austerity and prodemocracy movements in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey and Ireland provide contemporary empirical illustrations of such processes at work.

The chapters were originally published in a special issue of the Journal of Civil Society.

Social Movements and the Transnational Transformation of Public Spheres

Angela Bourne

ABSTRACT

This article presents a theoretical framework for the empirical study of social movements as agents in the transnational transformation of public spheres. It draws on the existing literature on transnationalization of public spheres, which predominantly focuses on the broadcast media as carriers of the public sphere, to conceptualize transnational public spheres and mechanisms of public sphere transformation and to identify indicators for measuring the degree of that transformation. It then turns to argue that conceptualization of transnational public spaces as complex, multilayered, and overlapping permits analysis of social movements as agents of public sphere transformation in the form of actors or arenas, either within transnational spaces or through more routine forms of contestation within the nation state. I then adapt indicators developed to measure the degree of transnationalization of public spheres and illustrate their applicability for the study of social movements using contemporary examples of movement practices and discourses.

Introduction

As many commentators have observed, one of the distinctive characteristics of the wave of social movement mobilizations in the wake of the financial crisis of the late 2000s were efforts to construct new spaces for public debate (Castells, 2012; della Porta & Mattoni, 2014; Flesher Forminaya, 2014; Flesher Forminaya & Cox, 2013). The occupation of public squares—and indeed the emergence of the global Occupy movement—provides a potent contemporary illustration of efforts by social movements to create alternative agora for discussion of public issues, although they are by no means isolated examples. Social media platforms and transnational networks like ATTAC, Blockupy, or the Alter Summit provided additional civil society fora for discussion of public issues of common concern to transnational communities (Castells, 2012; Chatzopoulou & Bourne, 2017). These practices illustrate the point that social movements may serve, on the one hand, as public spheres in themselves, or what Nancy Fraser called ‘subaltern counter publics’ (1992, p. 134), and on the other, as actors within broader national and transnational public spheres coalescing around institutionalized arenas of governance. They also provide a pertinent setting in which to examine the role of social movements in the transformation of public spheres, and more specifically the transnationalization of public spheres, given the interrelation of local, state, European, and global contexts of crisis contestation. This is the topic I address in this article, which aims to present the theoretical foundations of an approach for studying social movements as agents in the transnational transformation of public spheres.

I begin with a discussion of foundational insights drawn from the existing theoretical and empirical literature regarding conceptualization of transnational public spheres, mechanisms of public sphere transformation, and indicators for measuring the degree of that transformation. In the next part, I argue that conceptualization of transnational public spaces as complex, multilayered, and overlapping permits analysis of social movements as agents of public sphere transformation as either actors or arenas within transnational spaces or more routine forms of contestation within the nation state. I then adapt indicators developed to measure the degree of transnationalization of public spheres and illustrate their applicability for the study of social movements using examples of practices and discourses of social movements discussed elsewhere and in this special issue—namely the transnational anti-austerity movement, Blockupy (Chatzopoulou & Bourne, 2017), the Spanish housing movement, Platform for Mortgage Affected People and 15 M (or indignados movement) (Feenstra, 2017, see also Bourne & Chatzopoulou, in press), and the Irish Right2Water and Right2Change campaigns (Dunphy, 2017)—as well as substate nationalist movements that mobilized during Catalan and Scottish independence campaigns (Bourne, 2014) and a prisoner amnesty group of the radical Basque nationalist movement.

Social movements, public spheres, and the transnational transformation of public spheres

Following Habermas’ (1989) seminal contribution in the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, a public sphere can be conceived in ideal terms as a space or arena in which people, on the basis of equality, discover and deliberate in a rational and non-coercive manner public issues of common concern. The possibilities for exercising ‘public reason’ are intimately linked to possibilities for democratic governance insofar as they provide a site for formation of public opinion and the legitimization of political institutions in democratic systems. A public sphere may also have integrative properties, where individuals constitute themselves as a democratic political community.

Building on critiques that Habermas’ early conception of the public sphere failed to recognize the coexistence of plural, overlapping, and competing publics within the same communicative spaces, and its anchoring within a ‘Westphalian political imaginary’ assuming a political community bounded by its own territorial state, recent scholarship has embraced more complex conceptualizations of the public sphere (for such critiques, see Calhoun, 1992, pp. 33–36; de Vrees, 2007, p. 5; Fraser, 1992, 2007). This has included an effort to understand the implications for political communication and democratic practices of new political arenas emerging in Europe and beyond, with particular attention directed to the impact of the European Union (della Porta & Caiani, 2009; Fossum & Schlesinger, 2007a; Fraser, 2007, 2013; Gerhards, 2001; Koopmans & Statham, 2010; Risse, 2010, 2014; Salvatore & Trenz, 2013; Statham & Trenz, 2013, 2015; Trenz & Eder, 2004; Wessler, Peters, Brüggemann, Kleinen von Königslöw, & Stifft, 2008). In this literature, a key underlying normative concern has been the quality of democratic politics in the EU and more specifically the validity of the common assumption that democratic quality is constrained by the absence of an EU ‘demos’ due, at least in part, to the absence of a sufficiently developed transnational space for political communication. This literature provides a number of foundational insights for understanding the role social movements play in the transnational transformation of public spheres, namely a complex, multilayered conception of public spheres, theoretical proposals identifying mechanisms of public sphere transformation, and the development of indicators for observing transnational transformation of public spheres.

Conceptualizing transnational public spheres: ‘Top-down’ versus ‘bottom-up’ approaches

One of the major contributions of the more recent literature has been theoretical work conceptualizing public spheres as complex, multilayered, overlapping spheres of communication. Eriksen’s (2007) work on the EU as a sphere of public debate, for instance, identified three different kinds of European public spheres, each of which cross cuts national and transnational governance arenas. Eriksen distinguished between ‘strong publics’, ‘a general European public sphere’ and ‘segmented publics’ (2007, pp. 32–37). A ‘strong public’ entailed ‘legally institutionalised and regulated discourses specialized in collective will formation at the policy centre’ (Eriksen, 2007, p. 32). In the EU, these take the form of institutionalized deliberative spaces such as the European Parliament or the 2002–2003 Convention on the Future of Europe (Eriksen, 2007, p. 36). A second type was a ‘general European public’, or ‘communicative spaces of civil society in which all may participate on a free and equal basis and, due to proper rights entrenchment, can deliberate subject only to the constraints of reason’ (Eriksen, 2007, p. 32). These two kinds of public are effectively modelled on the EU conceived as ‘a rights-based federal union, based on core tenets of the democratic constitutional state’ (Fossum & Schlesinger, 2007b, pp. 12, 14–16). ‘Segmented publics’, in contrast, ‘evolve around policy networks constituted by a selection of actors with a common interest in certain issues, problems and solutions’ (Eriksen, 2007, p. 33). Here no ‘unifying form of discourse develops but rather discourses that vary according to the issue fields that reflect the institutional structure of the EU’ (Eriksen, 2007, p. 33). This is effectively founded on the conception of the EU as a regulatory system based on transnational networks or issue-oriented and relatively self-contained epistemic communities and in which ‘a European public space … is nationally segmented’ (Fossum & Schlesinger, 2007b, pp. 13–14).

While Eriksen’s conception of ‘segmented publics’ explicitly models a transnational public sphere (the EU) as an overlapping and multilayered arena, this and his other models might nevertheless be considered top-down models, insofar as they superimpose transnational onto national public spheres. An alternative approach, which might be called ‘bottom up’, starts from national public spheres and considers how they may develop new or more significant transnational dimensions. It follows the observation on the part of many scholars that the absence of a common transnational language, a transnational media system, or shared identities limited prospects for the development of ‘national public sphere writ large’ as conceived in Habermas’ (1996a) early work (for further discussion, see de Vrees, 2007; Zimmermann & Favell, 2011). Transnationalization of national public spheres involved an extension of the scale of political communication through, among other things, an increasing awareness of publics in other states, a synchronization of political debates across national spheres, a convergence in meaning structures, the circulation of ideas between speakers in different countries, and for some, multilayered identities encompassing national and transnational communities (Koopmans & Statham, 2010; Risse, 2010; Statham & Trenz, 2013; Wessler et al., 2008).

Transformation of public spheres

Another major contribution of the existing literature has been theoretical work on the processes through which public spheres may be transformed to encompass transnational communities of political communication. Theoretical accounts of the processes by which public spheres may acquire transnational dimensions emphasize both the impact of broader changes in the structure of governance as well as social processes whereby individuals engaged in critical public debate redefine and reconstitute existing public spheres. The former argument is essentially founded on the expectation that emergence of authoritative supranational institutions, with the EU as the primary example, creates conditions in which new patterns of contestation and communication emerge (Gerhards, 2001; Statham & Trenz, 2013, p. 9, 2015, p. 288; Wessler et al., 2008, p. 1).

This line of argument has been developed in greatest depth in recent research on the ‘politicization’ of the EU, which focuses on a shift from elite-dominated contestation over EU politics to one involving wider publics in contestation and debate over EU policy, processes of decision-making as such, and the purposes of the EU itself (de Wilde & Zürn, 2012, p. 139; Statham & Trenz, 2013, p. 7, 2015). Statham and Trenz argue, for instance, that in addition to the role of the media as carriers of an expanding public debate about Europe (2015, pp. 292, 294), the consolidation of the EU as an advanced governance system alters political opportunity structures (Statham & Trenz, 2013, p. 9): It gives some collective actors access to new supranational decision fora, while constraining mobilization opportunities in the domestic arena for other actors (Statham & Trenz, 2013, p. 9). Furthermore, insofar as European integration may create ‘winners’ and ‘losers’—in material terms, political authority, and identities—it provides incentives for broader public contestation about Europe (Fligstein, 2008; Hooghe & Marks, 2008; Statham & Trenz, 2013, p. 9, 2015, p. 299). These may come to ‘structure political conflict along pro-and anti-European lines’ (Statham & Trenz, 2015, p. 294). Member state elites have often sought to dampen public engagement in EU politics, but mass publics may come to engage in contestation in response to EU-level processes like new treaties (notably referenda on the Constitutional Treaty), and ‘external shocks’ like the financial crisis (de Wilde & Zürn, 2012; Statham & Trenz, 2013, 2015). Features of national political systems may also be important for understanding these processes, such as the degree of media receptiveness to EU affairs, dynamics of party competition, and the nature of national narratives, myths, and stories about the EU (de Wilde & Zürn, 2012; Hooghe & Marks, 2008; Statham & Trenz, 2013, 2015).

A second approach focuses on intersubjectivity of social actors, who may disseminate new or adapted practices and discourses that redefine identities, social bonds, and practices of political communication (Calhoun, 2002; Eder, 2007; Risse, 2010). As Risse put it,

public spheres emerge in the process during which people debate controversial issues … The more we debate issues, the more we leave the position of neutral observers [of others beyond the national spheres]—thereby creating and/or reifying political communities in the process. (2010, p. 120)

Such processes are likely to be conflictual: Political contestation over matters of public concern open possibilities for critical self-reflection, reflexivity, and social learning. Social learning may take place when people argue together in public as equals, which may create reciprocal obligations and bind them together into a process of ‘collective will formation’ (Eder, 2007, p. 49). Reflexivity is important insofar as ‘members of the public are speakers who debate and deliberate not only by reflecting on their own interests and values but also on their own identity as autonomous agents’ (Salvatore & Trenz, 2013, p. 2). Moreover, ‘affirmation of the normative legitimacy of the public sphere itself has a structuring effect on the emergence of “world society”’ insofar as the ‘public sphere is evoked as a normative horizon of a cosmopolitan community of citizens’ (Salvatore & Trenz, 2013, p. 4; see also Eder, 2007, p. 46).

Measuring transnationalization of public spheres

A further major theoretical contribution of this literature is the wealth of insights it provides into observing and measuring the transnationalization of public spheres. Here I briefly review three of the most sophisticated approaches, namely those by Koopmans and Statham (2010), Risse (2010) and Wessler et al. (2008). Koopmans and Statham’s approach (2010), which draws on Koopmans and Erbe’s (2004) work on vertical and horizontal Europeanization, identifies progressively wider territorially based spheres of communication arranged in concentric circles around individual national public spheres. The spatial reach and boundaries of political communication are investigated in relation to the patterning of ‘communicative flows’ and ‘the relative density of public communication within and between different political spaces’ (Koopmans & Statham, 2010, p. 38). In the model, a centrally located national space is surrounded by the national spaces of separate European countries, which is in turn surrounded by a supranational European political space where the institutions and polices of organizations like the EU, the Council of Europe, or the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) are the focus of communication. Beyond this, a broader sphere includes the national political spaces of countries outside Europe, while an outer sphere contain...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Social Movements as ‘Arenas’ and ‘Actors’ in Transnationalizing Public Spheres
• 1 Social Movements and the Transnational Transformation of Public Spheres
• 2 More than a Copy Paste: The Spread of Spanish Frames and Events to Portugal
• 3 Beyond Nationalism? The Anti-Austerity Social Movement in Ireland: Between Domestic Constraints and Lessons from Abroad
• 4 National Anti-austerity Protests in a European Crisis: Comparing the Europeanizing Impact of Protest in Greece and Germany During the Eurozone Crisis
• 5 The Gezi Protests and the Europeanization of the Turkish Public Sphere
• 6 European Counterpublics? DiEM25, Plan B and the Agonistic European Public Sphere
• 7 Essay: Rethinking Global Civil Society and the Public Sphere in the Age of Pro-democracy Movements
• Conclusion: Social Activism Against Austerity – The Conditions for Participatory and Deliberative Forms of Democracy
• Index