Southern European countries are currently experiencing a dramatic economic slump and fully fledged austerity measures. Accordingly, the standard of living of the majority of southern European populaces has fallen significantly. Nevertheless, the dynamics of social contention in the form of strikes and protests that accompany these experiences remain understudied. Why in certain southern European countries collective upset arising from economic deprivation has translated into frequent and large-scale contentious acts, while in others it has not? Drawing on the case of Cyprus from a comparative southern European perspective, we seek to explain how the relations between and within the party system and civil society can create the conditions that obstruct open social conflict. The intensity and nature of party-society linkages which have their causal roots in a country's historical trajectory can be a sufficient condition for the absence of strikes and protests.
