This paper aims to offer an exploratory and conceptual approach on the political construction of the financial crisis and reform, using Greece as a case study. It will do so moving beyond claims making to include the wider repertoire of all political and economic claims made by the multiplicity of actors addressing a specific political topic in the public sphere, where social issues are defined.
According to Koopmans and Statham (1999) the synthesis of the protest event and political discourse approaches allows for the study of both discursive and institutional contextual variables. Extending the protest event design, they switch the focus from “protest“ to “political claims making“, and from “movement“ to “multi-organizational field,“ analyzing all actions by all actors which are relevant to a specific political issue field. Following Franzosi (1999), they point to the importance of mapping the relationships between actors, which facilitates the understanding of the dynamic process of a political conflict and the identification of shifting alliances and oppositions between actors (Koopmans and Statham, 1999, Kousis 2009).
The paper will draw from the above approach as well as studies concerning state-social movement interactions (Goldstone and Tilly, Kousis 2008). It aims to lay out, a) the role played by powerful institutional actors at the community, national and supranational level (IMF and EU institutions), including corporate, professional and citizen-worker groups, b) the linkages and strategies which they develop to promote their claims, or counterclaims in a wide variety of policy areas, especially related to privatization and development.
