The rhythm of conflict: Protest-counterprotest dynamics around far-right related issues

The advance of the far right has deeply penetrated liberal democracies, both in ballots and the streets, even in those lands traditionally hostile to reactionary sirens. This rise did not leave challengers unresponsive: institutional and non-institutional actors, indeed, mobilised to respond – directly or indirectly – to this wave. Framed in a larger perspective, this struggle is a repercussion of the structuring motion of old and new cleavages, and its investigation may enrich our understanding of the expanding polarisation in the political conflict. The paper aims at contributing to the scholarship on the political conflict, moving beyond electoral politics and investigating contentious interactions between the far right and its challengers in the streets. Also, it seeks to understand how this coupled dance is influenced by the local context in which protests are embedded. To do so, the empirical work analyses protest events promoting and countering the issues most emphasised by far-right actors. Against this backdrop, the protest-counterprotest dynamic offers a suitable perspective for understanding the local political struggle around the emergence of the far right. Drawing on a protest event approach, the paper analyses protest politics around far-right related issues through a comparative perspective at the local level. In particular, the research relies on an original dataset that gathers events both supporting and countering far-right related issues. Following the paired comparison design, two South European regions that share similar systemic factors have been selected: Andalusia in Spain and Emilia-Romagna in Italy. Indeed, they both have a long-lasting leftist tradition that has been recently challenged by the electoral far-right eruption. However, the two cases chosen have contextual differences that allow an explanatory investigation about how opportunities and threats shape the mobilization. Also, the analysis focuses on the period between 2015 and 2022, providing a longitudinal view of the phenomenon. In the first part, the paper offers a preliminary picture of this political conflict at the local level by describing mobilizations supporting and countering far-right stances. Then it seeks to discern how protests and counterprotests interact influencing each other, showing the rhythm of this coupled dance, especially on the frequency of events and the tactics adopted by actors. Furthermore, the cross-national design allows for exploring how different local political and institutional characteristics shape divergent interactions based on local political and societal characteristics. Here, preliminary results suggest that the coupled interrelation between the far right and its challengers is strongly influenced by electoral politics, where the radical right-wing populist growth plays a central role.