Local Dynamics of Contentious Responses to Far-Right Politics

In the last decade, the far right has penetrated almost all European countries, even in those lands that were traditionally hostile to conservative sirens. This upsurge has both materialized in electoral politics, with the impressive success of radical right-wing parties, and in contentious politics, with bottom-up protests raising nativist and authoritarian stances. Correspondingly, a constellation of actors mobilized in the street to challenge this advance in various ways, from targeting emerging extreme and radical actors to supporting the issues contested by their ideology (such as multiculturalism, LGBTQIA* rights, or the antifascist memory). Yet, a comprehensive perspective about which actors participate in these responses, which tactics they adopt, and around which issues they mobilize is still largely missing. By joining the literature on contentious politics with that on militant democracy, the paper aims to address these concerns with a comparative and longitudinal investigation of the local dynamics of contentious mobilization challenging far-right politics. It innovates the research in two directions. Firstly, while previous studies have mostly focused on responses targeting pre-selected far-right organizations, the paper integrates this predominant actor-centered perspective with an issue-related one. Second, it adopts an extensive approach by including diverse actors that are engaged in this contention (e.g., from institutional and electoral actors to grassroots and loosely organized ones) and diverse types of action (e.g., from institutional ceremonies to violent counterdemonstrations). To do so, the empirical study adopts a most similar system design, examining this contention in two southern European regions (Andalusia in Spain and Emilia-Romagna in Italy) with a leftist tradition that have recently experienced an upsurge of the far right. Following the Protest Event Analysis approach, data was collected through quality local newspapers. The original dataset covers 825 contentious events from 2015 up to 2023 and it accounts for various information at the event- and contextual-level. The unit of analysis includes diverse types of contentious actions challenging far-right politics, including both those directly targeting far-right actors and those loosely competing with them around contended issues. Preliminary findings show that, in both the cases investigated, the set of actors contentiously responding to far-right politics is highly heterogeneous. About the tactical repertoire, when the levels of far-right mobilization are lower, the contentious responses are mostly peaceful and non-violent; conversely, when the levels are higher, the mobilization against far-right politics is more often confrontational and violent. Also, demonstrative events are more likely to be attended by institutionalized actors, while disruptive ones are more likely to be attended by loosely organized actors. Finally, how issues motivate the contentious mobilization challenging far-right politics seems to be strongly context-sensitive, depending on the political agenda of national radical right-wing parties.