Social Movement Studies ISSN: 1474-2837 (Print) 1474-2829 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csms20 Competing modes of coordination in the Greek anti-austerity campaign, 2010–2012 Kostas Kanellopoulos, Konstantinos Kostopoulos, Dimitris Papanikolopoulos & Vasileios Rongas To cite this article: Kostas Kanellopoulos, Konstantinos Kostopoulos, Dimitris Papanikolopoulos & Vasileios Rongas (2017) Competing modes of coordination in the Greek anti-austerity campaign, 2010–2012, Social Movement Studies, 16:1, 101-118, DOI: 10.1080/14742837.2016.1153464 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2016.1153464 Published online: 07 Mar 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 151 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=csms20 Download by: [85.74.178.175] Date: 10 January 2017, At: 11:04 SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES, 2017 VOL. 16, NO. 1, 101–118 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2016.1153464 Competing modes of coordination in the Greek anti-austerity campaign, 2010–2012 Kostas Kanellopoulosa , Konstantinos Kostopoulosb, Dimitris Papanikolopoulosa and Vasileios Rongasa aSociology, University of Crete, Rethimno, Greece; bPolitical Science & History, Panteion University of Political & Social Sciences, Athens, Greece ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Collective reactions to the Greek debt crisis and the austerity measures Received 24 November 2014 imposed by consecutive Greek governments in accordance with the Troika Accepted 6 September 2015 of lenders (European Central Bank, European Commission, IMF) have been KEYWORDS widely reported by the media; however, the study of contentious events and Protest networks; eurozone episodes has only recently started on a systematic basis. Since the beginning crisis; Greek politics; modes of the debt crisis, an impressive series of large protests and general strikes of coordination; anti- occurred in Greece against austerity policies. In this paper, we will focus on austerity the main organizations/groups that called and coordinated 31 large protest events from February 2010 until November 2012. Our sample includes trade unions, political parties of the left, anarchist groups, students, justice oriented groups, professional organizations, and Indignados, while their repertoires of contention are combinations of demonstrative, confrontational and violent protests, direct-democratic action, threats, symbolic violence or/ and destruction of property. Viewing collective action as an operation of inter-organizational networks that also comprise different and competing modes of coordination, our aim here is to examine how these very different groups managed to work together or, to what extent they did so. Were the differences in the ideological patterns of each challenging group an obstacle to inter-organizational alliances? How did threat and the changing political opportunity structure shape the Greek anti-austerity campaign? Introduction Greece, a euro zone member, was one of the European countries most severely hit by the current economic and financial crisis (Patomaki, 2013). In spring 2010, the national economy went almost bankrupt. The EU, the European Central Bank, and the IMF formed a ‘Troika’ that provided financial aid to Greece and as an exchange the center-left government of PASOK (Greek socialists) signed a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ on the structural reforms and the austerity measures that had to be imposed upon Greek economy and society. This ‘Memorandum’ received fierce opposition from the beginning. For the three-year period we examine here, austerity policies deepened the economic recession; new more severe measures were imposed and consecutive mass protests erupted all over Greece forming an impressive anti-austerity campaign (Diani & Kousis, 2014; Kousis, 2013). At the same time, similar anti-austerity protests were CONTACT Kostas Kanellopoulos [email protected] © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 102 K. KANELLOPOULOS et AL. erupting in various places around the world leading many scholars to argue for the emergence of a new global wave of protest (Della Porta & Mattoni, 2014; Flesher Fominaya & Cox, 2013; Tejerina, Perugorría, Benski, & Langman, 2013). In spite of the similar anti-austerity frames and the common repertoires of action of these protests, their evolution largely depends on the particularities of each case (Flesher Fominaya, 2015; Kanellopoulos, Papanikolopoulos, & Loukakis, 2015). In the Greek case special attention has been paid on the one hand to the role of new social actors – either individuals entering the politics of protest for the first time (Rudig & Karyotis, 2013), or new social categories like young unemployed or precarious workers (Sotirakopoulos & Sotiropoulos, 2013; Vogiatzoglou, 2014) – and on the other hand to the political impact of recent protests in reshaping the Greek political system (Kousis & Kanellopoulos, 2014; Kouvelakis, 2011). However, the role of major players in the anti-austerity campaign at the meso-level of mobilization like the trade union confed- erations and the political parties and organizations of the Left, has not yet been studied thoroughly. The period beginning in spring 2010 is a typical period of ‘thickened history’ (Tilly, 1978) – the pace of challenging events accelerated when whole populations engaged at a higher level of contention. The high frequency of protests that were synchronized at the national level, the high level of participants, the broad cross-class coalitions that involved a large number of challenging groups and the general public, make us argue for the emergence of a sustained anti-austerity campaign in Greece. In order to understand how these groups managed to work together, to what extent they did so, and the nature of their coalition, an array of insights from network analysis seems appropriate. These insights will help us first identify the various organizational networks operating in the campaign, and then focus on the alliance building processes that facilitated the inter-organizational collaboration. Thus, in our research we rely on network analysis to map the recent Greek anti-austerity campaign and then we turn our attention on the alliance building processes and on the different modes of coordination among the different actors within the emerging protest network trying to explore the relations among the different protest actors and understand whether this new anti-austerity context creates a whole new dynamic, or pre-existing network structures and competing relations continue to shape the field. Network analysis and modes of coordination Network analysis has long been applied in contentious politics (Curtis & Zurcher, 1973; Knoke, 1990; Zald & McCarthy, 1987). However, most studies focus on recruitment processes (Fernadez & McAdam, 1989; McAdam, 1988; McAdam & Paulsen, 1993; Snow, Zurcher, & Ekland-Olson, 1980), or on interorganizational dynamics (Diani, 1995; Rosenthal, McDonald, Ethier, Fingurtd, & Karant, 1985). Other scholars have addressed the community embeddedness that allow for participation in movements (Ansell, 2003; Gould, 1991). Diani has approached social movements as networks and has proposed a relevant research agenda (Diani, 2002, 2003b). But besides the advances offered by a growing body of studies on network effects, there is still little theoretical agreement on how collective action is coordinated and moreover what are the basic mechanisms of this coordination (Diani, 2015; Passy, 2003; Passy & Monsch, 2014). Moreover, seen from a strategic action field perspective, network analysis is very helpful to map a field but is ‘… mute on the dynamics that shape fields’ (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012, p. 29). Recent research has emphasized the importance of alliances to social movements by exploring how such alliances come about (for an overview see Van Dyke & McCammon, 2010). As researchers turn to the examination of conditions facilitating inter-organizational collaboration, the list of the explanatory factors keep growing: social ties and especially brokers or bridge builders (Obach, 2004; Rose, 2000), common interests and congruent political identities and/or ideologies (McCammon & Campbell, 2002; Rose, 2000), political opportunities and – mainly – political and economic threats (Almeida, 2010; Borland, 2010; Isaac, 2010; Van Dyke, 2003; Van Dyke & Soule, 2002). However, as McCammon and Dyke (2010) suggest, the major challenge for the researchers is not multiplying the SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUdies 103 key-factors, but considering their interactions, thus how they combine to produce alliances among social movement organizations (SMOs). Diani (2015) in a recent study proposed to look at the modes of coordination of collective action as consisting of different combinations of the mechanisms of resource allocation (the whole set of proce- dures through which decisions are taken regarding the use of organizational resources) and boundary definition (the internal functioning of an organization regarding the creation and reproduction of boundaries), to better capture and analyze the formation of protest campaigns and their relational dimensions (Diani, 2015, p. 15). Diani distinguishes between four different modes of coordination, namely the organizational mode which assigns limited importance to cooperation and alliances and is more promoted by units