Towards a ‘Non-Global Justice Movement’? Two Paths to Re-Scaling the Left Contention in the Czech Republic
| Title in English | Towards a ‘Non-Global Justice Movement’?Two Paths to Re-Scaling the Left Contention in the Czech Republic |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | This chapter focuses on the problem of "failure" of Global Justice Movement to mobilize citizens against the recent international economic crisis and its consequences. It focuses on this problem through a case study of leftist protest politics in the Czech Republic but it explores processes that might also have taken place in other democratic countries. The analysis focused on the dynamics of diffusion and scale-shift mechanisms behind the mobilisation of Czech left movements. It has showed that, while the opportunities provided by international financial institutions contributed to the transnationalisation of domestic contention in 2000, the subsequent time period witnessed the left active on the local and national levels. Consequently, transnational diffusion occurred in the first period and hardly played any role in the second one, in which the left remained within the scope of domestic political institutions, their actors and strategies. Although the financial crisis and subsequent economic downturn represented a chance for the left to point out the supranational roots of national and local hardships, it has not been utilised (not only) in the Czech Republic. There is a strong path-dependency in Czech social movements that influences the readiness and swiftness of their response to new challenges. With the partial exception of the radical left at the beginning of the period under study here (which was largely driven from abroad), in terms of issues and framing, the Czech left has been self-centred and nation-state-dependent and has tended towards local contention, even in the present era of intensified internationalisation and globalisation. Even if the particular trajectories of the two left components – the moderate and radical left – were very different, both of them focused more on the imminent consequences of global economic friction than on its more universal origins. |
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