Henry P. Rammelt

National University of Political Studies and Public Administration | SNSPA

In Eastern Europe the financial crisis of 2008 highlighted the gap between expectations concerning the new configuration of liberal and capitalist states on the one hand, and the social realities on the other. Waves of contention followed, which were provoked especially by austerity measures implemented by the respective governments. These were in...

Massive protest waves, mainly led by younger citizens, appeared during the past years in Romania. [Gubernat and Rammelt] provide an analysis of the production of meaning by the “Romanian street” as a collective actor. They argue that “Vrem o ţară ca afară! (We want a country like abroad!)” became the leitmotif for important parts of the Romanian pr...

This chapter takes stock of the scholarly puzzlement over recent protests in France. While some scholars have wondered whether the ‘contentious French’ (Tilly, 1986) are not that contentious anymore (Chabanet et al., 2018), recent mobilizations indicate a revival of street politics. We argue that France no longer fits its traditional portrait of an...

Romanian society transitioned from an apathetic political culture to one in which protesting became a constant component. This chapter analyses the effects of regime transformation, cultural consumption, and social media activism on protest participation in Romania. Analysing the passage from non-involved individuals to politically active citizens,...

Thirty years since the regime-changes in Eastern Europe. Thirty years of debates on democratization, illiberal trends and deconsolidation. This chapter takes stock of the puzzle around anticipated chances for democratic consolidation in Romania and the more recent appraisal for citizens’ democratic attitudes and resilience in this country. While Ro...

Spatial dimensions of protest and social movements have been a rather neglected subfield within social movement studies (Routledge 2013). This is even the more surprising as different social groups attribute different meanings and values to space. A series of anti-establishment protests culminated in a massive wave of anti-corruption protests in 20...

Intersections.EEJSP 6(4): 94-110. Abstract In the context of recent global economic and political changes, trade unions were forced to find new discursive and organisational strategies, as well as new means of imposing their agendas. However, the form and configurations of protests in Romania have shifted significantly from the workers' strikes of...

Massive protest waves, mainly led by younger citizens, appeared during the past years in Romania. Gubernat & Rammelt provide an analysis of the production of meaning by the "Romanian street" as a collective actor. They argue that "Vrem o ţară ca afară! (We want a country like abroad!)" became the leitmotif for important parts of the Romanian protes...

In September 2019, the third Global Climate Strike organized by the Fridays For Future (FFF) protest campaign mobilized 6000 protest events in 185 countries and brought 7.6 million participants out onto the streets. This report analyses survey data about participants from 19 cities around the world and compares it to data from an international surv...

In September 2019, the third Global Climate Strike organized by the Fridays For Future (FFF) protest campaign mobilized 6000 protest events in 185 countries and brought 7.6 million participants out onto the streets. This report analyses survey data about participants from 19 cities around the world and compares it to data from an international surv...

The new type of collective action and the accompanying waves of protests, termed by Pleyers the “2010 movements” (Pleyers 2015), was mainly defined by the fact that the participants “are mobilizing around specific projects, connected among each other through informal networks and personal affinities” (Pleyers 2016). Online social networks facilitat...

The present article analyzes the new culture of protest in Romania, a type of engagement we define as recreative activism. During the past years, young and culturally-inclined citizens started demanding more and more to have a share in the political process. To explain the novelty of this phenomenon, we argue that patterns of cultural consumption i...

La crise financière a démystifié le système capitaliste aux yeux de larges segments de la population d’Europe de l'Est, exacerbant le décalage entre les attentes suscitées par le processus de démocratisation et la situation, souvent difficile, d’un nombre important de citoyens. Dans ce contexte, l'indignation que certains d’entre eux expriment s'es...

An increasing number of studies dealing with democratic transitions in Eastern Europe, especially those dedicated to aspects of social capital and political culture, stress their comparative component. The newly democratic countries in this region, used as unit of analysis, are often treated as being monolithic blocks. Even though they are not as h...

This article attempts to analyze the connection between civic engagement and social capital, within the domain of social movements. Often left behind by the majority of key theoreticians of social movements, the notion of social capital brings to light the essential influence of the past, when talking about patterns of social engagement. Taking a c...

This paper deals with the international media coverage of the Romanian protests from January-February 2012. The purpose is to analyze whether the events managed to transcend the borders of national representation in the media. Our hypothesis is that, due to the fact that Romania is not considered to be a major player in world politics and economy,...