The cascading crisis and the changing base of popular protest: The case of Iceland

Abstract

The rise of economic injustice protests during the Great Recession era – i.e. against economic inequality, flawed democracy, and austerity – begs the question whether the social and political divisions underlying protest behavior have changed. Iceland offers a microcosm for studying such changes. Since the crisis struck, huge protests against economic injustice have emerged repeatedly, providing an opportunity to study how protest behavior has changed during the cascading crisis, that is, a crisis that started in finance but then led to recession, austerity, and political crisis. This article uses survey data obtained in Iceland before the crisis, and during two protest waves emerging at different stages of the crisis, that is, during the 2008–2009 financial crisis, and during the 2016 ‘Panama Papers leak’. The author finds that economic vulnerability, perceptions of flawed democracy, and political centrism emerged as predictors of protest behavior during the crisis. But the role of ‘new social movements’ allegiance seems to diminish in the later stage of the crisis. The study supports broad theses about changes in popular protest, yet it illustrates the need to embed the work in a given (evolving) social context.