ESA RN32 Lunchtime Seminar 17 February 2025 - Manuela Caiani

ESA RN32 Lunchtime Seminar 17 February 2025 - Manuela Caiani

Join us for another online lunchtime seminar with Manuela Caiani on February 17, 2025.

Manuela will speak about 'movement-parties' on the radical right, outlining the different paths or forms that relations between movements and parties on this reactionary side of the political spectrum can take (e.g. cooperation, conflict, cooptation, etc.) and the conditions at the macro-contextual and meso-organisational levels of analysis that can explain them. Several empirical cases from Europe and beyond will be offered to illustrate the argument, reflecting on similarities and differences with left-wing parties. Based on a common analytical framework, the paper offers a highly differentiated view of the development of radical right politics in Europe through the interplay between (radical right) political parties and movements. It addresses some of the following questions What are the main characteristics of 'movement parties' on the radical right? What organisational and strategic features qualify these networks of organisations as 'movement parties' rather than 'party movements'? What is the life cycle of movement parties in terms of their emergence and breakthrough, the structuring of movement-party relations and the construction of shared collective identities?

Manuela Caiani is Associate Professor in Political Science at the Scuola Normale Superiore, where she is part of the COSMOS (Centre on Social Movement Studies) research team. She has received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Florence, Italy, in 2006 and is the past recipient of various post doctoral fellowships (Doctoral TRA Fellowship, START Center, 2009, University of Maryland, USA), among which the Marie Curie (Rey Juan Carlos University, Madrid) grant. She has received her national Italian Abilitazione for full professorship in Political Science and in Political Sociology, in 2017.

Her research focuses on Social Movements and Europeanization/transnationalization; Far Right Politics; Extremism online; Populism; Movement-parties; Qualitative methods of social research. She is Convenor of the Standing Group ‘Political Participation and Social Movements’ of the Italian Political Science Association (SISP) and Coordinator of the Master in Political Science and Sociology of the Scuola Normale Superiore. She is Co-director of the International Observatory on Social Cohesion and Inclusion-OCIS, https://osservatoriocoesionesociale.eu/.

Prof. Caiani has directed and collaborated in various international projects (Horizon projects; Volkswagen Foundation; Europe for Citizens Programme; FP4, FP5, FP7; PRIN; Jean Monnet; Research Grant Jubilaumsfonds, ONB).

She has published in, among others, the following peer-reviewed journals: Social Movement Studies, EJPR, Mobilization, Acta Politica, West European Politics, Government and Opposition, European Union Politics, South European Society and Politics, RISP; & for the following publishers: Oxford University Press, Ashgate, Palgrave, Routledge.

Host or Publisher ESA RN32 Political Sociology