Does Class Matter in Anti-Austerity Protests? Social Class, Attitudes towards Inequality, and Political Trust in European Demonstrations in a Time of Economic Crisis

This chapter describes the frequencies of the different types resulting from that combination among protestors and see what factors favour what people call a critical attitude, the 'optimum mix' of distrust and efficacy. It compares protest survey data from seven Western European countries streets demonstrations staged between 2009 and 2012 using data deriving from the Caught in the act of protest: Contextualizing Contestation (CCC) collaborative research project. The chapter explores the impact of both political opportunities and institutional performances. Both indicators signal the institutional capacity to protect their citizens from the economic crisis, and a differentiated effect of the anti-austerity policies on citizens' lives and both are based on EUROSTAT data. It should be noted however that Italian protesters score instead higher than other countries marchers as far as the EU is concerned, while on this issue Spanish and Swedish activists are, probably for different reasons, the most distrustful, followed by the non-EU member Swiss.