Collective Responses to the Economic Crisis in the Public Domain: Myth or Reality?

We challenge the common wisdom that the Great Recession has produced radical changes in political behavior. Accordingly, we assess the extent to which the crisis has spurred protest activities and given socioeconomic issues a higher saliency in public debates. We also assess how far the crisis has provided a more prominent place for economic and labor actors as subject actors, a more prominent place of economic and labor actors as object actors, as well as a more prominent place of economic and labor actors as addressees in claims making on the economic crisis. Our findings show that the crisis has not produced such radical changes in all these aspects, though it had some impact. At a more general level, our analysis unveils the normative underpinnings of the commonly held view that the economic crisis has fed a grievance-based conflict between capital and labor going beyond specific patterns and configurations in each country.