M Grasso
Biographic Data
| ID | 58655 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Grasso |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Grasso |
| SIGNATURE | GRASSO M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sheffield |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6911-2241 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 575 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
United in Diversity
This review article points to a number of ways in which the study of political participation has followed separate tracks, hence preventing it from deploying its full potential. We argue that the field stands to benefit much from ‘bridging’ different approaches and insights, combining those from different disciplines or subdisciplines. We review works that try to build such bridges, with the aim of encouraging dialogue across the disciplinary bou…
Intersectionality and inequalities in political participation in Europe
This paper contributes to the extant literature by providing a detailed analysis of political exclusion in Europe by examining intersectional inequalities. We apply a generalised concept of intersectionality that allows it to “travel” and examine different types of intersectional inequalities beyond the original aspects studied by the pioneering Black feminist struggles. Given historical patterns in the European context, we examine inequalities a…
Words are stones
This paper tests the effect of elite discourse on young people’s non-electoral political engagement. We hypothesize that statements by political elites that portray young people as alienated and as not very interested in politics have a negative impact on their likelihood of participating politically, while statements that portray them as integrated and interested in politics have a positive impact on their likelihood of participating politically…
Public opinion and the welfare state
Political Socialisation in the UK
A growing bulk of research examines intergenerational shifts in attitudes and the extent to which they are attributable to new cohorts of voters being socialised under different socioeconomic and cultural climates. This paper sets off from this research and provides an overview of how age and generational gaps across economic and sociocultural value dimensions have developed in the context of the United Kingdom. The paper further describes how de…
New perspectives on gender and political mobilization
Taming Through Support? Youth Organisations and the Impact of Public Funding on Their Political Activities
This article investigates the relationship between public funding and the political activities of youth organisations in Europe. By analysing original data from a random sample of about 4500 youth organisations in nine countries generated through a content analysis of organisations’ websites, we examine the extent to which they engage in political activities. The analysis provides evidence for a negative impact of public funding on the engagement…
Differential Protest Participation Among Fridays for Future Climate Protesters
This article focuses on differential participation amongst climate change protesters and examines the links between objective, subjective, and relational determinants for shaping their differential levels of political activism. We examine to what extent occasional protesters differ from more committed participants and which explanatory factors are most relevant. How do climate change demonstrators differ in terms of their sociodemographic profile…
Gendered opportunities across modes of political participation
We examine the role of ‘gendered opportunities’ for political participation by analysing original survey data covering nine European countries alongside relevant macro-level factors. We hypothesize that gender interacts differently with certain features of the broader context – here, government spending on public services – across various modes of participation, leading to ‘gendered opportunities’ for political engagement. By analysing data for t…
Intra-generational inequalities in young people’s political participation in Europe
The declining political engagement of youth is a concern in many European democracies. However, young people are also spearheading protest movements cross-nationally. While there has been research on political inequalities between generations or inter-generational differences, research looking at differences within youth itself, or inequalities between young people from different social backgrounds, particularly from a cross-national perspective,…
Gender inequalities in political participation and political engagement among young people in Europe
This paper contributes to the literature by examining gender inequalities in political participation and political engagement among young people from a comparative perspective. By analysing data on young people from nine European countries collected in 2018, we examine gender inequalities in participation in various modes of conventional and unconventional activism as well as related attitudes, broader political engagement and key determinants, c…
Youth doing politics in times of increasing inequalities
Particularly in the current context of rapid political change, it is crucial to understand the political participation of young people and what underpins their political engagement patterns as well the as the inequalities that may lie beneath them. While there is a rich literature on youth participation, to date we have lacked the data to carry out detailed subgroup analyses to understand differences in the political participation between differe…
The impact of the coronavirus crisis on European societies. What have we learnt and where do we go from here? – Introduction to the Covid volume
The coronavirus pandemic, which first impacted European societies in early 2020, has created a twofold crisis by combining a health threat with economic turmoil. While the crisis has affected all European societies very significantly, its impact varies across countries, social groups, and societal domains. In an effort to provide a first overview of the effect of the coronavirus crisis, in this editorial we discuss contributions of 58 papers publ…
Support for Prostitution Legalization in Romania
Romania is a major source country of labor migration to other EU countries, being commonly perceived as a source country for sex workers operating in more prosperous economies. However, very little is known about population attitudes in relation to prostitution in Romania. Based on nationally representative data from the Romanian Gender Barometer (2018) survey, we analyzed data on 860 individuals to examine the predictors of policy preferences fo…
Party membership and social movement activism
This article examines the macro–micro dynamics linking party membership with protest participation. We theorise that institutional and extra-institutional engagement are mutually reinforcing and that party membership has a positive effect on party activism. We examine key ideational and structural factors identified in the literature to analyse the relative importance of various factors for party members’ involvement. We look at micro-macro-level…
The attitudinal gender gap across generations
We compare gender gaps in attitudes towards redistribution and social spending across generations in the USA and Britain. We show that the US context, characterized by lower welfare provision, results in consistent or even widening gender gaps for generations born post-1925. On the other hand, the British context, characterized by higher welfare provision relative to the USA, exhibits a narrowing and closing of the gender gap for younger generati…
Socialization and generational political trajectories
The role of political socialization in explaining disengagement from specific modes of activism beyond voting remains largely unexplored, limited to date by available data and methods. While most previous studies have tended to propose explanations for disengagement linked to specific repertoires of political action, we propose a unified theory based on the different socialization experiences of subsequent generations. We test this theory using a…
Contentious Europeans?
Street Citizens
What are protest politics and social movement activism today? What are their main features? To what extent can street citizens be seen as a force driving social and political change? Through analyses of original survey data on activists themselves, Marco Giugni and Maria T. Grasso explain the character of contemporary protest politics that we see today - the diverse motivations, social characteristics, values and networks that draw activists to e…
Violent political action during the European economic crisis
European citizens in times of crisis
Prejudice and relative deprivation
Current literature on the economic determinants of prejudice focuses on how relative deprivation might lead to bias by focusing on group perceptions, with little or no attention given to individual-level deprivation. We address this gap in literature by examining how relative and objective individual-level hardship affects generalised prejudice and suggest that both forms of deprivation lead to increase in a wide variety of out-group biases. We t…
Deprivation, class and crisis in Europe
Analysing data from an original cross-national survey conducted in 2015 in nine European democracies covering five different types of welfare regime and asking individuals a variety of questions on their deprivation during the crisis, this paper shows that there are important cross-national and cross-class inequalities in deprivation as reported by individuals in different social classes. Cross-nationally, deprivation patterns reflected the welfa…
Age group differences in political activism in Malaysia
There is a dearth of studies on age-related patterns of political activism in Malaysia, specifically on young people’s patterns of political participation relative to their elders, and in relation to the rich literature that has developed in Western democracies. By analysing survey data from Wave 6 (2010–2014) of the World Values Surveys (WVS), this study aims to investigate the differences in political engagement between younger and older people…
La seguridad y el estado democrático liberal. Criminalizando la política de los jóvenes
Las políticas de austeridad fueron la reacción de muchas democracias liberales ante la crisis económica iniciada en 2008. Esto provocó un aumento de la contestación y de la movilización social, protagonizada en muchos casos por personas jóvenes. Como reacción a su vez, muchos gobiernos desarrollaron políticas con el objetivo de combatir estas formas de movilización, incluyendo la criminalización de la protesta. Este artículo explora las prácticas…
Protest participation and economic crisis
The economic crisis that started in 2008 has negatively affected European nations to different degrees. The sudden rise in demonstrations particularly in those countries most hard hit by the crisis suggests that grievance theories, dismissed in favour of resource‐based models since the 1970s, might have a role to play in explaining protest behaviour. While most previous studies have tested these theories at the individual or contextual levels, it…
Age, period and cohort analysis in a comparative context
Thatcher’s Children, Blair’s Babies, Political Socialization and Trickle-down Value Change
To what extent are new generations ‘Thatcherite’? Using British Social Attitudes data for 1985–2012 and applying age-period-cohort analysis and generalized additive models, this article investigates whether Thatcher’s Children hold more right-authoritarian political values compared to other political generations. The study further examines the extent to which the generation that came of age under New Labour – Blair’s Babies – shares these values.…
Relative deprivation and inequalities in social and political activism
In this paper we analyse whether relative deprivation has divergent effects on different types of social and political action. We expect that it will depress volunteering with parties as well as different types of conventional political participation more generally while stimulating volunteering with anti-cuts organisations and engagement in various kinds of protest activism. There is little research into how relative deprivation impacts on diffe…
Gender inequalities in political participation and political engagement among young people in Europe
This paper contributes to the literature by examining gender inequalities in political participation and political engagement among young people from a comparative perspective. By analysing data on young people from nine European countries collected in 2018, we examine gender inequalities in participation in various modes of conventional and unconventional activism as well as related attitudes, broader political engagement and key determinants, c…
The attitudinal gender gap across generations
We compare gender gaps in attitudes towards redistribution and social spending across generations in the USA and Britain. We show that the US context, characterized by lower welfare provision, results in consistent or even widening gender gaps for generations born post-1925. On the other hand, the British context, characterized by higher welfare provision relative to the USA, exhibits a narrowing and closing of the gender gap for younger generati…
Intra-generational inequalities in young people’s political participation in Europe
The declining political engagement of youth is a concern in many European democracies. However, young people are also spearheading protest movements cross-nationally. While there has been research on political inequalities between generations or inter-generational differences, research looking at differences within youth itself, or inequalities between young people from different social backgrounds, particularly from a cross-national perspective,…
Unemployment and attitudes to work
Attitudes research has repeatedly demonstrated that the vast majority of unemployed people want a job and that their employment commitment is generally at least as strong as employed people's. However, until now it has not asked if they are more likely than employed people to prefer unemployment to an unattractive job. While this oversight reflects a noted widespread reluctance to respond directly to right-wing authors' assertions, this article a…
Party membership and social movement activism
This article examines the macro–micro dynamics linking party membership with protest participation. We theorise that institutional and extra-institutional engagement are mutually reinforcing and that party membership has a positive effect on party activism. We examine key ideational and structural factors identified in the literature to analyse the relative importance of various factors for party members’ involvement. We look at micro-macro-level…
Blame and contention
In this paper we analyse the extent to which perceptions of the government’s role in the economic crisis impacted on the political behaviour of European citizens. This includes contentious political activities such as attending public meetings, participating in demonstrations, and joining strikes, but also electoral behaviour in the form of voting against the incumbent. We examine data from 2015 since it allows us to examine European nations expe…
How Civil Society Actors Responded to the Economic Crisis
We examine the relationship between material deprivation and different types of responses to economic crises by civil society actors. We are interested in understanding whether material deprivation has an effect on civil society reactions to the crisis and whether political opportunity factors contribute to this relationship. In particular, we wish to ascertain if the effect of material deprivation is moderated by perceptions of political stabili…
Political values and extra-institutional political participation
Previous studies have found that left-wing and libertarian individuals are more likely to engage in extra-institutional political activism. However, due to a lack of suitable data, studies to date have not analysed the relative influence of economic redistributive and social libertarian values for the intensity of protest participation. By analysing data from a unique cross-national dataset on participants in mass demonstrations in seven countrie…
The impact of the coronavirus crisis on European societies. What have we learnt and where do we go from here? – Introduction to the Covid volume
The coronavirus pandemic, which first impacted European societies in early 2020, has created a twofold crisis by combining a health threat with economic turmoil. While the crisis has affected all European societies very significantly, its impact varies across countries, social groups, and societal domains. In an effort to provide a first overview of the effect of the coronavirus crisis, in this editorial we discuss contributions of 58 papers publ…
Neoliberal Narrative in Times of Economic Crisis
Using political claims analysis on 1,000 articles from five national newspapers ( Daily Mail, The Sun, The Times, The Guardian , and Daily Mirror ), this article demonstrates that press coverage of the financial crisis, recession, and austerity in the United Kingdom between 2007‐14 drew heavily on a neoliberal discourse. Political, market, and civil society actors discussed the impact of hard times on people using a reductionist neoliberal narrat…
Mechanisms of Responsiveness
By employing individual-level data on MPs in 15 countries and 73 national and local assemblies, this article examines the conditions under which individual MPs are responsive to interest organizations. We show that MPs’ political values influence their responsiveness: MPs with more egalitarian and socially open values are more responsive to interest organizations. Moreover, MPs’ conceptions of democracy also matter in that more negative views of …
Attention to climate change in British newspapers in three attention cycles (1997–2017)
Convergence on Crisis? Comparing Labour and Conservative Party Framing of the Economic Crisis in Britain, 2008‐14
Since the 1980s, Britain's two largest political parties have been converging ever closer on the political spectrum, in line with a Downsian model of two party majoritarian systems. While both Labour and the Conservatives have been moving toward consensus, we investigate the extent to which the recent financial crisis, understood as a critical juncture, interrupted this movement. Using a “fuzzy set” ideal type analysis with claims‐making data, we…
Support for Prostitution Legalization in Romania
Romania is a major source country of labor migration to other EU countries, being commonly perceived as a source country for sex workers operating in more prosperous economies. However, very little is known about population attitudes in relation to prostitution in Romania. Based on nationally representative data from the Romanian Gender Barometer (2018) survey, we analyzed data on 860 individuals to examine the predictors of policy preferences fo…
Deprivation, class and crisis in Europe
Analysing data from an original cross-national survey conducted in 2015 in nine European democracies covering five different types of welfare regime and asking individuals a variety of questions on their deprivation during the crisis, this paper shows that there are important cross-national and cross-class inequalities in deprivation as reported by individuals in different social classes. Cross-nationally, deprivation patterns reflected the welfa…
Youth doing politics in times of increasing inequalities
Particularly in the current context of rapid political change, it is crucial to understand the political participation of young people and what underpins their political engagement patterns as well the as the inequalities that may lie beneath them. While there is a rich literature on youth participation, to date we have lacked the data to carry out detailed subgroup analyses to understand differences in the political participation between differe…
Gendered opportunities across modes of political participation
We examine the role of ‘gendered opportunities’ for political participation by analysing original survey data covering nine European countries alongside relevant macro-level factors. We hypothesize that gender interacts differently with certain features of the broader context – here, government spending on public services – across various modes of participation, leading to ‘gendered opportunities’ for political engagement. By analysing data for t…
European citizens in times of crisis
Prejudice and relative deprivation
Current literature on the economic determinants of prejudice focuses on how relative deprivation might lead to bias by focusing on group perceptions, with little or no attention given to individual-level deprivation. We address this gap in literature by examining how relative and objective individual-level hardship affects generalised prejudice and suggest that both forms of deprivation lead to increase in a wide variety of out-group biases. We t…
Violent political action during the European economic crisis
La seguridad y el estado democrático liberal. Criminalizando la política de los jóvenes
Las políticas de austeridad fueron la reacción de muchas democracias liberales ante la crisis económica iniciada en 2008. Esto provocó un aumento de la contestación y de la movilización social, protagonizada en muchos casos por personas jóvenes. Como reacción a su vez, muchos gobiernos desarrollaron políticas con el objetivo de combatir estas formas de movilización, incluyendo la criminalización de la protesta. Este artículo explora las prácticas…
Age, period and cohort analysis in a comparative context
Unemployment and attitudes to work
Attitudes research has repeatedly demonstrated that the vast majority of unemployed people want a job and that their employment commitment is generally at least as strong as employed people's. However, until now it has not asked if they are more likely than employed people to prefer unemployment to an unattractive job. While this oversight reflects a noted widespread reluctance to respond directly to right-wing authors' assertions, this article a…
Environmental Movements in Advanced Industrial Democracies
Environmental movements are networks of informal interactions that may include individuals, groups, and organizations engaged in collective action motivated by shared identity or concern about environmental issues. This article reviews literature on environmental movements (including antinuclear energy movements) according to four main aspects: the social bases and values underlying the movements' mobilization, the resources supporting their mobi…
Do Issues Matter? Anti-Austerity Protests’ Composition, Values, and Action Repertoires Compared
An important wave of anti-austerity protests has swept across Western Europe in recent years. We can thus distinguish between three different types of protest occurring in Western Europe recently: “old” issue protests, relating to the trade union and labor movement; “new” issue protests, relating to culture and identity issues; anti-austerity protests, emerging directly in reaction to austerity measures and cuts enacted in the current period. Fol…
Convergence on Crisis? Comparing Labour and Conservative Party Framing of the Economic Crisis in Britain, 2008‐14
Since the 1980s, Britain's two largest political parties have been converging ever closer on the political spectrum, in line with a Downsian model of two party majoritarian systems. While both Labour and the Conservatives have been moving toward consensus, we investigate the extent to which the recent financial crisis, understood as a critical juncture, interrupted this movement. Using a “fuzzy set” ideal type analysis with claims‐making data, we…
Neoliberal Narrative in Times of Economic Crisis
Using political claims analysis on 1,000 articles from five national newspapers ( Daily Mail, The Sun, The Times, The Guardian , and Daily Mirror ), this article demonstrates that press coverage of the financial crisis, recession, and austerity in the United Kingdom between 2007‐14 drew heavily on a neoliberal discourse. Political, market, and civil society actors discussed the impact of hard times on people using a reductionist neoliberal narrat…
How Civil Society Actors Responded to the Economic Crisis
We examine the relationship between material deprivation and different types of responses to economic crises by civil society actors. We are interested in understanding whether material deprivation has an effect on civil society reactions to the crisis and whether political opportunity factors contribute to this relationship. In particular, we wish to ascertain if the effect of material deprivation is moderated by perceptions of political stabili…
Protest participation and economic crisis
The economic crisis that started in 2008 has negatively affected European nations to different degrees. The sudden rise in demonstrations particularly in those countries most hard hit by the crisis suggests that grievance theories, dismissed in favour of resource‐based models since the 1970s, might have a role to play in explaining protest behaviour. While most previous studies have tested these theories at the individual or contextual levels, it…
A participatory generation? The generational and social class bases of political activism in Turkey
This research aims to understand the extent to which generation and social class determine Turkish respondents’ level of political activism. It tests both the macroeconomic socialization effect and the social class effect on political activism as hypothesized by Inglehart and Lipset, respectively. It also strives to understand whether a macropolitical period effect may also some generational implications for political activism. Beyond these exami…
Solidarity in Europe
solidarity in Europe; transnational solidarity; political sociology; citizen responses to crisis; asylum policies; refugee crisis; attitudes towards European Union
Attention to climate change in British newspapers in three attention cycles (1997–2017)
Socialization and generational political trajectories
The role of political socialization in explaining disengagement from specific modes of activism beyond voting remains largely unexplored, limited to date by available data and methods. While most previous studies have tended to propose explanations for disengagement linked to specific repertoires of political action, we propose a unified theory based on the different socialization experiences of subsequent generations. We test this theory using a…
Contentious Europeans?
Street Citizens
What are protest politics and social movement activism today? What are their main features? To what extent can street citizens be seen as a force driving social and political change? Through analyses of original survey data on activists themselves, Marco Giugni and Maria T. Grasso explain the character of contemporary protest politics that we see today - the diverse motivations, social characteristics, values and networks that draw activists to e…
Violent political action during the European economic crisis
European citizens in times of crisis
Prejudice and relative deprivation
Current literature on the economic determinants of prejudice focuses on how relative deprivation might lead to bias by focusing on group perceptions, with little or no attention given to individual-level deprivation. We address this gap in literature by examining how relative and objective individual-level hardship affects generalised prejudice and suggest that both forms of deprivation lead to increase in a wide variety of out-group biases. We t…
Deprivation, class and crisis in Europe
Analysing data from an original cross-national survey conducted in 2015 in nine European democracies covering five different types of welfare regime and asking individuals a variety of questions on their deprivation during the crisis, this paper shows that there are important cross-national and cross-class inequalities in deprivation as reported by individuals in different social classes. Cross-nationally, deprivation patterns reflected the welfa…
Age group differences in political activism in Malaysia
There is a dearth of studies on age-related patterns of political activism in Malaysia, specifically on young people’s patterns of political participation relative to their elders, and in relation to the rich literature that has developed in Western democracies. By analysing survey data from Wave 6 (2010–2014) of the World Values Surveys (WVS), this study aims to investigate the differences in political engagement between younger and older people…
La seguridad y el estado democrático liberal. Criminalizando la política de los jóvenes
Las políticas de austeridad fueron la reacción de muchas democracias liberales ante la crisis económica iniciada en 2008. Esto provocó un aumento de la contestación y de la movilización social, protagonizada en muchos casos por personas jóvenes. Como reacción a su vez, muchos gobiernos desarrollaron políticas con el objetivo de combatir estas formas de movilización, incluyendo la criminalización de la protesta. Este artículo explora las prácticas…
Relative deprivation and inequalities in social and political activism
In this paper we analyse whether relative deprivation has divergent effects on different types of social and political action. We expect that it will depress volunteering with parties as well as different types of conventional political participation more generally while stimulating volunteering with anti-cuts organisations and engagement in various kinds of protest activism. There is little research into how relative deprivation impacts on diffe…
Blame and contention
In this paper we analyse the extent to which perceptions of the government’s role in the economic crisis impacted on the political behaviour of European citizens. This includes contentious political activities such as attending public meetings, participating in demonstrations, and joining strikes, but also electoral behaviour in the form of voting against the incumbent. We examine data from 2015 since it allows us to examine European nations expe…
Citizen Politics in Times of Crisis
European Solidarity at a Crossroads? Citizens’ Attitudes and Political Behaviors in Europe
Many observers have voiced their concerns that solidarity is at risk in Europe. Given this wider context, we are urgently in need of sound empirical analyses examining the various dimensions of solidarity in Europe. Public debates focus on solidarity in many respects but there is to date a lack of empirical evidence to draw upon to inform them. In this context, this special issue emerges from research conducted in the European Union–funded resear…
Mechanisms of Responsiveness
By employing individual-level data on MPs in 15 countries and 73 national and local assemblies, this article examines the conditions under which individual MPs are responsive to interest organizations. We show that MPs’ political values influence their responsiveness: MPs with more egalitarian and socially open values are more responsive to interest organizations. Moreover, MPs’ conceptions of democracy also matter in that more negative views of …
Political science (40 works) · Politics (36 works) · Law (30 works) · Sociology (30 works) · Law (23 works) · Political economy (19 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (19 works) · Economics (17 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (16 works) · Psychology (11 works)