Difusión Y Efectos Del Movimiento 15m En Andalucia: Mayo De 2011

Resumen:El movimiento 15M supuso una inflexión en la política española. Nos interesa estudiar los inicios del 15-M en Andalucía. Concretamente pretendemos responder a las siguientes cuestiones: ¿Qué factores han facilitado la difusión de ‘acampadas’ del 15M, previas a los comicios municipales de 2011? Y ¿Qué influencia ha tenido la emergencia del 15M en el aumento del voto indignado? El principal resultado es que la dimensión política y social explica mejor que la económica la expresión de ‘indignación’ en la calle. Además se demuestra con claridad que los factores políticos parecen ser la clave para explicar la indignación en las urnas.Abstract:The movement known as ‘15M’ marked a turning point in Spanish politics, both within the sphere of social mobilisation and in the institutional arena. Not only on account of the swift and broad dissemination of this movement of those who were up in arms, but also in terms of its influence on the agenda of the political parties. The movement emerged in May 2011, coinciding with the local elections. Although the epicentre of this phenomenon was the Puerta del Sol square in Madrid, it underwent a rapid process of dissemination, spreading to Spain’s major cities. In Andalusia, the movement quickly made its presence felt, manifested through the strategy of ‘taking over’ and camping out in town squares until the local elections of 22 May 2011 had come to an end. Undoubtedly, one of the most salient elements of this phenomenon of social mobilisation was the speed with which it spread throughout the country and the high level of ‘defiance’ involved in its collective action, occupying town squares in the days leading up to the local elections. We are interested in studying the start of this phenomenon of mobilisation known as the 15M Movement in Andalusia, and its impact on the upcoming local elections. We are focusing our attention on factors that may have influenced the emergence of early manifestations of outrage in the days leading up to the elections, and on the effects of these collective actions on the electoral behaviour of citizens. Hence, we shall seek answers to the following questions: a) Which factors facilitated the spread of ‘camp-outs’ and other public actions that occurred as part of the 15M Movement during the days leading up to the local elections? and b) How did the emergence of 15M influence the increase of ‘outraged’ voting tendencies?. In order to answer the questions that motivated this study, we created two models of analysis: the first aims to explain the fast spread of ‘early’ expressions of the 15M Movement in Andalusia; and the second seeks to analyse its influence on electoral behaviour. More specifically, by applying model A we aim to ascertain which factors might have facilitated the coordination of camp-out actions in the municipalities of Andalusia. In other words, we are looking to identify which local contexts fostered the spread of the collective action that began in the Puerta del Sol square. To do this, the model encompasses many of the major currents that explain the emergence of belligerent collective action. Hence, the analysis incorporates key concepts in the study of initiating movements, such as the Structure of Political Opportunities measured as ‘access’ to the political system, considering the effective number of parties, in order to account for the political context. It also encompasses factors that provide an account of the social context: networks of micro-mobilisation at a local level, specifically associationism; and urban style, in other words, the size of the municipality. Finally, with regard to socio-economic factors, we included the impact of the financial crisis, measuring the difference in the unemployment rate between 2007 and 2009. Model B aims to explain the phenomenon of the ‘protest vote’ and the potential impact of the 15M Movement on the pull effect with regard to this vote. Specifically, the aim is to determine whether the outrage expressed early on in town squares also translated into what happened in the polling stations of those towns. Ultimately, the aim is to reconstruct the mechanisms that explain a type of electoral behaviour: the manifestation of protest in the polling stations. In this respect, we studied the literature that seeks to explain the influence of the political atmosphere on electoral preferences. To this end, we examined the relationship between the intensity of collective action as part of the 15M Movement as well as the impact of the crisis and the ‘protest vote’. The ‘protest vote’ has been defined as ballot slips that are left blank or voided, or votes cast for minority parties, and it has been expressed as the difference between the local elections of 2011 and 2007. This study encompasses municipalities in Andalusia with over 50,000 inhabitants, and so we gathered data about the protest events that took place in these municipalities during the period leading up to the local elections in 2011. The first stage of fieldwork involved designing and applying a detailed search protocol, along the lines of the Protest Event Analysis (Fillieule & Jimenez, 2003), applied to newspapers and other digital resources from each locality, which reported on the presence of camp-outs in the squares of the municipalities included in the study. Hence, the unit of observation is the protest event, which has been defined taking into account the place and date on which it occurred. Having gathered this information, a summary indicator was constructed: the spread of the 15M phenomenon. This indicator was allocated to the database ‘Research in the municipality, where the unit of observation was Andalusian municipalities with over 50,000 inhabitants. Furthermore, each municipality in the study was assigned the variable ‘protest vote’, constructed as the difference of the sum total of votes left blank or voided, and votes cast for minority parties, based on data provided by Spain’s Interior Ministry. We carried out multivariate analyses for each of the models, and the main finding yielded by this research is that the political and social dimensions provide better explanations than the economic dimension for the expression of ‘outrage’ in the street. Furthermore, it clearly shows that formal and informal political factors seem to be key when explaining indignation and outrage at the polling stations. Specifically, this study has clarified that the effects of the economic crisis have not had a relevant effect on collective action; on the contrary, the early emergence of the 15M movement is associated with a crisis of political representation, given that the ‘besieged squares’ are located in municipalities with less political party plurality in the legislative sphere. Furthermore, they present structural factors that facilitate collective action, such as urban style and the density of their micro-mobilisation networks. Moreover, the contextual effect of these acts of defiance by early adopters of the 15M Movement had an important impact at the polling stations, promoting the option of protest voting among citizens.