March 21, 2012

START investigator and former TRA recipient publish book on the mobilization of right-wing extremism

BY SAMANTHA GOLDMAN

START Investigator Donatella Della Porta and 2009 Terrorism Research Award (TRA) winner Manuela Caiani compare extreme right movements in Germany, Italy and the U.S. in their newly published book “Mobilizing on the Extreme Right” based on research funded by START. In particular, the book describes the dialogue, action and organizational structures of the extreme right, explaining these in terms of the political opportunities available to the social movement as a whole.

Della Porta and Caiani used three empirical methods—frame analysis, network analysis and protest event analysis—in their research to address:

• The cognitive mechanisms that influence organizational and individual behavior.
• Inter-organizational structural characteristics of right-wing organizations.
• The actions undertaken by right-wing extremists during the past decade.

Della Porta is a professor of sociology at the European University Institute. She is on leave from the University of Florence, where she was a professor of political science, president of the corso di laurea in administrative sciences and director of the department of political science and sociology. Della Porta directs the Democracy in Europe and the Mobilization of the Society (DEMOS) project, which is funded by the European Commission.

Caiani is an assistant professor of comparative European politics at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, Austria. In 2009, she was named a TRA recipient by START for her research on "Patterns of Right-Wing Political Radicalization Using the Internet within the United States and Europe." As a Marie Curie Fellow, Caiani is currently working on the project “How Political Violence Ends: A Comparative Analysis of Extremist Social Movements in Italy and Spain.”

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