4. The Spanish Indignados and Israel’s Social Justice Movement The Role of Political Cleavages in Two Large-Scale Protests

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4 The Spanish Indignados and Israel’s
Social Justice Movement
The Role of Political Cleavages in Two Large-Scale Protests
Ignacia Perugorría, Michael Shalev and Benjamín Tejerina
The 15M movement in Spain (15May 2011) is widely regarded as t he vang uard
of the “networks of outrage and hope” or “occupy social movements” that
swept several southern European st ates (Castells 2012; Tejerina et al. 2013b)1.
Unlike Occupy Wall Street, the Spanish Indignados featured not only en-
campments and assemblies of the young but also very large protest events
and wide public support . The mass demonstrations that occurred in Madrid’s
Puerta del Sol and elsewhere mobilized participants wit h social and politica l
proles quite diferent from previous protest events and social movements
(Anduiza et al. 2013). Polls ca rried out by the Center for Sociological Research
indicate that in early June a majority (54per cent) of the adult population
supported the protests, and in a later poll following t he November elections,
one in ten reported they had actively participated in 15M protest activities. 2
Similar broad-spectrum mobilization and support was also a feature of the
protests that occurred around the same time in Portugal and Greece. In all
three countries, a profound political-economic crisis had been set in train
by the  nancial crisis. What distinguishes Spain from these two European
countries, and thus makes it a particularly interesting case for analysis, is
that while events in Madrid remained at the center of media and public
attention, the movement also s pread to Spani sh peripheral regions wit h long-
lasting anti-centralist stances. The Spanish 15M movement thus seemed to
successfu lly sur mount the profound socia l and politico-ideolog ical div isions
that have traditionally cut across Spanish politics: the left-right continuum,
and the tension between centralism and regionalism.
From this perspective it is interesting to compare the Spanish 15M with
the Israeli case, which, while less well-known, was exceptional in its scale
1 This research was funded by the Israeli Mi nistry of Science, Technolog y and Space.
2 Reports and sou rce data a re availa ble from ww w.cis.es. The a pproval rate wa s de ned here as
those wh o were ‘quite’ or ‘ver y’ posit ive divid ed by the entir e sample, includ ing non-responde nts
and tho se unintere sted in the 15M w ho were not asked thei r opinion. Sign ica ntly higher r ates
of support a nd participation were repor ted in other, sma ller polls. See w ww.simplelogica.com
and www.metroscopia.org.
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 IGNACIA PERUGORRÍA, MICHAEL SHALEV AND BENJAMÍN TEJERINA
and support. What began as a small encampment of young people in Tel
Aviv in mid-July 2011 protesting against the shortage and high cost of rental
accommod ation rapidly mor phed into a social justice movement (herea fter
denoted 14J, since it began on 14July). This protest campaign dominated
public and private attention for two months, gathering broad and enthu-
siastic endorsement. According to self-reports, one-quarter of the entire
adult population participated in street protests.3 However, the economic
background i n Israel was much less severe tha n in other cases of mass protest
like Greece, Portugal, and of course Spain. Prior to the protests, Israel did
not experience either a collapse of its  nancial institutions or the threat of
a sovereign debt crisis. The business cycle had been on the upswing since
mid-2009 , youth unemployment was moderate, and no new or controversial
austerit y plan was on the government’s agenda (Rosenhek and Shalev 2013).
No less intriguing is the fact that in spite of the deep and fractious ideo-
logical and social divisions that characterize politics in Israel, the protest
movement was remarkably consensual – even more so than in Spain. It
spawned a series of unprecedented mass demonstrations that peaked on
3September 2011 with a turnout of 400,000 – equal to the mobilization
peak reached on 19June in Spain, with a population six times that of Israel.4
Opinion polls indicate that the Israeli protest movement enjoyed extremely
broad approval among the mass public (support rates of 80per cent or
more).5 Unlike in Spain, it was praised and promoted in nearly all of the
major organs of the mass media and was treated with tolerance and even
sympathy by most local authorities and police.
In divided societies, it is not obvious how large segments of the public
come to participate in demonstrations and award a social movement such
broad popular legitimacy that it (temporarily) cannot be either ignored or
repressed. The puzzle motivating this paper is the fact that in both Israel
and Spain, broad and consensual protests occur red in societies rent by deep
sociopolitical d ivisions that were seemingly unrelated to the distributional
issues that animated the protests. Theoretically, focusing on the efect of
political cleavages on contentious mobilization contributes to established
3 The Israeli survey analyzed in this paper, carried out shortly after the protests peaked,
yielded a participation rate of 24.4per cent, compa red with 25.5per cent based on a survey by
the Israel Democrac y Institute i n April and May t he following yea r (Hermann et al.2012).
4 Estimates of the number of protest participants in Israel are based on counts of mobile
phone users in the relevant areas by TrendIt (http://trendit.net/en), published by all media
sources and uncontested by eit her protest organizers or the authorities.
5 See for example ww w.peaceindex.org and http://truman.huji.ac.il/upload/truman_site_
poll_37_September2011(1).pdf.
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THE SPANISH INDIGNADOS AND ISRAEL’S SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT 
understa ndings of the political opportunity for protest by adding a hitherto
unrecognized hindrance (the cleavage structure of institutional politics).
Empirically, common denominators discovered in Spain and Israel are
likely to have signi cant explanatory power, given the sharp contextual
diferences between these two settings in institutional and noninstitu-
tional politics. The comparison may thus shed badly needed light on the
recent protest wave, for which the social movement literature proved to
be ill-prepared.
In analyzing the political dynamics of the two protests, we focus on
their most distinctive shared characteristic: their unusually broad and
cross-cutting public support. This is a n intentional departu re from much of
the emergent research on the anti-inequality and anti-austerity protests in
consolidated democracies since 2010, which has focused mainly on the sites
in which the occupation of public space took place and in which innovative
practices were developed (Benski et al. 2013). In some national contexts –
notably the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US – this narrow focus is
justied because active mobilization behind the anti-inequality protests
was limited main ly to the camps themselves. However, in Israel and Spain,
endorsement and participation extended far beyond the occupier activists.
Thus, our interest is not in the ‘core militants’ but in the hinterland of both
passive and active supporters.
We investigate the political and ideological determinants of the success
of these two movements in mobilizing mass support. Specically, what
is the relationship between individuals’ sympathy for active engagement
and the cleavage structure of institutional politics? Our chapter presents
comparative analyses of micro-level data from public opinion polls in Spain
and Israel carried out soon after the mass demonstrations peaked. The
rst section reviews some of the main characteristics of the protests in
the two countries, not including their organizational forms. The following
two sections focus rst on the economic background and second on the
national political context, especially institutionalized cleavages. We then
discuss our hypotheses and data sources. We present our ndings using
three explanatory dimensions: the ‘master’ (left-right) political cleavage,
support for redist ribution, and the social cleavages relevant to each society.
The Protests in Spain and Israel
A wave of protests began in Spain in late September 2010, when trade un-
ions called for a general strike to ght back austerity measures. In March
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 IGNACIA PERUGORRÍA, MICHAEL SHALEV AND BENJAMÍN TEJERINA
2011, Spanish university students joined the mobilizational tide and also
launched a str ike against rising tuition fees and budget cuts in public educa-
tion. A few days later, the platform Youth Without A Future ( Juventud Sin
Futuro) organized a demonstration against both the economic crisis and the
bipartisan ‘PP-PSOE partitocrac y’. They described themselves as ‘Homeless,
jobless, pensionless, fearless’. On 14May, a large demonstration took place
in Barcelona, convened by 200 social organizations and unions ghting
against welfare cuts in Catalonia (Uba sart forthcoming). In this combust ible
context, the call issued by the digital platform Real Democracy Now (DRY,
Democracia Real Ya) to take to the streets on May 15 – one week before
regional and municipal elections throughout Spain – was the spark that
ignited the so-called ‘Indignados’ mobilizations. Hundreds of thousands of
people, communicating t hrough the Inter net and socia l media applications,
took to the streets in fty Spanish cities in the ensuing days.
Triggered by police repression and the political response to the 15May
mobilization, the original call for ‘Real Democracy Now’ quickly gave way
to an ‘Occupy the Square’ movement. Mobilizations were portrayed as
“apolitical” and, downplaying their heterogeneity in both socio-economic
and politico-ideologica l terms, part icipants de ned themselves as “persons”
working together in “common matters” for the “common good” (Perugorría
and Tejerina 2013b). The central movement’s demands concerned electoral
reform and political corruption, ending state subsidies to the Catholic
Church, and  nding immediate solutions to the problems of unemployment
and precariousness. In its initial stages, the 15M movement was supported
by 65-70per cent of the public.6 Mobilizations reached a peak on 19June,
with 250,000 people demonstrating in the streets of several Spanish cities.7
However, by mid-June the encampments were no longer sustainable due
to increasing fears of repression and eviction, and they passed the torch
to decentralized assemblies in urban neighborhoods, small towns, and
villages. This transition was accompanied by a steep decrease i n the number
6 S ee note 2. In ano ther sur vey carr ied out by the Span ish Youth Inst itute (IN JUV E) in October
2011 , of the 15-29 age gro up, 62per cent of i nterviewe es had a positive opi nion of the protest s, 14
specic 15M demand s were approved by the majority, and 26per cent repor ted attending 15M
mobilizations (http://www.injuve.es/observatorio/valores-actitudes-y-participacion/jovenes-
actitudes-sociales-y-politicas-y-movimiento-15-m). According to surveys by Metroscopia for
the El País ne wspaper, sympat hy towards 15 M declined f rom 64per cent to 51per cent bet ween
June 201 1 and May 201 2, but increa sed to 63per cent in May 20 13. (http://ww w.metroscopia .org/
datos-recientes/analisis-blog/item/clima-social-mayo-2013?category_id=3).
7 The  gure of 250 ,000 protes ters is the aut hors’ conser vative est imate based on i nformation
in national newspapers and from groups close to t he 15M movement.
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THE SPANISH INDIGNADOS AND ISRAEL’S SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT 
of participants but also by an internationalization of the protest that soon
turned the 15M into a beacon for similar movements around the world (see
the chapter by Nez in this volume).
The Israeli 14J social justice movement emerged on 14July 2011 as a
protest against the cost of housing by a small group of students who erected
tents on Rothschild Boulevard in the heart of Tel Aviv’s nancial district
(Grinberg 2013). The ‘tent protest’ or ‘housing protest’, as it was initially
called, quickly spawned a series of unprecedented mass demonstrations.
The 14J movement was remarkably consensual, and it was praised and
promoted by nearly all of the major organs of the mass media, including
the business press. Until the protests quickly faded as summer ended, local
authorities and the police adopted a tolerant or even sympathetic stance
towards the tent encampments and mass demonstrations of the protest
movement.
Contrar y to the 15M, the Israeli 14J did not place demands on the political
system. It did, however, call for the revitalization of the welfare state and
for increased state support for young families. The movement adopted the
deliberative a nd partic ipatory democratic practices t hat origi nated in Spai n
but recognized the leadership of a cadre of young activists with two au-
thoritative spokespersons. It cooperated with a wide variety of interest and
cause groups, but like the 15M it scr upulously avoided any kind of contact or
collaboration wit h political parties. Protest leaders consciously adopted the
all-embracing slogan ‘the people demand social just ice’. Ironically, however,
the most enthusiastic supporters and bearers of this slogan came from
the ranks of the middle and upper-middle classes. They included auent
citizens who were among the winners from the neoliberal restr ucturing of
Israel’s political economy since the 1980s but whose children found their
incomes and employment conditions eroded by the longer-term efects of
these very same reforms (Rosenhek and Shalev 2013).
Economic Background
In early 2011, the Spanish economy was in its third year of recession as
a result of not only the worldwide nancial crisis but also the bursting
of a decade-long real estate bubble and the implosion of the market for
mortgages. Following the lead of other developed countries, the Spanish
government had ta ken measures to rescue vulnerable bank s and to weather
the socio-economic efects of the nancial storm. However, as talks about
Greece’s potential economic bailout began to intensify, attention turned
to Spain amid worries over its public decit (60per cent of its GDP). This
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 IGNACIA PERUGORRÍA, MICHAEL SHALEV AND BENJAMÍN TEJERINA
prompted the government to backtrack and announce a slew of austerity
measures.
The recession hurt most Spaniards but had a particularly severe impact
on the young. Unemployment rates soared to more than 40per cent for 20-24
year olds. Those with jobs were, however, not much better of. Many were
caught in a system of temporary contracts and poorly paid, low-status jobs
unrelated to the occupations for which they had been trained (Tejerina et
al. 2013a). Moreover, in mid-2011 almost 70per cent of young adults aged
18-29 still lived with their parents, thus putting further pressure on already
tight family budgets and overburdened support networks.
Despite its scope and gravity, the Spanish crisis did not have the same
socio-economic impact across the diferent Autonomous Communities.
As a result, it produced diverse political reactions, either exacerbating or
downplaying long-lasting regionalist sentiments. Politicians in some of
the Communities governed by the People’s Party (PP) called for a return
of some competencies to the central state. At the same time, regionalist
political leaders in Catalonia complained that federalism was ‘bleed-
ing’ their budgets. The regional government enacted severe austerity
measures and deferred payments to its employees, unleashing a strong
anti-austerity movement that preceded and prepared the ground for the
15M movement.
The economic background in Israel was much less severe than in Spain.
Dissatisfaction with the high cost and limited availability of housing for
students and  rst-time home buyers was widespread, as was resentment
about price rises i mposed by either the government or monopolistic private
corporations. Income inequality in Israel rose in the 2000s, but unlike in
previous decades this was due to regressive reforms of the tax and transfer
systems. The main victims of cuts in transfer entitlements were not young
people, nor were they drawn f rom the ranks of the middle classes, in whose
name the protests were mainly conducted. Rising poverty reected a shar p
deterioration in the situation of the two most vulnerable groups in Israeli
society – Arab citizens (20per cent of the population) and ultra-orthodox
Haredi Jews (about 10per cent).
On the eve of the social justice protests, the business cycle in Israel was
actually on the upswing and youth unemployment was relatively modest
(12per cent). At the same time, the average real wage had been essentially
stagnant for a decade, while housing prices soared. The relative incomes
of young adults and families had been falling due to the declining value of
assets like higher education, which had previously enabled young people
to attain middle-class lifestyles (Shalev 2012).
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THE SPANISH INDIGNADOS AND ISRAEL’S SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT 
Political Context and Institutionalized Cleavages
Spanish politics continues to be molded by historical processes. Some
elements inherited from the political culture of Francoism (including its
delegitimation of some forms of protest) have proven resilient (Tejerina
2010), and the consensus forged bet ween the major parties dur ing the return
to democracy in the late 1970s casts persistent shadows over contemporar y
politics, including the continuing distrust of social movements (Tejerina
2010; Fishma n 2012). Since re-democrat ization, politics in Spain has revolved
primarily around two intersecting axes: left-right, and Spanish unionism
or ‘centralism’ versus regionalism or ‘peripheral nationalism’. Since the
1980s, two opposing parties have been hegemonic: the center-left Spanish
Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and the right-wing People’s Party (PP).
Although a rmed separatism existed for a brief period in Catalonia, political
attention has long focused on the ‘Basque (armed) conict’. In 2009, the
abertzale (Basque-nationalist) left, a coalition of diferent social move-
ment organizations and party formations, began a transition from a hybrid
political-military strategy to a ‘purely political’ oppositional strategy, akin
to the Irish and South African separatist causes (Perugorría 2012). As noted
below, this transition had rami cations felt in the municipal elections that
followed the initial protests of the 15M movement.
Electoral politics in Israel are a complicated mélange of parties, issues,
and social groups (Arian 2005). The three main categories of parties tar-
get the Palestinian-Arab minority, the religiously observant Jews, or the
majority of secular and moderately observant Jews. Parties representing
the rst two constituencies focus mainly on their community’s needs and
worldviews. In the residual category of parties, which is the largest, the
two main rivals were traditionally Labor on the left and Likud on the right.
Historically, Labor de ned itself as socia l-democratic and Likud as economi-
cally liberal, but the primary axis of contention in Israeli politics since the
1967 war has been whether to trade territories occupied in that war for
peace. Over the la st several decades, Lik ud has been t he indispensable part y
of government, usua lly in coalition with nationalist and clerical par ties. The
left bloc – comprising the Labor Party and its closest allies – has steadily
lost ground to a succession of ephemeral center parties, as its peacemaking
strateg y was increasingly discred ited. E forts to revive the party by adopting
a social-democratic agenda have largely failed.
If we were to characterize party supporters in the Jewish population
by their issue positions on the role of territorial aspirations, the use of
military force, the rights of Palestinian citizens, and the role of religion in
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 IGNACIA PERUGORRÍA, MICHAEL SHALEV AND BENJAMÍN TEJERINA
public life, they wou ld be positioned on a roughly uni-dimensional left-right
spectrum. In contrast, positions on social and economic issues tend to be
consensual, since most Israelis would prefer a less unequal society (Shalev
and Lev y 2005; Shalev 2007). Parallel in part to t he Spanish situation, ‘tr ibal’
collective identities institutionalized in Israeli politics have long served as
a structural barrier to class-based demands for redistribution. The main
divisions structuring ideology and partisanship are based on nationality,
country of origin, or religiosity. At the same time, a vigorous arena of dis-
tributive politics  ourishes alongside or outside of political part ies, based on
pressure groups, unions, NGOs, and others who lobby, bargain, and protest
vis-à-vis the government, parliament and st ate bureaucracies. Contentious
politics are a ubiquitous feature of this menu, but like party politics they
are sectoral in character. For all these reasons, the mass popular protest
that emerged in the summer of 2011 was highly unexpected.
Rationale, Hypotheses, and Data
Although public opinion in Spain and Israel was not entirely consensual,
the majority of Spaniards and Israelis were supportive of the 15M and 14J
movements, and among those who were not, lack of enthusiasm was more
common than outright opposition. Still, the majority of the public stayed
at home during even the largest demonstrations. How may these varia-
tions in passive and active support be explained? Our theoretical claim is
that, in contrast to contentious political action resting on a narrower and
therefore more homogenous support base, in order to explain support for or
engagement in protests as broad as those observed in Spain and Israel it is
essential to focus on the role of politicized social and ideological cleavages.
By denition, movements with broad public support are at least partially
successful in breaching boundaries created by solidarities generated by
class, place, ethnicity, religion, and cultural habitus. Such divisions are
even less permeable when they already play an established role as political
cleavages in the institut ional sphere of mass politics, along with ideological
divisions that have crystallized in the same sphere.
Israel and Spain are especia lly suitable cases for ex amining the relevance
of the cleavage str ucture of institutional politics to non-institutional mobi-
lization because they represent ‘least likely’ conditions for our hy pothesis
to be vindicated. The contention waged by the 15M and 14J movements
focused on ‘non-par tisan’ issues of economic justice a nd the responsiveness
of the political system, whereas the key social and ideological divisions
that divide parties and voters in the electoral politics of both countries
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ostensibly belong to unrelated domains. Precisely because many of the
core social divisions and issues of ‘normal’ politics in Israel and Spain are
seemingly orthogonal to the questions of equality, redistribution, and the
economic and social role of the state that were so central to the protests,
their emergence is even more puzzling. If it can be shown that factors like
nationalism and religiosity structured individual engagement in 15M and
14J, this would be a strong indication of the power of political ideologies
and politicized social divisions to structure mass support for extensive
protests.
Substantively, we expect ideological and social cleavages embedded in
institutional politics to help predict who participates in protest activities
and who remains outside, and among outsiders, to help explain diferent
levels of passive support. However, the role of institutionalized divisions is
not the same for passive and active engagement. As a political performance
in a public space, the mass demonstration renders social divisions and
partisan loyalties potentially more salient than in the context of passive
support. A s Klanderman s (1997) has pointed out, when protest organizations
or activists seek to mobilize the members of groups with socio-cultural or
socio-political loyalties and identities that difer from those of the leaders,
activists, and core supporters of a social movement, even individuals who
sympathize with the movement’s grievances and demands may refrain
from openly joining its mobilizations.
To identify connections between the cleavage structure of institutional
politics and individual engagement with the protests that took place in
Israel and Spain, we rely on nationally-representative public opinion polls.
These polls asked respondents about both their sympathy and their active
participation in the protests. (In Israel, the relevant question asked speci -
cally about demonstrations; in Spai n, it also i ncluded participation in camps
or marches as well as demonstrations). The Spanish survey was carried
out in November-December 2011, after the last of the mass protests on
15October; and the Israeli one in the third week of September 2011, after the
climactic 3September demonstration. The Spanish poll has a large sample
(over 6000) while the Israeli sample included just over 1,000 respondents,
which is typical of opinion polls in that country.8
8 For details on the Spanish CIS sur vey (Study No. 2920) see http://www.cis.es/cis/opencm/
EN/1_encuestas/estudios/ver.jsp?estudio=12604. The Israeli poll was a national sample survey
car ried out by the Sm ith Instit ute for the Taub Center for So cial Policy Re search in Is rael durin g
the third week of September 2011.
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 IGNACIA PERUGORRÍA, MICHAEL SHALEV AND BENJAMÍN TEJERINA
Findings
We begin by presenting responses to the questions on passive support and
active participation that are the basis for our analysis (Table4.1). Looking
rst at passive support, while respondents were ofered diferent options
in the Spanish and Israeli surveys, it is clear that the protests were much
more broadly supported in Israel. Only 8per cent of the sample expressed
opposition to 14J, and a majority chose the strongest category of support.
In Spain, however, nearly half (47per cent) of the respondents ranked their
sympathy for 15M at or below the perceived midpoint of the support scale.
Moreover, just over one-tenth reported that they were not familiar with
the movement (and accordingly were not asked about either passive or
active support). In what follows, because the Israeli response pattern is
so positively skewed, we focus on explaining variation in whether or not
respondents ‘strongly supported’ the protests in their country. For Spain,
‘strong support ’ is operationalized as the top 4 ranks of the original 11-point
scale.
Regarding active participation, the overall rate was more than twice
as high in Israel than in Spain (24per cent vs. 11per cent). Although ac-
tive participation in both countries was highly correlated with passive
support, not only strong supporters took to the streets. This may re ect
a time inconsistency problem – respondents were asked about their sup-
port of the protests after they had peaked but were reporting on active
participation that would have occurred while the demonstrations were
still in full swing.
The ‘Master’ Political Cleavage: Left-Right Polarization
In contextualizing our two country cases, it was emphasized that in the
institutional political arena of both countries the left-right axis both sum-
mari zes and symbolically represents the ideological domain of institutional
politics. The issue positions of individuals, social sectors, and political
parties can all be parsimoniously described on this axis. Yet the content of
left-right variation difers substantially between the two contexts, and in
each of them it is made up of several diferent layers of meaning. In general,
the left-right division refers to both the ‘old’ tension between economic
liberalism and support for the welfare state, a nd the ‘new’ tension between
authoritarianism and a pro-growth orientation versus libertarianism and a
pro-green orientation. As noted, however, in Israel these issues are weakly
articulated by most political parties and do not form the basis for left/right
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THE SPANISH INDIGNADOS AND ISRAEL’S SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT 
identi cation, which instead rest s mainly on positions regarding terr itorial,
military, and religious issues that are specic to the Israeli context.
In Spain it is a lso true – though to a lesser extent – that left and right serve
as political markers for ‘non-standard’ beliefs and issue positions. Their
meaning is linked to local conicts that emerged in several historically
Table. Passive and active participation in the Israeli J and Spanish M
movements
ISRAEL: “To what extent do you support the social protest?”
Distribution of responses Proportion attending a
demonstration
Strongly support 56% 37%
Support 29% 12%
Oppose 5% 0%
Strongly oppose 3% 0%
Not sure 5% 3%
No reply 1% –
Total 100% 24%
(n=1,0 05 )
SPAIN: “To what extent do you sympathize wit h the 15M movement or ‘Indign ados’?”
Distribution of responses Proportion attending a
demonstration
Full sy mpathy-8 12% 32%
7 10% 22%
6 11% 16%
5 8% 9%
4 18% 4%
3 10% 5%
2 9% 1%
No sympathy-1 10% 1%
Unfamiliar / haven’t heard 11% –
No reply 4% –
Total 100% 11%
(n=6,082)
Note: In Spain th e original 11-point scale of passive suppor t was collapsed into 8 levels, and the
question regarding active support asked whether the respondent had attended a demonstration
or participated in an encampment, march or protest.
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 IGNACIA PERUGORRÍA, MICHAEL SHALEV AND BENJAMÍN TEJERINA
profound rounds of contention over state authority. The transition from
Francoism to democracy three decades ago raised or amplied what
continue to be contested issues concerning arrangements for recognizing
and accommodating diversity between regions. These issues are partly
embodied in the left-right dimension, as well as having their own ideo-
logical discourses based on demands for national recognition and/or local
autonomy.
Against this background, it is of considerable interest to ask how far
support and participation in the protests of 2011 followed the left-right
division. Since political economy and redistribution are central to the
left-right cleavage in Spain but not in Israel, we expect polarization around
this cleavage to be more marked in the Spanish case. However, there is
also a temporal dynamic to consider. A protest may enjoy widespread
legitimacy at the initial moment of emergence, but after the rst ash of
enthusiasm dies down it may align more closely with familiar political
divisions. Accordingly, for each country Figure4.1 presents the results
of an initial poll carried out only a few weeks after the protests broke
out, compared to a later one. In Israel, the second survey was elded
only a month after the rst, while in Spain it was six months later. To
maximize comparability, the proportion strongly supporting the protests
was recalculated for each survey as a ratio, relative to the mean for all
respondents.
Figure. Proportion of strong supporters relative to the mean, according to
left-right position
2.0
Right (22%)
Moderate
right (27%)
Center
(29%)
Moderate
left (8%)
Left (6%)
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
Late July Late August
2.0
Right (3%)
Moderate
right (13%)
Center
(31%)
Moderate
left (27%)
Left (8%)
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
Early June NOV-Dec
SpainIsrael
The ndings for both countries support both of our expectations. The posi-
tion of individuals on the left-right dimension is associated with support for
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THE SPANISH INDIGNADOS AND ISRAEL’S SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT 
the protests in both countries but substantially more in Spain than Israel.
Furthermore, there is clear evidence of growing polarization over time.
In addition to the overall role of the left-right cleavage – the contrasts
between t he two countries and at t wo points in time – we are able to compare
the impact of this political division on two diferent types of engagement:
passive support and active participation. Here, diferences between the
two countries are best discerned by juxtaposing them on the same graph
and measuring absolute rather than relative rates of engagement. It appears
from Figure4.2 that citizen involvement was more cross-cutting in Israel
than in Spain. In Spain, individuals well to the left were almost as likely as
their Israeli counterparts to support and participate in the protests – but
the di ferences between the two countries become sharper when attention
shifts to the center and right.
Figure. Two types of engagement in protest, by left-right ideology
100%
Strong passive supportActive participation
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Left-10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
Right-1
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Left-10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
Right-1
SpainIsrael
Table. Cross-country dierence in left-right polarization
Spain Israel
Passive support 4.4 1.5
Active participation 7.7 2.0
Note: Polariz ation is measured as the ratio of the proportion engaged in the two most lef tist
categories in comparison with the two most rightist ones.
The cross-country diference in the left-right gradient can be conveyed by
a simple measure of polarization: the ratio of the proportion engaged in
the two most leftist categories in comparison with the two most rightist
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 IGNACIA PERUGORRÍA, MICHAEL SHALEV AND BENJAMÍN TEJERINA
ones (see Table4.2). The results highlight not only the greater intensity of
political polarization in Spain but also the fact that in both countries – but
again, especially in Spain – the left-right division matters more for active
than passive engagement.
It should be noted that the ultimate impact of polarization on aggregate
support was muted in Spain by the distribution of the population along
the left-right spectrum. Whereas in Israel fewer than 30per cent of passive
supporters and 15per cent of active participants placed themselves in the
top 4 categories of the leftism scale, in Spain the parallel proportions were
two-thirds and three-quarters respectively. Hence, lack of enthusiasm for
the protests on the right had less of an overall impact in Spain than in Israel.
Commitment to Redistribution
As has already been emphasized, in Israel the content of the left-right
cleavage concerns issues of identity and foreign policy that are seemingly
irrelevant to the 14J, framed as a movement committed to social justice.
Indeed, we expected attitudes towards government eforts to reduce
inequality via redistribution to be closely related to engagement in the
Israeli protest. Since the 15M movement addressed a wider range of issues –
including the deteriorating prospects of youth, government corruption and
non-responsiveness, and opposition to austerity – we assumed that in the
Spanish context, attitudes to redistribution would be less closely linked to
protest involvement. Figure4.3 conrms these expectations. Both forms of
engagement in mass protest were more strongly linked in Israel to views on
the welfare state than in Spain.9 Measur ing polarization in t he same manner
as before, we  nd that in relation to both passive and active involvement it
was about 60per cent higher in Israel than in Spain (Table4.3).
Thus, whereas in Israel engagement in protest was more responsive to
redistribution tha n to leftism, the profound role of leftism in Spain in select-
ing protest supporters and activists was evidently due to something more
than the tension between social democracy and free-market liberalism.
The left-right cleavage in Spain also overlaps in part with social cleavages
that are key drivers of political behavior – the conict over regionalism
9 In I srael, support for r edistrib ution is measur ed by combining re sponses to two q uestions:
one asked wh ether the gover nment should reduce i ncome inequal ity, the other as ked respond-
ents to choo se their most important policy pr iority from a l ist that included “reducing povert y
and ineq uality ”. In Spain, the r elevant quest ion ofered a n 11-point sc ale tapping ag reement wit h
the view that the government should spend more on bene ts and social serv ices even though
this would mandate higher taxes. In both cases, we compacted responses into a 5-point scale.
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THE SPANISH INDIGNADOS AND ISRAEL’S SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT 
versus centralism, and the religious cleavage. Figure4. 4 shows that all three
variables are clearly associated with left-right positions. As we shall now
see, such overlaps play an important role in understanding the politics of
protest involvement.
Figure. Correlates of the left-right cleavage in Spain
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
LOW
MEDIUM
HIGH
LESS AUTONOMY
NO CHANGE
MORE AUTONOMY
ACTIVE RELIGIOUS
PASSIVE RELIGIOUS
NON-RELIGIOUS
Support for redistribution
0%
Right-
1
3
2
4
5
6
7
8
9
Left-10
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
Regionalism
0%
Right-
1
3
2
4
5
6
7
8
9
Left-10
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
Religiosity
0%
Right-
1
3
2
4
5
6
7
8
9
Left-10
Figure. Two types of engagement in protest, by attitude towards
redistribution
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Pro-5
4
3
2
Anti-1
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Pro-5
4
3
2
Anti-1
Spain
Israel
Passive supportActive participation
Table. Cross-country dierence in polarization regarding redistribution
Spain Israel
Passive support 1.8 2.9
Active participation 2.7 4.2
Note: Polariz ation is measured as the ratio between the top and bottom cate gories.
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 IGNACIA PERUGORRÍA, MICHAEL SHALEV AND BENJAMÍN TEJERINA
Politicized Social Cleavages
In both Israel and Spain, con icts over issues of social and economic justice
like those raised in the 15M and 14J protests a re directly or indirectly linked
to social d ivisions along ethnic, religious, or reg ional li nes. The politicization
of such social cleavages results from both group diferences in culture and
interests, and historical alliances, co-optations, and animosities between
parties and groups. Hence, group membership not only represents a poten-
tial prior inuence on individual orientations that may have inuenced
support for the protests under study here, but may also embody group-level
interests and loyalties that are at least as relevant.
To illustrate th is point concretely, consider the alienation of Israel’s ultra-
orthodox population from the 14J movement. Given the high incidence of
poverty among ultra-orthodox Jews, the social justice movement with its
critique of rising inequality and focus on the need to revive and enlarge
Israel’s welfare state might have garnered considerable sympathy and sup-
port from this sector of the population. Two factors prevented this from
happening: the deep cultural divide between the ultra-orthodox and the
educated, secular, and Tel Aviv-based core of the protest movement, and
the speci c way in which the ultra-orthodox communities of Israel have
been incorporated into institutional politics by ‘sectoral’ political parties.
These parties routinely participate in government coalitions that enable
them to target state-supplied or state-subsidized services and benets
to their constituents. Fear of jeopardizing this system of redistribution
sowed suspicion and reluctance among both their leaders and supporters.
At the same time, non-orthodox Israelis deeply resent the bene ts won by
ultra-orthodox politicians for their constituents.
Bearing in mind the ideological, ethnic, and religious cleavages just
noted, we evaluate the efect of institutionalized political cleavages on
citizen engagement in the 14J protests by distinguishing six distinct
sociopolitical blocs or ‘tribes’. In addition to the Arab-Jewish cleavage,
our typology relates to the only measurable ethnic division among Jews,10
that between veterans and ‘Russians’ (immigrants from the Former Soviet
Union, FSU), as well as to the religious and left-right cleavages. Unfortu-
nately, it is not feasible to distinguish between ‘hardcore’ ultra-orthodox
Jews and ‘modern’ observant Jews; hence both are aggregated here under
10 Measuring the longstanding division between Jewish immigrants (or their descendants)
from A rab countrie s and those who ori ginated in Eu rope requires i nformation on t he origin of
grandparents which was not available in the survey analyzed here.
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THE SPANISH INDIGNADOS AND ISRAEL’S SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT 
the ‘religious’ umbrella. We also aggregated ‘traditional’ and ‘secular’ Jews
(other than Russians) into a single ‘non-religious’ category, since in any
event this distinction had no signi cant impact on protest support. Finally,
note that since 75 to 80per cent of both Russian immigrants and religious
Jews identify with the right, other members of these two groups are not
included in this analysis.
Figure. Passive and active support for the Israeli protests by sociopolitical bloc
80%
65% 61%
36%
42%
58%
Nonrelig
left (14%)
Nonrelig
center
(16%)
Nonrelig
right
(27%)
FSU right
(12%)
Religious
right (12%)
Arabs
(12%)
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
45%
36%
26%
15% 12% 13%
0%
Passiv
e
Active
The ndings in Figure4.5 make it evident that the high rates of aggregate
support for the Israeli protests conceal considerable divergence between
di ferent sociopolitical blocs, and that this divergence is especially marked
for active par ticipation. The strongest support and active involvement came
from nonrelig ious, non-immigrant Jewish Israelis who identify w ith the left.
Compared to immigrants from the FSU and observant veteran Jews – both
of whom identify with the political right – members of this group were
twice as likely to be strong passive supporters and three times as likely to
have participated in a demonstration. Among the majority (57per cent)
who dened themselves as non-religious Jews, both types of support were
clearly associated with the left-right division. Finally, Palestinian-Arab
citizens exhibited a unique pattern of relatively high passive but low active
engagement. As a marginalized minority, the Arabs in Israel could hardly
be unsympathetic to the protestors’ call for social justice, but given the
deep social and political gulf between Arabs and Jews (as well as a high
degree of spatial segregation), they were less amenable to and available for
performative political action on a broad Jewish-Arab front.
Given the prevalence of economic disadvantage among Arabs, ultra-
orthodox Jews, and part of the FSU immigrant community, it is clear that
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 IGNACIA PERUGORRÍA, MICHAEL SHALEV AND BENJAMÍN TEJERINA
collective political loyalties were capable of overriding the role of economic
concerns in shaping the orientation of diferent socia l groups to the protests.
This tendency notwithstanding, it is still possible that individual-level
variation withi n the groups is at least partly explained by mater ial concerns.
To investigate this possibility, we constr ucted an indicator of ‘fear of future
economic distress’ from two questions asked in the Israeli survey.11 More
than one in six of the individuals polled indicated that they were seri-
ously in fear of future economic diculty. Figure4.6 shows that, except
among Russian immigrants, such anxiety exercised a palpable efect on
individual-level variation in passive support for the 14J protests within
each sociopolitical ‘tribe’.
Figure. Passive support for the Israeli protests by sociopolitical bloc and fear
of future economic distress
Nonrelig
left (14%)
Nonrelig
center
(16%)
Nonrelig
right
(27%)
FSU right
(12%)
Religious
right (12%)
Arabs
(16%)
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
A lot
Certain ex
tent
Little or none
Turning now to the impact of politicized social cleavages in Spain, the
present section reports ndings for the efects of religion and regionalism,
connecting them as in Israel to the left-right cleavage. On the face of it,
the political role of religion is unlikely to be signi cant since, in line with
the majority of Europeans, only 15per cent of Spaniards regularly attend
religious services (Center for Sociological Research 2009). Nevertheless,
Calvo and colleagues have shown that religious voting can be important
even when large sectors of the population feel indiferent to religion
11 The indicator summed responses to the following questions: “ Do you fear that you or you r
family could  nd yourself in poverty or economic distress in the next 2-3 years?” and “Do you
or anyone in your family fear being unemployed due to layofs or d i culty in  nding a job?”
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THE SPANISH INDIGNADOS AND ISRAEL’S SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT 
(Calvo and Montero 2002; Calvo 2009; Calvo et al. 2010). During the 1980s,
the widespread perception of Alianza Popular (AP) as an extremist and
conservative party brought sizeable number of Catholics to vote for the
center-leftist PSOE. However, after its transformation into the Partido
Popular (PP) in 1989, the party allowed Catholic voters to overcome the
obstacles that had prevented them from voting for the PP. As a conse-
quence, by the mid-1990s religious voting recovered notably, associated
with a sharpening of the religious proles of the other major Spanish
parties (Montero et al. 2008).
Religious voting peaked in the mid-2000s, tied to an unusual level of
confrontation between the Socia list government and the Catholic Church.
The 2004-2008 agenda of the PSOE government implied controversial and
simulta neous changes on various fronts: the civil rights of sexual minorities,
the role of religion in the educational curricu lum, bioethics, women’s rights,
and the recover y of the ‘historical memory’ of the Franco years. The result-
ing con ict with the moral order defended by the Spanish Catholic Church
had a clear e fect on voting in the general elections held in March of 2008. In
this election, the religious cleavage in Spain was most salient to voters who
did not identify ideologically with the left, and had the strongest impact on
support for the PP (Calvo et al. 2010). This suggests the importance for our
purposes of assessing the joint efect of the left-right and religious-secular
cleavages on mass mobilization in the 15M protests.
It is worth noting that in the specic case of the 15M movement, politi-
cal con ict over religion explicitly spilled over into contentious politics.
Among other demands, the 15M protestors called for the ‘real decoupling’
of the state and the Catholic Church. Coinciding with the world summit of
Catholic Youth in Madrid and the Pope’s visit to Spain, in mid-August 2011
the 15M Working Group on the Economy obtained consensus for a detailed
proposal for eliminating tax collection and various state subsidies targeted
to the Catholic Church and its allied institutions.12 This confrontational
move presumably increased the salience of the religious cleavage for 15M
support, especially (in light of our earlier theory) for performative (active)
engagement.
For the purpose of our empirical ana lysis, we distinguish t hree broad cat-
egories of religious identication and observance in Spain. ‘Non-religious’
12 Sources: http://madrid.tomalaplaza.net/2011/08/17/propuesta-abierta-consensuada-por-
el-gr upo-de-t rabajo-de- economia-sobre -n anciacion-de -la-iglesia/; Ret rieved 3Februar y 2013
from http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/1428422/0/logros-conseguidos/pendientes-ideario/
movimiento-15m.
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 IGNACIA PERUGORRÍA, MICHAEL SHALEV AND BENJAMÍN TEJERINA
respondents (about one-quarter of the total but nearly 40per cent of those
aged under 35) have no stated religion or are atheists. The ‘passive religious’
identify as Catholics or with some other religion but hardly ever attend
services, while ‘active religious’ attend at least several times a year (roughly
one-third of the total and two-thirds of those over 65).
Figure. The joint eects of religiosity and leftism on support and participation
in the Spanish M protests
Non- religious Passive religiousActive religious
80%
Strong passive supportActive participation
60%
40%
20%
0%
1 Right2 34 Left
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1 Right2
34
Left
For two reasons, it is essential to analyze the efects of religiosity and
political ideology jointly. First, the overlap between the two variables
implies a risk of overestimating the impact of religion analyzed alone.
At the same time, this overlap is only partial. Some non-religious and
actively religious respondents have the ‘wrong’ orientation (Figure4.4).
In fact, at least half of the members of both groups position themselves
in intermediate categories of the left-right scale. Consequently, it is not
surprising to  nd (Figure4.7) that religiosity has a substantial independent
efect on involvement in the 15M demonstrations, net of an individual’s
placement on the left-right continuum (and also, as will be shown later
in the multivariate analysis, net of other determinants). Both passive
and active engagements in the 15M movement were restrained among
those oriented towards religion. The most visible efect, except for those
denitively loyal to the right, is the diference between secular Spaniards
(the largest category) and all others.
A second reason for jointly analyzing the efects of the left-right and
religious-secular cleavages is that studies of electoral behavior show that
their efects are interactive (Calvo et al. 2010). Our results show an inter-
action that is especially pronounced for active participation in the 15M
protests. Religiosity weakened the tendency of engagement to rise along
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THE SPANISH INDIGNADOS AND ISRAEL’S SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT 
with leftism. Put di ferently, secular leftists were ‘free’ to be drawn into the
protests to a degree that more religious leftists were not.13
Figure. The joint eects of regional identity and leftism on support and
participation in the M demonstrations
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
1 Right2 34 Left
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1 Right2
34
Left
More regional As much or more Spanish
Strong passive supportActive participation
Similar ndings emerge when examining the regional cleavage in Spain,
which we have argued has bot h an identity dimension (based i n some cases
on ethnicity) and a political-institutional one. Figure4.8 shows that while
identifying with one’s region had only a modest relationship with passive
support, it subst antially ampli ed the role of leftism in mobilizing citizens
to actively participate in the protests.
Multivariate Analysis
The ndings reviewed provide strong indications that ideological and
social cleavages shaped engagement in both the Spanish and Israeli pro-
tests. However, an obvious question is whether the bivariate and trivariate
relationships analyzed would hold up in a multivariate analysis. The
purpose of such an analysis is to evaluate net efects, not only by holding
constant the other key explanatory variables that we have reviewed so
far but also by adding controls for other factors that are not of particular
interest for our theoretical agenda but could plausibly have explanatory
power.
13 Interesti ngly, these are not t he same interactions th at Calvo and colle agues (2010, Figs 3 &
4) found in their study of voting for t he two main parties in Spain’s 2008 elect ions.
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 IGNACIA PERUGORRÍA, MICHAEL SHALEV AND BENJAMÍN TEJERINA
Before turning to the results, it should be emphasized that we do not
regard the multiple regressions that follow as an empirical test of a well-
speci ed theoretical model. Rather, the purpose is to test the robustness
of previously-examined bivariate relationships and to obtain estimates of
the relative weight of diferent predictors and the extent to which they are
simil ar for both the two outcomes and the t wo countr y cases. We ignore pos-
sible interaction efects, including some that have already been documented
in the previous exploratory analysis, because this would complicate and
overtax the model.
The key explanatory variables for both countries include the left-right
cleavage, attitudes towards redistribution, and the social cleavage (religion)
which is common to both countries. For Israel, the model also includes a
dummy variable for respondents from the Former Soviet Union. For Spain,
we add two measures of the regional cleavage, one tapping collective iden-
tity and the other the desired level of local autonomy, as well as dummy
variables for the two most important centers of regional nationalism
(Catalonia and the Basque Country). A third binary variable is intended
to capture any net impact of Madrid, the Autonomous Community that
hosts the three branches of the central government and was the epicenter
of the 15M movement.
The control variables included in all models are: (a) age, on the grounds
that the protests were clearly dominated by, and mainly oriented towards,
young people and that older persons might have faced greater technical
di culties and anxiety about participating in demonstrations; (b) gender,
given the prominence of women in the leadership and activist core of the
Israeli movement; (c) education, since students played a central role as
activists and suppor ters of these movements, and complaints by t he Spanish
‘youth without a future’ were often linked to the shortage of (good) jobs
for university graduates; and (d) variables measuring the degree to which
respondents felt they were under economic pressure and, in Israel, dummy
variables to represent the north and south of the countr y, where economic
opportunities are generally inferior to those in the center.
For each country, separate regressions were estimated for passive and
active engagement. The models for both were identical, except that the one
predicting active engagement includes passive support as an independent
variable. The reason is that in relation to active participation, our interest
is in explaining what turns sympathy into action. The question at hand is
therefore how any given factor (e.g. leftism) afects the propensity to take
an active role in the protests, beyond its contribution to understanding in-
dividua l diferences in passive support. Note that for Israel the multivariate
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THE SPANISH INDIGNADOS AND ISRAEL’S SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT 
analysis does not include Arab respondents. The political and ideological
aliations of the Arab minority and its internal cleavages difer substan-
tially from those of the Jewish majority, and the size of the Arab sample is
insu cient to permit separate analysis.
Figure. OLS regressions predicting high passive support or active
participation in the M and J protests
-.25 -.15 -.05.05 .15 .25
SPAIN – PASSIVE SUPPORT
Age under 35
Age over 65
Non-religious
Attends services
Low education
Leftism
Redistribution
Separatist
Economic diculty
Catalunya
-.25 -.15 -.05.05 .15 .25
ISRAEL – PASSIVE SUPPORT
Women
Age under 35
Age 35-49
Religious
Russian (FSU)
Higher education
Leftism
Redistribution
Economic diculty
South
North
-.15 -.05.05 .15 .2
5.
35
SPAIN – ACTIVE PARTICIPATION
Sympathy for 15M
Age under 35
Non-religious
Higher education
Leftism
Redistribution
Regional identity
Basque
Madrid
-.15 -.05 .05 .15 .25 .35
ISRAEL – ACTIVE PARTICIPAT ION
Sympathy for J-14
Age under 35
Age 35-49
Religious
Higher education
Leftism
Redistribution
Economic diculty
South
North
The charts in Figure4.9 are designed to ease the task of comparing the
four diferent sets of results. To facilitate comparability within and across
regressions, they present standardized (beta) coe cients but only those
that were statistically signicant (t-statistic of at least 2). Note that since
both dependent variables are binary, a case could be made for estimation
using logistic regression, but we opted for the simpler and more intuitive
OLS approach. The full results of the regressions are available on request.
We begin with the two charts for passive support. Before noting speci c
highlights of these results, it is worth pointing out that the set of independ-
ent variables w ith signi cant net efects, and the size and direction of these
efects, are broadly similar between the two countries. In both countries
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 IGNACIA PERUGORRÍA, MICHAEL SHALEV AND BENJAMÍN TEJERINA
leftism, support for redistribution, and the relig ious cleavage have the most
impact on whether individuals expressed st rong sympathy for the protests.
In Israel, consistent with the weaker connection between the meaning of
the left-right cleavage and distributional issues than in Spain, attitudes
towards redistribution are a stronger predictor of passive support than
left-right position. Another noteworthy diference is that whereas both a
direct indicator of economic distress and one of the regional indicators have
substantial e fects in Israel, the relevant variable for Spain has little impact.
So far as country-speci c predictors are concerned, as expected Israelis
who immigrated from the Former Soviet Union were substantially less
sympathetic to the 14J movement. In Spain, also not surprisingly, indiv idual
support for regionalism plays a role, but only as measured by support for in-
stitut ional separatism. However, no additional e fect is found for the dummy
variables for Catalonia and the Basque Country. Although respondents in
Catalonia were a bit more sympathetic than the average respondent, it
appears that the dist inctiveness of these two regions is mai nly accounted for
by other individual-level va riables included in the model (such as separatism
and leftism). Lastly, only in Israel were women more likely to sympathize
with the protests than men.
Turning to the ndings for active participation, in both countries the
young, leftists, the secular, the educated, and egalitarians were the most
likely to turn sympathy into active engagement. But except for the religious
cleavage, all of t hese e fects were notably stronger in Israel. The most obv ious
di ference between the two countr ies is that in Spain more of the var iation
in whether individuals took to the streets is explained by their degree of
sympathy. In addition, in Israel di ferences in age and ideology contributed
much more than in Spain to the residual variation in active participation.
Only in Israel do we nd that indicators of economic distress in uenced
protest participation. Although the obser ved efects are weak, it is interest-
ing to note a signicant shift in their direction as we move from passive
to active engagement. Net of diferences in ideology and social cleavages,
more advantaged Israelis (those with a higher education) were less likely to
strongly support the protests – but at any given level of support, they were
more likely to participate.
Finally, Spanish regionalism has interesting efects on active engage-
ment. Individuals expressing regional nationalism (as indicated by their
primary identity) were somewhat more likely to participate. However, the
net efects of the regional dummy variables show that in the nationalist
Basque Country the propensity for active engagement in the 15M protests
was below average. The second nding conrms our suggestion that for
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THE SPANISH INDIGNADOS AND ISRAEL’S SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT 
Basques, the pressing regional-political agenda at the onset of the 15M
movement had the efect of crowding out their propensity to take to the
streets on behalf of an ‘outside’ movement.
* * *
Can social movements in divided societies win broad support and inspire
large-scale participation? Our paper has analyzed two extensive and con-
sensual protests that took place amidst the 2011-2012 international cycle of
anti-inequality protests – the Israeli 14J and Spanish 15M movements. We
have characterized these movements as having broad and cross-cutting
public support and have aimed to unveil t heir lim itations as well as success
in breaching politicized social and ideological boundar ies. Our theoretical
claim is that, in contrast to contentious political action that rests on a
socially and politically homogenous base, in order to explain support for
such extensive protests it is essential to focus on the cleavage structure of
institutional politics. While central to the study of mass electoral politics,
the role of political cleavages has not previously been addressed as one of
the features of the institutional political system that may either facilitate
or impede contentious collective action.
Given the lack of prior theoretical guidance regarding the role of institu-
tionali zed political cleavages in st ructuri ng engagement in non-instit utional
political action, our research is exploratory and aims to contribute to the
development of empirically grounded and inspired theoretical insights.
Two features of the design of the research have facilitated this endeavor: the
contrast bet ween two di ferent levels of engagement (passive a nd active), and
the comparison between two d iferent national contexts. The protest s occur-
ring in Israel and Spain bot h featured mass mobilizations and broad popular
support (dependent variable), and the two countries a lso share institutional
political systems that are rent by social and ideological cleavages dividing
parties and voters in electoral politics (independent variable). Moreover,
in both contexts these cleavages belong to domains that are nominally
unrelated to the core issues of distributive ju stice and political account abilit y
raised by t he protesters. Hence, we have suggested that Spain and Israel are
ideal showcases for uncovering the role that social and ideological divisions
entrenched in ‘conventional’ politics may play in the patterning of g roup and
individual engagement in ‘unconventional’ political action.
Our empirical ndings are based on micro-data from parallel public
opinion polls conducted in 2011 in Spain and Israel af ter the protests peaked.
We began with an analysis of the impact of the ‘master’ left-right cleavage,
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 IGNACIA PERUGORRÍA, MICHAEL SHALEV AND BENJAMÍN TEJERINA
showing that in both countries support and participation in the protests
were considerably stronger among citizens on the left and weaker among
those on the right, especially in relation to active engagement. However,
there are also quantitative and qualitative diferences between the two
countries, particularly in the likelihood of respondents identifying with
the politica l right or center participating actively in the protests. Consistent
with the greater centrality of social and economic issues to the meaning of
left and right in Spain, we  nd stronger ideological pola rization of support-
ers there than in Israel. At the same time, and for the same reason, both
passive and active forms of support were more strongly linked to views on
redistribution in Israel than in Spain.
Although politicized social cleavages are partly embodied in the lef t-r ight
divide, our multivariate statistical analysis conrmed that they also had
substantial e fects in their ow n right on the structur ing of engagement in the
15M and 14 J protests. At the same ti me, we also found evidence of interactive
efects of ideological and social divisions. For example, although clearly
located on the political left, Israel’s Palestinian-Arab citizens combined
relatively high passive support with low active participation. In Spain, we
found that religious aliation and observance restrained the propensity
of those on the left to play an active part in the 15M movement, whereas
being secular or having a prima rily regional identit y had the opposite efect.
These kinds of interactions suggest that future research would benet
from the use of congurational methods and that the weight of diferent
determinants of engagement in protest cannot be accurately assessed by
means of a regression model that includes only main efects. Nevertheless,
the key ndings of our multivariate analysis are clear and important: the
‘gross’ bivariate efects presented in the exploratory results also show up as
‘net’ e fects in a multivariate model; and in the two countr ies, both political
ideology and politicized social cleavages matter.
Diferences in the results of the Spanish and Israeli regressions are
particularly interesting as far as active participants are concerned. Israeli
protesters tended to be young (under 35), secular, university-educated,
and living in the relatively auent center of the country, and they were
both left-wing (‘dovish’) and social-democratic in their ideological outlook.
Parallel tendencies were generally found in Spain – but with the exception
of the religious cleavage, the efects were much weaker.
What do these  ndings portend for the study of Occupy-type social
movements, and the social movement literature more generally? Our
research moves away from the prevailing focus on the core activists of the
recent socio-economic protest s and their novel practices to the less-studied
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THE SPANISH INDIGNADOS AND ISRAEL’S SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT 
hinterland of passive and active supporters. This perspective highlights the
challenges faced by any social movement aspiring to appea l to and mobilize
the mass public, a n aspiration that was expressed in the Spanish and Israeli
protests by framing their critique in very broad terms (‘economic injustice’,
‘political unaccountability’), widening the boundaries of the social move-
ment community (‘the middle class’, ‘persons’, ‘the people’), and portraying
their concerns and demands as ‘apolitical’ and even ‘commonsensical’.
Our ndings imply that these framing eforts paid of for the 14J and 15M
movements. Both movements, especially in Israel, attained considerable
levels of support. However, the fact that politicized social and ideologi-
cal cleavages ostensibly unrelated to the gist of the protests nonetheless
structured both passive and active support for them draws attention to the
role of everyday politics in structuring engagement in these movements.
The efects of this struct uring are ev ident in a glass ceiling mechanism t hat
was especially important for participation in performative forms of sup-
port, and also received expression in the increased polarization of passive
support as the cycle of contention progressed. Are unconventional social
movements irremediably tied to inst itutionalized polit ical cleavages despite
their unequivocal attempts to distance themselves from ‘divisive old-time
politics’? Future comparisons with the similar movements that emerged
in less-fractured societies – the Portuguese Geração à Rasca and the Greek
‘Indignados’ mobilizations – may shed light on this important question.
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Part 2
The Practical and Spatial Dimensions of Activism
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