When violence broke out at the demonstrations surrounding the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, the authors of this book were there. The protests proved to be a critical moment in the global justice movement.
Presenting the first systematic empirical research on the global justice movement, "Globalization from Below" analyzes a movement from the viewpoints of the activists, organizers, and demonstrators themselves. The authors traveled to Genoa with anti-G8 protesters and collected data from more than 800 participants. A year later, they surveyed 2,400 activists at the European Social Forum in Florence. To understand how this cycle of global protest emerged, they examine the interactions between challengers and elites, and discuss how these new models of activism fit into current social movement work.
"Globalization from Below" places the protests within larger debates, revealing and investigating the forces that led to a clash between demonstrators and the Italian government, which responded with violence.
Donatella della Porta is professor of political science; Massimiliano Andretta is a researcher in political science and sociology; Lorenzo Mosca is a researcher in information and communication technologies; Herbert Reiter is a researcher in history, all at the European University Institute.

The way in which police handle political demonstrations is always potentially controversial. In contemporary democracies, police departments have two different, often conflicting aims: keeping the peace and defending citizens' right to protest. This collection analyzes a wide array of policing styles. The contributors look at cultures and political power to examine the methods, the trends and cycles, and the consequences of policing protest. Focusing on Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, Spain, the United States, and South Africa, the contributors explore the various police strategies of coercion, negotiation, and information surveillance. They discuss protest policing in relation to specific countries' governments and consider public opinion, media, and the police's perception of reality to illustrate the reciprocal ways in which police and protest are defined. Moreover, this volume considers the profound changes from the forceful 1960s to a "softer" 1990s, including the consequences of this move.