Abstract

This short essay comments Loris Caruso's paper, puts his insights in perspective with other empirical works and brings new theoretical and methodological elements that could help to go further in the analysis of the relationships between social movements, public authorities and political parties. Caruso rightly challenges the Political Process theories by presenting empirical evidence from fieldworks in Italy in the 2000s, formulates a brilliant theoretical critic of these models and suggests innovative hypotheses and results that resonate with the literatures about the institutionalization of social movements and about the effects of social movements on public policies. I conclude on the crucial need to consider more seriously the issue of multilevel governance and on the need to compare diverse policy fields as well as different types of protests and issues.