Comparative Social Movements Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Often times, the political sphere’s understated preference for the mundane seems to be best understood as a ringing endorsement of routine and formality and a stinging rebuke of conflict and struggle. However, because most political arrangements—outside of anarchic examples—are structured on some sort of hierarchical system of authority, it is almost inevitable that politics will at some point become contentious. If and when political discord occurs, average citizens usually choose to advance their concerns through conventional forms of political participation such as voting or perhaps canvassing for an established political party. Alternately, depending on the issue, political actors may elect to work for political or social change from outside the system by challenging and confronting elites and authorities through forms of collective action to accomplish a common goal or purpose. Still, the concept of collective action in the political realm is much more than a simple cooperative enterprise of political convenience. It is in many respects a political statement that allows organized groups or social movements to change the nature of mainstream political debate by framing it to reflect their own specific interests.

Normative Origins

Historically speaking, social movements have come to serve as key access points for political activity in societies where minorities, marginalized groups, and otherwise disenfranchised individuals have either been overtly or subtly snubbed by the political sphere. Not surprisingly, because social movements arise from grassroots activities and networking, they are often particularly adept at identifying underused or constricted avenues for political participation in democratic societies whose existence by their own definition depends on guaranteeing their citizenry unencumbered access to the political process. In fact, sociologist Ian Angus goes so far as to suggest that “contemporary democracy relies upon social movements to continue the process of expanding democracy towards rule by all the people” (2001).

Still, social movement theorists would argue that any influence that social movements have wielded over contemporary democracies should be understood as the product of two distinct lineages of social movements: old and new. For some scholars, the French Revolution of 1789 still serves as the high-water mark in the history of collective action, producing tangible conclusions about the nature of group dynamics and political behavior. However by the late nineteenth century, the works of intellectuals Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and eventually Antonio Gramsci began to resonate with workers in industrialized countries in Europe and North America who felt exploited, abandoned, and disenfranchised by the “capitalist state.” Eventually, socialism’s message of revolution and solidarity led workers to conclude that governments that were unwilling or unable to insulate their economic well-being from the broad reach of unfettered capitalism would face acts of civil disobedience or general work stoppages, which in turn led to more formalized social movement activity with the creation of trade unions and communist parties. Theorists categorize these early forms of collective action as examples of old social movements.

As the end of World War II (1939–1945) ushered in the “grand bargain” of the welfare state for most industrialized countries, both working conditions and economic prospects improved to the point where a large portion of the labor force began to emerge consisting of professionals, civil servants, and the like who would constitute the middle class. But even though middle-class workers still could not identify with society’s elites, they also began to view themselves as politically, culturally, and intellectually distinct from the old social movements of the working class. Although middle-class workers did not entirely abandon their support of trade unions and left-wing political parties, they were much more drawn to forms of collective action that reflected a variety of postmaterialist values that went beyond a class-based economic agenda by encompassing a wide range of moral, cultural, and social crusades. Many of the social movements that formed during this era included civil rights groups, women’s movements, antiwar groups, and environmentalists and would become characterized by theorists as new social movements.

Some scholars of late have begun to view the loosely connected collection of social movements involved in various kinds of transnational ant globalization activism as yet another milestone in the history of collection action, given that it features significant elements of both old and new social movements. For contemporary social movement theorists, this modern coalescence of diverse views and interests may indeed point to the emergence of a new global social movement that has defied traditional forms of categorization thus far.

Theoretical Traditions

By the 1960s, with scores of new social movements infiltrating the political spheres of Europe and North America to various degrees of success, the scholarly community began to formally conceptualize this trend through a number of theoretical approaches. Yet, all of the efforts on the part of theorists to produce a reasonably concise account of the motivating factors that shape social movement activity were divided between one school of thought that centered its explanations around ruminations on mobilization and another that emphasized the significance of organizational structures.

While several theorists see collective action as the end result of the mobilization of political actors, early on, both interactionism and functionalism suggested alternate explanations for “value-driven” collective behavior. Advocates of resource mobilization theory claim that social movement behavior is entirely contingent on a movement’s ability to mobilize its resources, which can either be material—work, money, concrete benefits, services—or nonmaterial—authority, moral engagement, fixed friendship. Finally, some mobilization theorists cite the institutional constraints of the political process as a movement’s primary motivation for taking advantage of potential political opportunities to affect change.

Unlike mobilization theorists who suggest that social movement activity is best understood as the organized expressions and rational aspirations of political actors, organizational theorists have produced an alternate narrative that contends that social movements are primarily concerned with their own organizational survival and thus pursue their agendas by adapting their organizational structures to best respond to the pressures of the political sphere. Some of the organizational theories that emerged from this school include contingency theory, the organizational ecology perspective, and neoinstitutional theory.

Bibliography:

Angus, Ian. Emergent Publics: An Essay on Social Movements and Democracy. Winnipeg, Man.: Arbeiter Ring, 2001.
della Porta, Donatella, and Mario Dani. Social Movements: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Eder, Klaus. “The ‘New Social Movements’: Moral Crusades, Political Pressure Groups, or Social Movements?” Social Research 52, no. 4 (1985): 869–890.
MacAdam, Douglas, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. Dynamics of Contention. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Mellucci, Alberto. Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society, edited by John Keane and Paul Mier. London: Hutchinson Radius, 1989.
O’Brien, Robert, Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Arte Scholte, and Marc Williams. Contesting Global Governance: Multilateral Economic Institutions and Global Social Movements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Tarrow, Sidney. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. New York: Cambridge University of Press, 1998.

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