Social Movements. Donatella della Porta
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for their social marginalization. According to rational approaches, mobilization can thus be explained as being more than the gratification of pursuing a collective good; it also promotes the existence of horizontal solidarity links, within the collective, and vertical links, integrating different collectives. On the basis of a wide range of empirical research, one can therefore foresee this phenomenon:
Participants in popular disturbances and activists in opposition organizations will be recruited primarily from previously active and relatively well‐integrated individuals within the collectivity, whereas socially isolated, atomized, and uprooted individuals will be underrepresented, at least until the movement has become substantial.
(Oberschall 1973, p. 135)
Accordingly, scholars of resource mobilization concentrate their attention on how collective actors operate, how they acquire resources and mobilize support, both within and without their adherents’ group.
Over the years, research on social movement organizations has extended its attention to the relations between organizations and the dynamics going on in organizational populations. Increasingly sophisticated network studies have looked at the interactions between the organizations and individuals identified with social movements (Diani 2015; Diani and McAdam 2003; Krinsky and Crossley 2014; Mische 2008). Concepts and methods borrowed from organizational theory have been applied to the study of the factors behind organizations’ emergence and survival, again with reference to both the national and the global sphere (Atouba and Shumate 2010; Davis et al. 2008; Den Hond, De Bakker, and Smith 2015; Smith et al. 2018; Smith and Wiest 2012; Wijk et al. 2013).
The definition of social movements as conscious actors making rational choices is among the most important innovations of the resource mobilization approach. However, it has been the target of several criticisms. It has been charged with indifference to the structural sources of conflict and the specific stakes for the control of which social actors mobilize (Melucci 1989; Piven and Cloward 1992). Its emphasis on the resources controlled by a few political entrepreneurs, at the cost of overlooking the self‐organization potential by the most dispossessed social groups, has also been criticized (Piven and Cloward 1992). Finally, it has been noted that in its explanation of collective action this approach overdoes the rationality of collective action, not taking the role of emotions adequately into account (Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta 2001). In fact, as some of the most influential proponents of this approach admitted, “early resource mobilization models exaggerate the centrality of deliberative strategic decisions to social movements” (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001, p. 7), overemphasizing similarities between social movements and interest politics. As in organizational sociology neo‐institutionalism focused attention to appropriateness rather than rationality, also social movement studies tended to give more attention to the importance of norms over means and on prefiguration as anticipation of the future (Tavory and Eliasoph 2013).
1.1.4 What Determines the Forms and Intensity of Collective Action?
A most cogent and systematic response to this question has come from the perspective usually defined as “political process” (McAdam 1982; Tilly 1978). This approach shares with resource mobilization theory a strategic view of action – so much so that they are sometimes treated as a unified perspective – but pays more systematic attention to the political and institutional environment in which social movements operate. The central focus of “political process” theories is the relationship between institutional political actors and protest. In challenging a given political order, social movements interact with actors who enjoy a consolidated position in the polity. Charles Tilly (1978, p. 53) famously spoke of movements as “challengers,” contrasting them to established members of a given polity. The concept that has had the greatest success in defining the properties of the external environment, relevant to the development of social movements, is that of “political opportunity structure.” Peter Eisinger (1973) used this concept in a comparison of the results of protest in different American cities, focusing on the degree of openness (or closure) of the local political system. Other empirical research indicated important new variables, such as electoral instability (Piven and Cloward 1977), the availability of influential allies (Gamson 1990), and tolerance for protest among the elite (Jenkins and Perrow 1977). Sidney Tarrow integrated these empirical observations into a theoretical framework for his study of protest cycles in Italy, singling out the degree of openness or closure of formal political access, the degree of stability or instability of political alignments, the availability and strategic posture of potential allies and political conflicts between and within elites (Tarrow 1989, 1994).
To these variables others have been added, relating to the institutional conditions that regulate agenda‐setting and decision‐making processes. Characteristics relating to the functional division of power and also to geographical decentralization have been analyzed in order to understand the origins of protest and the forms it has taken. In general, the aim has been to observe which stable or ‘mobile’ characteristics of the political system influence the growth of less institutionalized political action in the course of what are defined as protest cycles (Tarrow 1989), as well as the forms these actions take in different historical contexts (Tilly 1978). The comparison between different political systems (for some pioneering works, see Kitschelt 1986; Kriesi et al. 1995; della Porta 1995) enabled the central theme of relationships between social movements and the institutional political system to be studied in depth.
The political process approach succeeded in shifting attention toward interactions between new and traditional actors, and between less conventional forms of action and institutionalized systems of interest representation. In this way, it is no longer possible to define movements as phenomena that are, of necessity, marginal and anti‐institutional, expressions of dysfunctions of the system. A more fruitful route toward the interpretation of the political dimension of contemporary movements has been established.
One should not ignore, however, some persisting areas of difficulty. On the one hand, supporters of this perspective continue to debate delicate problems such as the choice of the most appropriate indicators to measure complex institutional phenomena. First, the lack of consensus on the relevant dimensions of the concept of political opportunities resulted in their exponential growth. Early studies of political opportunities focused on a small number of variables. Since the 1980s, however, the addition of new variables to the original set has expanded the explanatory power of the concept, but reduced its specificity. The concept runs the risk of becoming a ‘dustbin’ for any and every variable relevant to the development of social movements. Most of the concept’s problems arise from the way in which it has been developed, picking up variables from a variety of studies on a variety of movements. This accumulation of heterogeneous variables reflecting different authors’ concerns and ideas has resulted in a concept which, to quote Sartori (1970), denotes much but connotes little. Particularly in international comparative studies, it is impossible to handle the large number of variables and assess properly their explanatory power. Focus on structural variables might shift attention away from how norms and values, referring in particular to movements goals (or discursive opportunities), influence movement strategies as well as their chances of success (Goodwin 2011; Goodwin and Jasper 1999; Jasper 2018).
A second problem arises when we wish to distinguish between ‘objective’ reality and its social construction (Berger and Luckmann 1969). Some changes in the political opportunity structure do not have any effect on a social movement unless they are perceived as important by the movement itself. Structural availability must be filtered through a process of ‘cognitive liberation’ in order to unleash turmoil (McAdam 1986). For protest to emerge, activists must believe that an opportunity exists, that they have the power to bring about change and they must blame the system for the problem. Looking at structural opportunities without considering the cognitive processes that intervene between structure and action can be very misleading. It is important, therefore, to analyze activists’ understandings of available opportunities, the lenses through which they view potential opportunities for their movements (Gamson and Meyer 1996). Perceptions of state response may be particularly influenced, for instance,