Social movement theory

PowerPoint Presentation
prepared by
Terri Petkau, Mohawk College

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Politics and Social Movements
Robert J. Brym

Copyright©2011byNelsonEducationLtd
18-3
INTRODUCTION
• Will examine:
Two type of politics
Sociological theories of democracy
Theoretical explanations for social
movements
History and future of social
movements*

18-4
TERMS DEFINED
• Power: Ability of an individual or group
to impose its will on others, even if
they resist
• Authority: Power widely viewed as
legitimate
• Authorities: People who occupy
command posts of legitimized power
structures*

18-5
TERMS DEFINED
• Social movements: Continuing
collective attempts to change part or
all of social order by means of
rioting, petitioning, striking,
demonstrating, and establishing
pressure groups, unions, and
political parties
• Political parties: Organizations that
seek to control state power*

18-6
TWO TYPES OF POLITICS
• Are two types of politics:
1. “Normal politics”: When authorities
are firmly in power
2. “Politics beyond rules”: When
legitimate authority grows weak*

18-7
POWER FROM ABOVE:
NORMAL POLITICS
• The state: Set of institutions that formulate and
carry out a country’s laws, policies, and binding
resolutions
• In normal politics, ultimate seat of power is the
state (state power widely recognized as
legitimate)
• State also is authorized to use force (coercive
power) if necessary
 But use of force by authorities is sign of state’s
weakness (should not need force to impose will)*

18-8
THE STATE
• In democratic countries like Canada, the
government is formed by elected
members of the political party that wins
most seats in a general election
• Government initiates policies, proposes
laws, and enforces both
• The government is referred to as the
executive branch*

18-9
CIVIL SOCIETY
• Individuals in civil society (private sphere
of life) also exercise control over the state
through variety of organizations and
institutions, including:
 Social movements
 Mass media
 Pressure groups or “lobbies”
 Political parties*

18-10
THE INSTITUTIONS OF
STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY

18-11
POWER FROM ABOVE:
NORMAL POLITICS
• Are five sociological theories of
democracy:
1. Pluralist theory
2. Elite theory
3. Marxist theory
4. Power-balance theory
5. State-centred theory*

18-12
PLURALIST AND ELITE
THEORIES
1. Pluralist theory: Argues normal democratic
politics is characterized by compromise
and accommodation of all group interests
 Compromise and accommodation
guarantees democracy
2. Elite theory: Argues that despite
compromise and accommodation, power
is concentrated in higher-status groups,
whose interests the political system serves
best
 Elites are interconnected but do not form a
ruling class*

18-13
ELITIST CRITIQUE OF
PLURALISM
• Research undermines pluralist theory insofar as it
demonstrates:
 Existence of large, persistent, wealth-based
inequalities in political influence and political
participation
 Disproportionately large number of political and other
elites come from upper- and upper-middle-class
families
 Political involvement decreases with social class
As political involvement declines, so does political
influence*

18-14
3. MARXIST THEORY
i. Instrumentalist Marxists: Argue that elites form a
ruling class, one dominated by big business
 The state is instrument of business elite who
gain control of state by:
 Having members of wealthy families occupy
important state positions, and
 Having the state rely on big business for advice
and financial support
ii. Structuralist Marxists: Argue capitalist state acts
as arm of big business because it is embedded
in a capitalist system that forces it to act this
way*

18-15
POLITICAL APATHY AND CYNICISM
BY ANNUAL HOUSEHOLD
INCOME, CANADA

18-16
VOTER TURNOUT, CANADIAN
FEDERAL ELECTIONS

18-17
4. POWER-BALANCE
THEORY
• Argues that despite concentration of power in
society, substantial shifts in distribution of power
often occur
 These shifts have discernible effects on voting
patterns and public policies
• Suggests degree to which a country is
democratic depends on distribution of power
between upper and lower classes
 A country is more democratic when power is
widely distributed*

18-18
CONTRIBUTIONS TO FEDERAL
POLITICAL PARTIES BY
SOURCE

18-19
RESULTS OF 2008 CANADIAN
FEDERAL ELECTION

18-20
5. STATE-CENTRED
THEORY
• Argues that despite influence of distribution of
power on political life, state structures also exert
important and independent effect on politics
• Focuses on how the state itself structures
political life independently of way power is
distributed among classes and other groups
 Example: United State’s citizen-initiated voter
registration law that effectively disenfranchises
many disadvantaged people*

18-21
FIVE SOCIOLOGICAL
THEORIES OF DEMOCRACY
COMPARED

18-22
POWER FROM BELOW:
POLITICS BEYOND THE RULES
• Are three theories that seek to
explain emergence and/or growth of
social movements:
1. Relative deprivation theory
2. Resource mobilization theory
3. Frame alignment theory*

18-23
POWER FROM BELOW:
1. RELATIVE DEPRIVATION
THEORY
• Argues social rebellion occurs when an intolerable
gap develops between social rewards people feel
they deserve and social rewards they expect to
receive
 Social rewards include money, education, security,
prestige, etc.
• Claims those who lead and join social movements
are likely to be “outsiders” who lack strong social
ties to community
• Large body of research has discredited both
claims*

18-24
2. RESOURCE-MOBILIZATION
THEORY
• Argues social movements emerge only when
disadvantaged people are able to marshal the
means necessary to challenge authority
• Success or failure of social movements depends
largely on availability of resources
 Resources include jobs, money, arms, capacity to
create strong social ties among themselves, and
access to means of spreading their ideas
Example: High level of unionization is conducive to
more strike activity because unions provide
workers with leadership, strike funds, and
coordination*

18-25
WEIGHTED FREQUENCY
OF STRIKES, CANADA,
1946-2006

18-26
PERCENTAGE OF
NON-AGRICULTURAL WORKERS
UNIONIZED, CANADA,
1945-2005

18-27
3. FRAME ALIGNMENT
THEORY
• Stresses face-to-face interaction strategies
employed by movement members to recruit
nonmembers who are like-minded, apathetic, or
even initially opposed to the movements’ goals
• Frame alignment strategies include:
 Reaching out to other organizations thought to
contain members sympathetic to movement’s
cause
 Elevating importance of positive beliefs about the
movement
 Stressing likelihood of the movement’s success*

18-28
HISTORY AND FUTURE OF
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS:
THE RICH COUNTRIES
• Three centuries ago, social movements typically were
small, localized, and violent
• Subsequent growth of the state led to changes in
social movements, including:
 Growing in size (partly due to increased literacy,
modes of communication, and new densely populated
social settings)
 Becoming less violent (size and organization often
allowed movements to become sufficiently powerful
to get their way without frequent resort to extreme
measures)*

18-29
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND
CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS
• Were four stages in efforts to expand rights of
citizens:
1. Civil citizenship: 18th
century-struggle for right to free
speech, freedom of religion, and justice before the
law
2. Political citizenship: 19th
/early 20th-
century struggle for
right to vote and run for office
3. Social citizenship: 20th
century-struggle for right to a
minimum level of economic security and full
participation in social life
4. Universal citizenship: Last third of 20th-
century
struggle to recognize right of marginal groups and
rights of humanity as a whole to full citizenship*

18-30
NEW SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS
• Broadening of struggle for citizenship rights was
signalled by emergence of “new social
movements” in 1960s and 1970s
• Social movements considered “new” in terms of:
i. Breadth of their goals
ii. Kinds of people they attracted
iii. Potential for going global*

18-31
NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS:
i. GOALS
• Some new movements promote rights of humanity
as a whole to peace, security and clean
environment
 Examples: Environmental movement, peace
movement
• Other new movements promote rights of particular
groups historically excluded from full social
participation
 Examples: Women’s movement, gay rights
movement*

18-32
ii. MEMBERSHIP
• New social movements are novel in that they
attract disproportionately large number of well-to-
do people from social, educational, and cultural
fields
 Members include teachers, professors, journalists,
social workers, artists, actors, writers, and student
apprentices to these positions
Such people are predisposed to participate given
higher education, employment outside business
community, and routine exposure to struggles of
their clients and audiences (prompting them to
become advocates)*

18-33
iii. GLOBALIZATION
POTENTIAL
• New social movements possess more
potential for globalization than old social
movements
• Globalization facilitated by inexpensive jet
transportation and innovations in
communications technology
• Often transcend local and national
boundaries to promote universalistic goals
(e.g., anti-nuclear and environmental
movements)*

18-34
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
• “Other 85%” of the world is weak economically,
politically, and militarily because of colonial rule and
delay in industrializing economy
• Rather than seek to broaden democracy through
expansion of citizenship rights, social movements
(fueled by anti-Western sentiment) focus on
ensuring more elemental human rights, such as:
 Freedom from colonial rule
 Freedom to create conditions for independent
economic growth**

Social Movements
Basic Concepts

Business
• Book update
• Book report assignment (distributed,
explained)
• Web update
– Username: SMStudent
– Password: SocMove
– These are CASE Sensitive!!
• Correct exam dates: March 10, April
28

Choosing Sides, Choosing
Theory
• There is a broad tendency to use different
theories for movements we agree with and
those we disagree with
• Our own movements
– Respond to core principles of justice, morality
and characterized by clear thinking.
– Principal focus on identifying the most effective
forms of action
• Opponents
– Irrational, deluded even motivated by evil
– OR cynical, hiding their true motives
– Principal focus on explaining how people could
think such things, or on exposing the “true”

Theories are rooted in cases
and standpoints
If you understand what movements are the
touch-points for a line of theory, and how
the theorists stood with respect to them,
you will understand the core of the theory
Our goal is to treat movements as even-
handedly as possible in our theory, use the
same theories for all movements, or be able
to explain theoretically why they differ
This does NOT mean we give up our capacity
to form political or moral judgments about
right and wrong

Older theories
1. Fearful. French revolution, turmoil,
Fascism, Stalinism, lynching. “How could
people support such terrible things?”
• Group mind, Authoritarianism, Ideological
delusion
• “Collective behavior” theory focused on
disruption of society
1. Celebratory. Marxian/Socialist supporters
of working class movements. Black Civil
Rights Movement and anti-war
movements of the 1960s
• Goals seem unproblematic, reasonable
• Political sociology tradition fed into resource

Basic Definitions (courtesy
Goodwin/Jasper)
• Protest = the act of challenging, resisting,
or making demands upon authorities,
powerholders, and/or cultural beliefs and
practices by some individual or group
• Social movement = a collective,
organized, sustained and noninstitutional
challenge to authorities, powerholders, or
cultural beliefs and practices.
• Revolutionary movement = a social
movement that seeks, at a minimum, to
overthrow the government or state

Protest
• the act of challenging, resisting, or
making demands
• upon
– authorities, power-holders,
– and/or cultural beliefs and practices
• by some individual or group
Discuss examples? Borderline cases?
We don’t study ONLY protest.

Social Movement is a
• challenge to
– authorities, power-holders, OR
– cultural beliefs and practices
– (NOTE: others would say “actions to promote or
resist social change”)
• that is
– collective (multiple people)
– organized (coordinated, at least to some
degree)
– sustained (lasts a while, not just one outburst)
and
– non-institutional (the most problematic part of a
standard definition – outside the “normal”

Different ways of defining
movements
• As groups of people (the most natural idea):
BUT a movement can continue as the
people in it come and go
• As a (single) challenge that lasts a long
time – but misses the complexity of
movements
• As preferences for change (i.e. as sets of
ideas) (McCarthy & Zald 1977 – commonly
cited) BUT although the preferences bound
a movement, they are not the thing itself
• As sets of actions with common orientations
toward social change preferences

Another, related way of
defining terms
• Collective action (esp. protests): people act
together in some concerted fashion.
• Collective campaign: series of collective
actions oriented toward the same general
social change goal bounded by space, time,
and/or participants
• Social movement: a complex set of
collective campaigns and other collective
events broadly oriented to the same
general goal
– Emphasis on complexity, diffuse boundaries

About the “goals” of social
movements• Can be extremely vague and ill-defined, especially
for relatively unorganized turmoil expressing
discontent without clear proposals: “make things
better for farmers [or peasants, or poor
urbanites]."
• Organizations are more likely to articulate clear
goals or proposals.
• Different factions of the same movement may
disagree about specific goals. I.e. different
branches of women’s movement, Black
movement, workers’ movements, gay movement.
• A complex movement generally encompasses
may specific and even competing goals within a
broader more diffuse social change orientation

Organizations
• Social movement organization (SMO): an
organization (with boundaries, members, a
structure) explicitly oriented toward
movement goals. National Organization for
Women. NAACP. Greenpeace.
• Other organizations (sometimes called
“preexisting” organizations) may be part of
movements, but their “purpose” is not the
movement. I.e. churches, unions, fraternal
organizations, government agencies.
• All the organizations in a social movement
taken together may be called a social
movement sector (but the term is NOT

Movements are more than
organizations
Individual Actions
Organizational Actions
Collective Actions not by
Organizations
Actions
oriented
toward
goal
Preferences for social change

Organizations in movements
• Coherent decision-making groups set
goals, plan strategies, accumulate
resources
• Often seek directly to influence those
who have power
• Often plan events designed to draw in
other people OR to influence other
people’s opinions
• May take many forms: moderate law-
abiding, small informal or small
clandestine, large bureaucratic,

Other kinds of collective
actions
• Demonstrations, mass protests. Typically
planned by an organization or coalition of
organizations, but may draw in many other
people. May also occur more
spontaneously after a major precipitating
event, or at a gathering formed for another
purpose.
• Riots, short-term insurrections. Typically
not planned (although some may be
incited). Generally build upon prior
sentiments, organized on the spot.
•

Individual actions are also parts of
movements
• Individual thoughts, ideas
• Isolated contributions, usually
financial
• Votes, public opinion, “green”
consumerism
• Some individuals take extensive
actions to promote their movements:
one-person campaigns
• Individual acts of interpersonal
resistance and solidarity. Challenge

Individuals and movements:
Beliefs
• Adherents support the goals of the
movement.
• Beneficiaries stand to benefit personally
from the movement.
• Constituents are adherents who identify
with the movement. If you support the
goals but hate the movement, you are an
adherent who is not a constituent.
• Conscience constituents are people who
support a movement even though it won't
benefit them (e.g. white supporters of black
movement, wealthy supporters of working
class movement).

Individuals and movements:
actions
• Participants engage in movement activities
• Contributors give money to movement
organizations.
• Members are be members of particular
organizations (see below)
• NOTE: a "movement" as a whole is not a
single entity with a membership list, but it is
common for the term "movement member"
to be used casually by non-specialists to
refer to participants, contributors,
constituents, or sometimes even adherents.

Social movements overlap
with other elements of society
We don’t worry about drawing
boundaries, but about
understanding the phenomenon

Aberle’s types
Total Change Partial Change
Individual
Change
Redemptive
(religious sects)
Alterative
(personal
improvement)
Social Change Transformative
(revolutionary,
millennial)
Reformative
(specific issues)

Turner & Killian’s Movement
Orientations
1. Value: the specific things the group
wants to change
2. Power: the desire to acquire power
3. Participation as an end in itself: self-
expression, doing the right thing,
belonging
All movements have elements of all
three, but vary in the mix.

Types of movement issues:
many dimensions
• Universal issues: “everyone” benefits
(in principle): peace, environment
• Responses to economic crises,
threats to subsistence, livelihood
• Inequality issues
• Specific issue, moral reform
movements
– On behalf of yourself
– On behalf of others, victims
• Think in terms of the social structure

Universal issues
• Examples: peace, environment
• Despite universal claims, always
contentious
• Peace: avoid war vs. use force to get
rid of a perceived problem
• Environment: all are harmed if the
planet is destroyed, but the harms and
the costs of protection are distributed
unevenly
• The groups supporting these issues
tend to be tied to lifestyle, political, or

Inequality issues
• Oppressed people who form separate
economically & politically weak communities
(many ethnic/racial minorities). Few ties to
dominant groups.
• Class movements
– Reactive responses to subsistence threats
– Longer-term solidaristic institutionalized movements
seeking state power
– These may be tied to deep social divisions
• People who experience discrimination (e.g.
women, gays, disabled, religious minorities)
– Typically integrated with other groups
– Vary in class position and level of economic deprivation
– Group members may disagree about whether

Specific reform issues
• The issue itself is not necessarily a matter
of people’s whole lives
• People choose whether to be involved with
the issue, although tied to life
circumstances
– Victimization of self or family member
– Professional involvement
• These issues may “spin off” from other
strong ideological communities, e.g.
religious conservatism or feminism
• Or they may be relatively isolated issues
not closely tied to other movements

Interrelations (more later)
• Movement issues tend to come in sets,
people who support one issue tend to
support others that are seen as related
• Common ideologies such as class
conscious social justice or conservative
Christian morality create a general view,
people may move between issues
• Other linkages more “accidental,” who
happens to be allied: the linkages become
stronger due to alliance & conflict structures
& patterns, or may shift around over time.

Movement forms: an
empirical inventory 1
• Reform campaigns carried by formal
organizations that raise money, lobby
legislators, organize volunteers. Shade into
interest groups, charitable groups. Link to
larger pools of public opinion.
• Larger movements (e.g. women, Blacks,
labor) with many organizations, strong
base, have won presence in the polity
• Nationalist movements: broad upswelling of
oppressed populations, revolutionary if not
repressed
• Sporadic or unorganized uprisings or
resistance by oppressed people

Movement forms: an
empirical inventory 2
• Movement sects. Small isolated
organizations with sweeping social change
goals but no mass base.
• Top-down mass mobilizations. Elites
organize “movements” for their own ends;
may lose control of them.
• Ideological movements whose main goals
are creating & communicating new ideas.
• Cultural movements whose main goal is
creating new ways of living or being
• Religious movements are ideological &
cultural but seem to have special features

Borderline cases
• Special interest groups that lobby but lack
mass actions
• Limited mobilizations around highly specific
issues (citizens for a stop sign at the
corner)
• Self-help movements (depends on
definition, theoretical orientation)
• Movements within organizations (e.g.
movements within churches, within
businesses)
• Small political parties (often movement
consciousness, not really contending for

The basic questions about
movements
Why are there social movements?
How are there social movements?

Why movements? Depends
on the question
• Why do people need movements? Issues
of disadvantage, power differentials
• Why do people think they need
movements? Issues of interests, grievance
formation, ideologies.
• Why are people able to form movements?
Issues of resources, capacities,
opportunities.
• Why do movements succeed? Issues of
opportunity, strategy.
• Why do movements rise and fall? Issues of
coevolution, dynamics.

Political Process
• The broad orientation of this class is
the political process synthesis with a
“coevolutionary” twist
• A way of integrating different factors
into a common model
• Considers structural conditions, the
organization and capacities of a
group, the processes of ideology and
social construction, and strategic and
tactical interactions.

Coevolutionary Theory
• Builds on political process
• Stresses that movements change/evolve
not only from their own internal logic but in
interaction with other actors
• Stresses that regimes, opponents, media,
etc. ALSO change/evolve in interaction with
movements
• Historical trajectories are the consequences
not only of the movement’s choices but of
what others do.
• No actor can control outcomes, because
the outcomes are ALSO a product of others’

Linking Structure & Agency
in Coevolution
• We need to think probabilistically: a
particular set of conditions puts constraints
and limits on action but does not pre-
determine it
• Some sets of conditions are highly
constraining, you almost always get the
same outcomes
• Other sets of conditions are less
constraining, permit a wide variety of
outcomes depending on luck or
strategy/skill
• Even when conditions are highly
constraining, sometimes the low-probability

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