The consequence of social movement is the one area which has not been
studied very methodologically and systematically. The scholarship
available in this domain is not sufficient to understand the impact
of social movements and the processes or means chosen to reach the
goal. The means-end analysis of social movement is the main concern
for this book. The book has been divided into two parts “Types of
consequences” and “comparative perspectives”. The book contains
ten essays on different types of protest movements and tries to
settle the link between means and end. Most of the essays in this
book take William A. Gamson’s 1975 work Strategy of Social
Protest as the benchmark and try to see critically the question
of consequences through theories and hypotheses provided in this
work.
This book starts with the historical account of past research, future
problems and future development by Marco Giugni. He tries to
differentiate between the past works on social movements which
focused on goals and the aim of this book which tries to find out the
impact and consequences of social movements. The two strategies
'disruption' and 'moderation' and the effect of both these in
different situations is the concern for him. He says that both these
strategies success is dependent upon the political context of the
movement. Further, he puts the methodological agenda for the study of
the consequences of movement. First one should define the range of
movement consequences and then specify the types of consequences to
be studied and then search for plausible relevant causes and finally
reconstruct causal pattern and histories. The comparative study,
according to him, is an influential tool to study the consequences in
different countries and provides better insight in this direction.
The first essay of the book talks about the impact of “Social
Movement Organizations” (SMOs) on public policy in a democratic
framework of governance. In democracy, representatives are mainly
concerned about reelection so the will of the majority becomes
important. Therefore, interest groups and SMOs cannot influence the
public policy as SMOs might not represent the majoritarian views
(Lohmann). But, Gamson finds American democracy “a members-only
system” and SMOs, which he calls “challenging groups”, do
poorly because the government is unresponsive. However, Lohmann
contradicts and says that when government is democratic and
responsive then SMOs often do poorly because elected officials know
the public demands and work according to majority wants. Therefore,
it can be argued that the influence of SMOs and interest groups are
constrained by two factors: “electoral competition and limits on
ability of citizens and legislators to pay attention to many issues
at the same time”(Page, 4). Those issues on which the public cares
little about, the impact of SMOs can be higher by changing public
policy's preferences and its intensity of concern about particular
issues.
Social movements, political parties and Interest Groups have
different connotations but changing role and rules in democratic
politics make these terms some time overlapping and ambiguous. So,
Paul Burstein in this essay tries to find the definition of these
terms. Mccarthy and Zald emphasises on “opinions and
beliefs...preferences” and Tilly talks about the interaction that
leads to social movement. For Tilly, “the term social movement
applies most usefully to sustained interaction between a specific set
of authorities and various spokespersons for a given challenge to
those authorities.” However, this definition has a risk of being
overinclusive. But, marginality is the key distinction between Social
Movement Organisations and Interest groups i.e., SMOs are the
“margins of the political systems”(Page,7). Further, SMOs are
less institutionalized than interest groups and have less ties with
governments unlike Interest groups. Somehow, Political Parties,
Interest Groups and SMOs share most of the attributes and these
distinctions tries to represent a continuum-in which on one end SMOs
are present and others are on the different end.
Edwin Amneta and Michael P. Young say that the assessment of 'goals'
of any social movement is not so useful academically as many of the
goals of the social movements are hidden and “focusing upon them
alone would mean missing other important occurrences that might have
resulted from the challenge”. They start with the concept of
collective goods and argue that the greater the collective benefits
achieved by the challenge, the greater its favourable impact.
Gamson's study posits two forms of “success”- the realisation of
new advantages for the challenging organization and the acceptance of
the organization as a legitimate mouthpiece for the group it claims
to represent. Through these means he divides it into two categories
of “full response” having two version of partial success:
“cooptation” and “preemption” and complete failure which he
refers to as “collapse”. Further, this 'success' and 'failure'
depends upon the challengers adherence to stated programs. However,
in the critic of this view, it can be stated that sometimes
challengers stated programme is not achieved but it provided many
collective benefits to the participating mass. As despite the failure
of “Townsend Movement's” programs, Townsend Movement was
responsible for greater change in social security act in United
States.
So, a focus on programme tends to overlook unintended benefits of
challenges that may be beneficial to the followers of those
challenges. Sometime, social movements get benefits from other than
state or target groups and it helps in mobilising more people for new
rounds of protest movements. So, one should look beyond the
challenges and goals of social movements and go for study of impact
of movements. However, these theoretical frameworks are very much
related to “Resource Mobilisation Theory” and as Clause Off said
there is a probability of “free-rider problem” in this thesis.
Therefore, researcher should go beyond the standard methodological
propositions especially causal analysis and ascertain the impact of
the challenges posed by social movements. The main question to ask is
what might have been the consequences in absence of the challenger.
Moreover, they are suggesting to differentiate between “the policy
making process into the components of agenda setting, the
specification of the content of the legislation, and the enactment of
proposal” (Page, 41). This will help in accessing the degree of
success of any challenger as well as the point in the process at
which its impact took place.
The impact of social movement on political institution in Switzerland
and United States have been studied by Hanspeter Kriesi and Dominique
Wisler. Social movements do not, generally, question the existence of
political structure and they generate the patterns of beliefs and
preferences that sustain them and these political institutions
through the use of, “adaptive preferences” very often one
dismisses the undesirable that is unattainable anyhow. The
paradigmatic shift in the political institutions changes only in
periods of profound societal crisis especially economic crisis, which
establishes conditions for change in political institutions as in
1860s, Switzerland adopted direct democracy. The studies have well
documented that the Swiss democratic movement and American populist
movement both started in the phase of deep economic crisis. But,
generalisation of this type is problematic as in the capitalist
economy, crisis is inherent as capitalism works in a cycle of boom
and slow down but always it does not convert into change in political
institutions. However, they take in consideration different other
structural conditions that helped in the change of political
institutions like federalism, lack of institutionalisation of the
state, the weakness of political parties and elite divisions. So,
vulnerability of institutions is one of the main cause for political
institutional change. This essay ambiguously submits to economic
determinism and sees conflicts of other institutions simply the
sub-cause.
Della Porta finds that social movements make democracy vibrant and
try to impose “democracy from below”. They open new arenas for
people's participation and these arenas are in public control which
in turn helps in making democracy vibrant. It can be seen through the
debate on protest rights which developed in 1960s. Protest rights and
protest policing both started from 1960s and evolved as a constituent
part of democratic process. The polarisation of social and political
forces made two coalitions: one of their opponents who made law and
order coalitions and their supporters who made civil rights
coalitions. His analysis of both countries germany and Italy showed
that the legacy of recent experiences with totalitarian regimes was a
mistrust of democratic procedures. In both countries, these
coalitions were formed around the issue of protest rights and
transformed the formalistic view of democracy into a more
participatory form of democracy. At the same time, violent movements
were stigmatized.
The protest right allowed people and groups to gather and ask for
concessions from the state but there are other institutions which are
different from state and the difference lies in the capacity to use
repression. In Anti-war protests in USA, science faced the biggest
challenge from the protestors and it allowed many changes in the
institution of science and technology. Now, informations about
science and technology's benefits and dangers were available to
people and in universities, “science-wars” started between
supporters of science and critics of science. Basically, some
scientists were sympathetic to the anti-war movement and rapid growth
of science facilitated military-university ties and it decentralised
the power distribution. Therefore, Kelly Moore says that challenges
to institutions are more difficult as it is not clear where power is
centered in an institution and also professionals within institutions
hold the most power so there are few ways in which clients and other
groups can affect the behaviour of the people. But, she does not
examine those shared information about science and technology and
justifies that it were useful or not.
During 1980s and 1990s, the women's movements of United States and
United Kingdom presented feminist agenda in an era of conservative
government. The impact of these movements especially in three domains
abortion, economic equity, and domestic violence and the
institutional and structural changes in the Women organisations and
political challenges faced are studied in the article of Joyce Gelb
and Vivien Hart. The American feminist Movement had well established
and professional networks of professional network of national
organizations coordinating a mainstream reformist movement with
liberal equality goals. It also had a vigorous set of locally
organized grassroots movements, which have combined advocacy and
service delivery in negotiating with bureaucratic and elected policy
makers. In contrast, British feminism has no equivalent
superstructure. Women were made minority members in national policy
making and the movement was characterized by marginality and an
ideological rejection by “high politics” of centralised
parliamentary state. However, at local level, British movements were
as vigorous as American movements were.
The success of movement may be analysed in several ways: “through
movement mobilisation, policy impact, and cultural changes; or change
in collective consciousness and discursive politics, which may create
resource for further mobilisation and change”(Page, 159-160). A
major change was increased participation of women in decision making
processes, which is the effect of leading politicization of women in
both countries. In USA, the right of women to abort or keep fetus
was accepted by the court and economic equity was also achieved to
some extent due to higher participation in state and non-state
institutions. However, this essay is framed in a “pluralist
tradition of power” and does not look upon the holistic view of
decision making as Steven Lukes says that Power has three components:
power to make decisions, capacity to stall or delay decision making
and shaping of desires.
The antiwar movement in USA and the anti-nuclear movement in the era
of cold war had effects on the foreign policy of the states. The
impact of anti-nuclear movements was studied by David S. Meyer and he
find out that in matters of national security, nations are not
ecological units influenced only by domestic or international
considerations. Rather there is an interplay of both with movements
in one country influencing the governments. Domestic unrest in
western countries influenced foreign policies but the impact of these
movements were very short term. The proliferation of nuclear weapons
in developing world after the end of cold war and the subsequent
anti-nuclear movements in these countries have very less effect.
Therefore, the change was only symbolic in nature which can be seen
in Reagan's offer of Zero-Zero option to Gorbachev and its failure.
In the later phase of the century, a new type of movement was seen
for the preservation and conservation of environment in the name of
environment movement. These movements were started by network of
nongovernmental groups and organisations that by means of social and
political intervention, including collective protest to prevent the
exploitation and/or destruction of natural resources. However, these
movements are confronted with a remarkable paradox; on one hand, it
has been successful in agenda setting, impact on individual attitudes
and behaviour and its contribution to the establishment of a new
polity and a new industrial sector but on the other hand, the
movement has been unsuccessful in stopping environmental degradation.
Despite these movements, natural resources continue to be exploited
at a larger scale, the ecological disturbances are more high, human
intervention in ecologically sensitive areas has increased and
pollution of all kind has increased.
Dieter Rucht clearly shows that the impact of environmental movements
have been more symbolic in nature and their success is marginal. Some
achievements like oil tankers have been essentially prevented from
cleaning their tanks with seawater that is then spilled into the
ocean and also the plan of dividing and exploiting Antarctica have
been abandoned. There is a complex web of interrelations in
environmental politics ranging from individual attitude and behaviour
to public opinion to response of state in environmental matters. The
current position of environment is not only the result of
contemporary policies rather it is the product of series of policies
adopted and adapted in the past. So, the positive influence might
shed in the rapid deterioration of environment in contemporary
societies.
Therefore, this book provides the theoretical, methodological, and
empirical analysis of consequences and impact of different kinds of
social movements on the institutions of state and non-state
institutions. Tilly ends the book with the metaphor “of exploring
all parts of the river”-- upstream, midstream and downstream-- in
order to understand causal linkages between social movements activity
and outcomes. The book emphasizes on the need of studying social
movement’s impact and to differentiate it from the impacts of
external social agents and other processes. However, this book does
not talk about the impacts of social movement in developing world or
so called “Third World” but these theories and methodologies can
be used for the assessment of social movements anywhere in the world.
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