Social movement

About: Social movement is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 23103 publications have been published within this topic receiving 653076 citations. The topic is also known as: movement & syndical movement.

Social Movement Insiders: The Impact of Institutional Activists on Affirmative Action and Comparable Worth Policies

Abstract: We challenge the assumption within resource mobilization theory that polity members and social movement activists are distinct entities by offering the concept of “institutional activists .” Institutional activists are social movement participants who occupy formal statuses within the government and who pursue social movement goals through conventional bureaucratic channels. Using regression analyses we examine the impact of institutional activists and social movement organizations (SMOs) on the comprehensiveness of two U.S. state policies: affirmative action, pursued by the civil rights movement; and comparable worth, pursued by the women's movement. We find that SMOs were decisive in adoption of affirmative action, but not comparable worth policies. In contrast, institutional activists were important for the passage of comparable worth but not affirmative action policies. These findings suggest that resource mobilization theory would better capture the impact of social movements on policy outcomes by recognizing activists who work as insiders on outsider issues.

Political Culture and Political Preferences

Abstract: Aaron Wildavsky has argued that it is theoretically more useful to think of political preferences as rooted in political culture than to entertain alternative bases such as schemas or ideologies. In the APSA presidential address in which he made his case, Wildavsky also advocated a program of research on political cultures, and welcomed “challenges and improvements.” David Laitin accepts the invitation; he variously takes issue with Wildavsky's concept of political culture.

Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Opportunities and framing in the Eastern European revolts of 1989

Abstract: The idea that the force of truth, the power of a truthful word, the strength of a free spirit, conscience and responsibility not armed with machine guns … might actually change something was quite beyond the horizon of [a Marxist philosopher's] understanding…Communism was overthrown by life, by thought, by human dignity. Our recent history has confirmed that. Vaclav Havel (1992) INTRODUCTION The year 1989, like 1848 and 1968, was a vintage year for students of collective action and social movements. One after another, like dominos, and quite unexpectedly, seemingly powerful Communist regimes were challenged and toppled in Eastern Europe by an opposition that grew within days into huge mass movements of the citizenry that demanded free elections and democracy and, except in Romania, achieved their goals without violence. Together with equally momentous events in the Soviet Union in the past few years, the 1989 revolutions spelled the end of the Cold War and started the spread of democracy beyond Western Europe. Somewhat reminiscent of 1848, when the liberal revolutions against authoritarian monarchies got confounded with nationalism, the weakening of the Soviet empire, the last colonial empire of the twentieth century, stimulated nationalist movements that led to civil war and strife in parts of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. But elsewhere, the new democracies are striking root despite enormous economic problems and the pains of changing from socialism to capitalist market economies.