Mobilisierung, Staat und Demokratie

The explanation of the emergence and consolidation of democratic regimes is one of the most important topics of political sociology. The main theoretical approaches can be divided into actor- and elite-theories on the one hand and structure- and modernization-theories on the other. This article combines actor- and structure-centered theories following the discussion of Lipset’s thesis of the connection between socio-economic modernization and democracy. Its theoretical starting point is the assertion that the emergence and consolidation of democratic regimes can be explained with reference to the power resources and interests of collective actors. These are determined in two ways by structural conditions: first, the social structural basis for the mobilization of collective actors changes with socio-economic modernization processes. Second, the mobilization of actors is dependent on certain conditions, which are influenced by modernization processes. The role of the state is emphasized, because the state can strongly affect the conditions of mobilization for collective actors in the civil society, and therefore block processes of democratization. The interests and power resources of state elites are not only conditioned by endogenous modernization processes, but furthermore by exogenous, geopolitical conditions. Therefore, the final result is, that socioeconomic modernization processes are a necessary but not sufficient condition for democratization.     

Theories of collective action and the Iranian revolution

Most analyses of the collective actions that led to the Iranian revolution rest upon one of two classical models: social breakdown or social movement. These explanations emphasize such factors as the politicization of recently uprooted migrants, the growth of a new middle class opposing autocracy, the authority of the clergy, and specific aspects of Shiite Islam. Conflicts of interest, capacity for mobilization, coalition formation, and the structure of opportunities that shaped the collective actions of various groups and classes are ignored or downplayed. This paper argues that mobilization and collective action against the monarchy resulted from the adverse effects of state development policies on bazaaris, industrial workers, white-collar employees, and professionals. Bazaaris' mobilization provided an opportunity for other social groups and classes to oppose the government. A coalition of disparate interests, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, brought down the monarchy.Iran's two major twentieth-century revolutions, and especially the second, appear so aberrant. They do not fit very closely widespread ideas of what modern revolutions should be like. Yet there is no doubt that the Islamic revolution in 1978–79 provided a thoroughgoing overthrow of the old political, social, and ideological order (Keddie, 1983:580).     

Ethnic Mobilization in south Tyrol: A primordial identity in crisis

South Tyrol and the German minority are portrayed as one of the most successful forms of ethnic mobilization in Western Europe. Its distinct historic roots and the related symbolic codes of collective identity formation can be seen as a classical example for territorially‐based minority politics. On the basis of a constructivist approach the thesis is developed that the primordial collective identity, dominant in South Tyrol, has generated very particular patterns of ethnic mobilization and conflict. On the one hand, it has secured the intransigent protest of the German population fighting an enforced Italianization ‘ over decades. On the other hand, however, this firm of collective identity is simultaneously fostering the recent crisis of ethnic politics in South Tyrol. The more general argument is made that in highly modem, European‐oriented society a primordial understanding of ethnic loyalty is no longer able to provide stable patterns of social integration and political loyalty. In this respect, the South Tyrolean case is interpreted as an example of how primordial patterns of collective identity and related political mobilization tend to lose their firm base in highly modern society.     

Responding to Disaster: Two Logics of Demands and the Politics of Hybridity

Two similar disastrous fires struck concert venues in the USA (The Station, 2003) and Argentina (República Cromañón, 2004). We explore similarities and contrasts in public responses to these tragedies to better understand two patterns of collective action. One pattern (‘insider’) revolves around the deployment of forms of action and organization aimed at working within the constraints and opportunities already available or easily attainable within prevailing institutional arrangements. The other (‘outsider’) involves a reliance on forms of action and organization that seek to gain leverage by challenging prevailing institutions, often by way of protest, direct action, and the threat to disrupt existing arrangements. These ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ patterns bear the imprint of accumulated repertoires of action and organization, are very often in tension, and involve trade-offs that participants in civil society organizations constantly weigh in considering alternative courses of action. Moreover, choices between the ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ strategies are made vis-à-vis complex arrays of constraints and opportunities embodied in prevailing institutional arrangements. We also argue that pure ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ patterns constitute theoretical constructs or ideal types, and that neither the ‘insider’ nor the ‘outsider’ modes of mobilization are inherently superior to one another in ensuring greater wellbeing or a stronger civil society. Moreover, in the actual terrain of collective action, such as in the two situations at hand, most often we find that actors deploy complex combinations of strategies, to constitute ‘hybrid’ modes of mobilization. To further illustrate this point, we briefly discuss populism as a form of mobilization that ultimately combines both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ strategies, and is in fact defined by a conflictive relationship between both sets of strategies.     

The religious field and the path-dependent transformation of popular politics in the Anglo-American world, 1770–1840

This article examines the formative influence of the organizational field of religion on emerging modern forms of popular political mobilization in Britain and the United States in the early nineteenth century when a transition towards enduring campaigns of extended geographical scale occurred. The temporal ordering of mobilization activities reveals the strong presence of religious constituencies and religious organizational models in the mobilizatory sequences that first instituted a mass-produced popular politics. Two related yet analytically distinct generative effects of the religious field can be discerned. First, in both cases the transition toward modern forms of popular mobilization was driven by the religious institutionalization of organizational forms of centralized voluntarism that facilitated extensive collective action. Second, the adoption of different varieties of the same organizational forms led to important divergences. The spread in the United States of societies for moral reformation—in contrast to their non-survival in Britain—steered popular politics there towards a more moralistic framing of public issues. These findings indicate the importance of the organizational field of religion for the configuration of modern forms of popular collective action and confirm the analytical importance of religion’s organizational aspects for the study of collective action.     

Lessons from the Niagara Movement: Prosopography and Discursive Protest

This article uses a case study of the Niagara Movement, which functioned from 1905–1910, to demonstrate that the use of prosopography (collective biographies) is a propitious methodological tool, particularly for those interested in the social-psychological analysis of movement actors within networks. I present a prosopography of the founders of the Niagara Movement. Learning more about the identity of political actors provides clues to the ways strategic choices are made and how collective action frames are developed. The prosopography of the Niagara Movement also provides theoretical insights into discursive processes that are often lost in studies of long movement trajectories. I analyze potential explanations for the absence of organizations such as the Niagara Movement from the civil rights canon, and, through an analysis of talk as a resource for mobilization, pinpoint directions for future researchers interested in micro theories of mobilization.     

Challenging National Borders from Within: The Political‐Class Formation of Indigenous Peasants in Latin America*

We explore the recent Indian‐peasant mobilization in Latin America. We argue that this mobilization seeks recognition of cultural differences and thus challenges hegemonic definitions of nationhood and neoliberal globalism. Indian struggles include self‐government and collective use of land for the reproduction of indigenous identity, and directly undermine the neoliberal drive towards privatization and individualization. We question both the Marxist views and the new‐social‐movement theories on identity politics. Instead, a theoretical synthesis is proposed where both class and identity serve as constituent parts of political‐class formation.     

Re-conceptualizing Civil Society: Towards a Radical Understanding

The article examines problematic aspects of contemporary theoretical thinking about civil society within a Western liberal-democratic context. The impact of neo-liberalism upon narratives of civil society, the assumption that civility resides more conspicuously within the world of associational life, and the tendency to conflate ‘civil society’ with the ‘third sector’ are areas critically discussed. Such conceptual incongruities, it is argued, obscure the path to a more radical theoretical understanding of civil society. In the second part of the article an alternative model of civil society is proposed. Supporting Evers premise that ‘every attempt to narrow down civil society to the third sector seriously impoverishes the very concept of civil society’ (Evers, Voluntary Sector Review 1:116, 2010), it is argued that civil society is best understood as a normative political concept, as being contingent in nature and distinct from the third sector.     

A Critical Examination of the Social Contagion Image of Collective Behavior: the Case of the Enfield Monster*

This paper makes an initial statement regarding the conceptual and empirical utility of the social contagion image as posited by Blumer and Klapp. Their position is then criticized on the basis of its assumption that unverified and unusual sensory experiences, mobilization processes, and mass preoccupations are equivalent and undifferentiated products of social contagion. Further, the social contagion approach is unable to adequately account for differential participation in these collective behavior events. Most of these problems stem from the assumed discontinuity between collective and institutional behavior embodied in the social contagion perspective. An alternative approach is posited which suggests that communication processes, availability of the population for participation, and institutional demands provide a more adequate explanation of differential participation with respect to unusual sensory experiences, mobilization, and mass preoccupation. A case study of a monster sighting in a rural community is presented and examined from this alternate perspective.     

Culture, Capital and Class Conflicts in the Political Economy of Cape Breton

Abstract This paper examines the unprecedented rapid unionization of fish processing plant workers in the industrial town of Glace Bay, Cape Breton. The explanation for union militancy is tied to historical dynamics in local labour markets and the transposition of working class consciousness from the mining sector to the fish processing sector. Historically forged household and community dynamics and cultural values provide the key to the mobilization of the Cape Breton fish plant workers. While the contradictory and complex nature of local culture allowed for the emergence of resistance, the conditions which inspired such action also nurtured social patterns well accommodated to the region's marginal economic conditions. Thus, the circumstances under which strategies for resistance are forthcoming must hold particular and locally meaningful cultural significance. Paternalistic control of the labour force in local fish plants successfully manipulated local cultural values. Impersonal corporate management strategies violated these codes of conduct and provoked rapid collective response.     

Social movements and the politics of care: empathy,solidarity and eviction blockades

ABSTRACT

This paper develops a perspective of mobilization based on the ethics of care to explore the complexities of political solidarity in social movements. On the one hand, it is interested in the reasons why commonly aggrieved individuals do not always collaborate to confront their oppression. On the other, it explores why sometimes people initiate mobilization for causes that do not benefit them directly. From a care perspective, aggrieved individuals may not mobilize to confront their troubles because some of their caring needs (emotional, identity, and participatory) are not covered. At the same time, empathy motivates people not affected by a grievance to initiate mobilization in support of the oppressed collective. Internal solidarity among those aggrieved may be created during the process of mobilization through care work. The analytical relevance of this model is demonstrated explaining the mobilization of the ‘Platform of Those Affected by Mortgages’, the biggest housing organization in Spain. A care-based approach to mobilization contributes to our analysis of contentious collective action by helping to better understand the complexities of political solidarity and the mechanisms through which organizations foster solidarity among their members.     

THE ROLE OF COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN INHIBITING MOBILIZATION: SOLIDARITY AND SUPPRESSION IN OAK RIDGE

On the basis of documents and in-depth interviews with 80 residents of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, we analyzed the lack of collective mobilization against documented environmental problems. Collective identity is a central concept in new social movement theory and is seen as a major determinant of collective action. We borrowed the concept but examined the converse. Individual activism has consistently emerged in Oak Ridge without the development of the collective processes that mark mobilization. We examined the establishment of a special collective identity for the community in Oak Ridge, then analyzed the role of collective identity in the suppression of health grievances through heightened saliency, consciousness, and opposition to activism.     

Export Agriculture and Development Path: Independent Farming in Comparative Perspective

Abstract This paper compares 'regions of "recent settlement' (Australia, Canada, the United States, and New Zealand) and Argentina to help assess the conditions under which export oriented agrarian regions and societies adopt a development path oriented to industrialization, focusing on the 1860s through the 1930s. The paper surveys the available literature to trace how agricultural export sector expansion shaped land tenure, class formation, and agrarian political participation in these societies. It sketches the class alliances and related structural conditions shaping the development path adopted. The regions of recent settlement tended to share a pattern of agrarian social structure and mobilization characterized by a high incidence of family operated farms, relatively little landlord predominance, strong farmer mobilization, and a class alliance and polity adhering to a consensus on industrialization and basic policies. Argentina represents a contrasting case in which landlords prevailed. The paper contributes to broader theoretical debate by relating the impact of export agriculture to the internal organization of the export sector.     

Transnational social movements and changing organizational fields in the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries

Recent decades have seen dramatic changes in the global political arena, including shifts in geopolitical arrangements, increases in popular mobilization and contestation over the direction of globalization, and efforts by elites to channel or curb popular opposition. We explore how these factors affect changes in global politics. Organizational populations are shaped by ongoing interactions among civil‐society, corporate and governmental actors operating at multiple levels. During the 1990s and 2000s, corporate and government actors promoted the ‘neoliberalization of civil society’ and the appropriation of movement concepts and practices to support elite interests. Not all movement actors have been passive witnesses to this process: they have engaged in intense internal debates, and they have adapted their organizational strategies to advance social transformation. This article draws from quantitative research on the population of transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs) and on qualitative research on contemporary transnational activism to describe changes in transnational organizing at a time of growing contention in world politics. We show how interactions among global actors have shaped new, hybrid organizational forms and spaces that include actors other than states in influential roles.     

NGO Networks,the Diffusion and Adaptation of NGO Managerialism,and NGO Legitimacy in Latin America

Nongovernmental organization (NGO) networks have become key instruments used by NGOs in Latin America. Because these networks have important roles to play in advocating for the sector, earning public support, and improving the provision of public goods and services, understanding these networks is important to understanding the NGO sector more broadly. The article examines how NGO networks use collective texts to diffuse and adapt managerial practices. NGO networks use elements of managerialism and their adaptations to signal quality, secure recognition in social development, identify strengths and weaknesses of the sector, and define civil society in order to garner sector legitimacy. While looking at managerialism from a critical perspective, the article finds that understanding NGOs networks and the diffusion and adaption of NGO practices can further pinpoint effective sources of sector legitimacy and help to strengthen the sector’s role in social development.     

Towards a 'Movement Society'? On the possibilities of institutionalizing social movements

Social movements come into existence only on the basis of certain preconditions. The concurrence of distinct factors on the levels of individual experience, collective framing and societal structure favour the emergence and stabilization of social movements. Drawing on a model that links these three levels with aspects of problematization, mobilization and stabilization, we argue that there is a growing probability for social movements to come into existence. This probability stems mainly from a set of macro-structural trends and their problematic effects that can be interpreted in terms of differentiation theory. Instead of encompassing and stable class movements as represented, for example, by the labour movement, we expect a multitude of more situationally bound movements that vary considerably in their themes, social bases and forms. It is precisely this heterogeneity of movements that is an enduring feature of contemporary Western societies.     

The Difference Ethnography Can Make: Understanding Social Mobilization and Development in the Brazilian Northeast

Ethnographic research is invaluable for social movement research. Ethnographies of everyday participation in mobilization help to counter the popular image of social movements as coherent, well-bounded entities consisting of individuals committed to the goals of the collective. In this study of the Movimento Sem Terra (the Landless Movement, or the MST) in northeastern Brazil, I establish a more complete continuum of movement membership by analyzing two interviews (one conducted in 1999, the other in 2003) with a former plantation worker named Cicero who considered himself a member of the MST in 1999 but “didn't even know what to say about the movement” three years later. Cicero's interviews are noteworthy because he is not the sort of person typically featured in studies of social mobilization: he did not join the MST because of a passionate commitment (more because the movement showed up and he couldn't see a reason not to), and he was never convinced of the MST's primary ideals or methods. Cicero's interviews provide what Lila Abu-Lughod calls a “counter-discourse,” in which people make decisions that are contradictory, and incomplete, often made without explicit articulation or even understanding. Ultimately, I argue that incorporating this broader continuum will help us better explain movement personalities and trajectories.

Blurred discourses: how market isomorphism constrains and enables collective action in civil society

Abstract Civil society – both national and transnational – is produced through the activities and discourses of a plurality of social actors, including political parties, NGOs and (new) social movements, media organizations, third sector organizations, market firms, and professional and trade associations. To understand the current dynamics of civil society, we need to combine the concept of the plurality with the investigation of a second phenomenon: namely, that in our globalized landscape master ideas and patterns of practices travel and materialize not only across national borders but also across different spheres of institutional life. In opposition to mainstream diffusionist explanations of the travel of ideas, we use Latour and Callon's translation model as a theoretical tool for reading an ‘exemplary’ case study taken from a broader Italian research programme. In particular, our aim is to provide some insights about how the current emphasis on economic performance and managerialization is translated into organizational processes of everyday activity regarding one of the most traditional collective actors of civil society, the third sector organization. The case considered here is a cooperative, whose origins are rooted in an encounter with Africa, and which is now engaged in a fair trade network. Specifically, we depict the complex system of meaning and practices that characterize this field when economic categories and priorities (for example rationalization, calculative action and efficiency) meet and blend with more conventional and expected logics of action (for example solidarity, emancipation and expressive behaviour) that are embedded within it.     

Aufbau des Zivilsektors in Transformationsländern: Lokalisierungsprozesse von Nichtregierungsorganisationen

The civil society in the transformation countries in Central and Eastern Europe is considered as the success factor for the development status of the democratic reforms in this area. Based on long years experience in the field the author shows how civil society organisations (CSO) are formed and what kind of problems they face concerning organizational development, voluntarism and professionalisation and fundraising. Due to the fact that CSO are initiated from outside or that they copy Western patterns the localisation processes—adaptation to the local condition and enculturation—are the basis for sustainability. But, the exclusive view to the civil sector and its extraordinary support may cause reluctance in parts of the population. The across-the-sectors Development Partnership is a way of cooperation in strategic development and project management of CSO, governmental organisations and enterprises. The results of this comprehensive approach on local, regional and national level are documented by best practice examples from Lithuania, Hungary, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.