Sociology 924: Social Movements Seminar Calendar Pamela Oliver

 

States and Movements, Part I

Material in this section examines the different characteristics of political regimes that affect movements, as well as the different ways in which these effects occur. This is a huge literature. This table tries to help organize this

Political Opportunity & Context 1 (Articles that seem most useful) Political Opportunity & Context 2 (Other useful articles) Movements Affect States Repression & Policing Relations Among Movements Sociological Forum Political Opportunity Debate

 

The important issues are (1) general effects of regime structures and openings on protest, i.e., broad "political process" or "political opportunity" arguments and data, as well as specific discussions about how movements and party systems interrelate; (2) feedback effects, how movements change states; (3) specific studies of how states control movements through policing and legal constraints; (4) counter-movement studies. There was also a special issues of Sociological Forum that specifically engaged theoretical issues in defining political opportunity: this did a good job of clarifying the debate and is now available as a published collection.

2009 Assignment. (1) "Required": Theoretical expositiosn of political opportunity and related ideas. From Group I: Read #2 Meyer ARS 2004 review, #4 Kriesi Blackwell Companion review, #9 Ray on political fields. The arguments in Amenta & Young 1999 #5 (US polity hinders mobilization) and Jenkins & Schock 1992 #8 (integrate political process with global politics) and Bordreau 1996 #10 (political process in Latin America & other less developed nations) are also useful for gaining a sense of comparison. (2) "Required" empirical articles on movements affecting states are Clemens 1993 and Andrews 1997 #s1 and 2 in "Movement Tactics Affect States".

Political Opportunities and Contexts Group I: The articles that seem most useful for providing recent overviews or examples of research on these issues.

  1. "Conceptualizing Political Opportunity" David S. Meyer and Debra C. Minkoff. Social Forces 2004 82(4): 1457-1492. Theoretical discussion plus empirical data. We will talk about how to read the tables.
  2. * "Protest and Political Opportunities." David S. Meyer 2004. Annual Review of Sociology. 30: 125-45. Theoretical discussion overlaps somewhat with the above article, but also reviews a broader range of literature.
  3. # "Political Opportunities and African-American Protest, 1948-1997." Jenkins, J Craig. American Journal of Sociology, 2003, 109, 2, Sept, 277-303 PDF
  4. * Kriesi, Hanspeter (2004). Political Context and Opportunity. The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule and H. Kriesi. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK, Blackwell Publishing: 65-90. Attempts to analyze the different levels of the concept and in particular the way political factors affect mobilization. Builds on Kriesi 1995 (#6 below)
  5. # Amenta, E. and M. P. Young (1999). "Democratic States and Social Movements: Theoretical Arguments and Hypotheses." Social Problems 46(2): 153-168. Theorizes the impact of democratic states on the mobilization of state-oriented challengers, as well as the forms of their mobilization & collective action. US state, comparatively speaking, has discouraged & continues to discourage social mobilization. Found useful by previous students. RTF format for download to your word processor. PDF format
  6. (*) Kriesi, H. (1995). The Political Opportunity Structure of New Social Movements: Its Impact on Their Mobilization. The Politics of Social Protest: Comparative Perspectives On States and Social Movements. J. C. Jenkins and B. Klandermans. Minneapolis, MN, U of Minnesota Press: 167-198. discussion of different characteristics of states which help or hinder movements; western Europe. This is an empirical comparison of four countries. PDF
  7. Hanspeter Kriesi, Ruud Koopmans, Jan Wilhem Duyvendak, Marco G. Giugni, "New Social Movements and Political Opportunities in Western Europe." MS 52-65. European Journal of Political Research 22: 219-244. 1992. Discusses the impact of the political opportunity structure on the mobilization pattern of new social movements in Western Europe. Focus is on the general level of mobilization in a given country, the general forms & strategies of action employed, the system level at which mobilization is typically oriented, & the development of the level of mobilization across time. Content analysis of newspaper articles on protest events in France, Germany, the Netherlands, & Switzerland reveals country-specific variations in the mobilization patterns of new social movements. Findings confirm the relevance of the political process approach for the study of social movements. 5 Tables, 4 Figures, A good empirical article from the same study but with more specific data than the above.
  8. # Jenkins, J. C. and K. Schock (1992). “Global Structures and Political Processes in the Study of Domestic Political Conflict.” Annual Review of Sociology 18: 161-185. Engages literature on political conflict and argues for integrating two theories: (1) political process theory, emphasizing the impact of internal political institutions & processes, eg, political exclusion, indigenous organization, & political opportunity structures; and (2) theories of global structures that focus on the external or international processes of incorporation into the capitalist world economy, the social effects of foreign capital penetration, & political dependence on core states. Stable URL
  9. * Raka Ray. "Women's Movements and Political Fields" Social Problems 1998. Comparison of women's movement in two Indian cities. PDF Copy Reconceptualizes the political environment in which a social movement organization operates by offering the concept of political fields, arguing that the actions, rhetoric, & effectiveness of organizations are best understood in the context of the fields in which they are situated. Drawing on 1990-1994 fieldwork data to examine the issue of violence against women in two different fields in Calcutta & Bombay, India, it is suggested that the structure of the field & an organization's position in it shape the discourse & practice of social movement organizations; mediate the effects of organization type (politically affiliated or autonomous), & determine whether or not organizations in the same movement (& field) converge or differentiate.
  10. (*) Boudreau, V. (1996). “Northern Theory, Southern Protest: Opportunity Structure Analysis in Cross-National Perspective.” Mobilization 1(2): 175-190. Political process model extended to Southern hemisphere. Extends the political process model of protest, particularly its opportunity structure component, to developing countries. At issue is how to render the model's central variables & relationships with enough flexibility to accommodate new cases outside the industrial North. Three questions are asked: how movement networks' internal social connections vary across settings, how variations in state strength & elaboration influence protest; & how the relationship between movement social structure & the external political environment shape opportunities. Also considered is how political opportunity can illuminate new cases if used in connection with specific collective forms that are both encouraged by external structures & responsive to needs & constraints produced by internal structure. PDF
  11. Tarrow, chapters 4 (statebuiliding), 5 (political opportunities)
  12. Jenkins, J. C. and B. Klandermans (1995). The Politics of Social Protest. The Politics of Social Protest: Comparative Perspectives On States and Social Movements. J. C. Jenkins and B. Klandermans. Minneapolis, MN, U of Minnesota Press: 3-13. Introduction and overview. PDF of chapter and a list of Abstracts of all chapters in the book.
  13. J. Craig Jenkins and Charles Perrow. "Insurgency of the Powerless: Farm Worker Movements (1946-1972). MS 37-51. ASR 42: 249-268 (PDF). 1977. Stable URL One of the early works on importance of elite support, which fed into political opportunity arguments.
  14. Buechler, Steven M. (2004). The Strange Careerof Strain and Breakdown Theories of Collective Action. The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule and H. Kriesi. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK, Blackwell Publishing: 47-66. A good review of the concept from its origins, repudication, revival. Argues for the need to specify strain & breakdown along with political opportunity to discuss their relations.

Movement Tactics and Effects on States

  1. * Elisabeth S. Clemens. Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change: Women's Groups and the Transformation of U.S. Politics, 1890-1920. American Journal of Sociology 1993, 98, 4, Jan, 755-798. Because women couldn't vote, they created new forms of politics leading to the educational lobbying system prominent today. PDF file Stable URL:
  2. * Andrews, Kenneth T "The Impacts of Social Movements on the Political Process: The Civil Rights Movement and Black Electoral Politics in Mississippi". American Sociological Review; 1997, 62, 5, Oct, 800-819. PDF File Examines the relationship between social movements & political outcomes, drawing on archival & documentary data on 81 counties in MS to explore the civil rights movement from the period of widespread mobilization in the early 1960s through the early 1980s. Focus is on the impacts of local movements on four political outcomes: (1) number of black voters registered, (2) votes cast for black candidates in statewide elections, (3) number of black candidates running for office in the late 1960s & early 1970s, & (4) number of black elected officials. Strategies used by whites to defeat or minimize the impact of the movement are critical pieces of the analysis. Evidence indicates that local movements have continued to play a central & complex role in the transformation of local politics long after the civil rights movement peaked, suggesting that, while mobilization plays a key role in the short run, its long-term consequences must be considered as well.
  3. Paul Burstein. Legal Mobilization as a Social Movement Tactic: The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity. American Journal of Sociology 1991, 96, 5, Mar, 1201-1225. Data are EEO cases. Findings are: relation between mobilization and grievances is problematic, blacks are central, resources are critical. Stable URL:
  4. Susan Harding. 1985. "Reconstructing Order Through Action: Jim Crow and the Southern Civil Rights Movement." In Charles Bright and Susan Harding eds 1984 Statemaking and Social Movements. Process of recreating social rules. old order effectively prohibited black collective action. Movement changes polity. (I have copy of this, could scan in.)

Relations Between Movements: Counter-Movements and Competition

  1. Andrews, K. T. (2002). “Movement-Countermovement Dynamics and the Emergence of New Institutions: The Case of "White Flight" Schools in Mississippi.” Social Forces 80(3): 911-936. This article examines the foundation of private segregationist academies that emerged throughout the US South in the wake of court-ordered desegregation. I focus on the state of MS where private academies grew dramatically from 1969 to 1971. I provide an analytic history of civil rights & school desegregation conflicts in MS, & I use OLS models to examine county-level variation in local support for private academies during this period. My analysis shows that the formation of academies occurs as a response to desegregation (1) when there is a credible threat that desegregation will be implemented (implicitly signaling the "success" of the movement); (2) when blacks have the organizational capacity to make claims & voice protest within newly desegregated schools; & (3) when whites have the organizational capacity to resist desegregation. These three specifications extend models of racial competition that have been used to explain white countermobilization. I argue that the establishment of academies was a countermovement strategy that flowed out of the prior history of organized white resistance to the civil-rights movement. In other words, whites were not only responding to court intervention & the proportion of African Americans in their community, but to the social movement mobilization of that community. 2 Tables, 1 Figure, 79 References. Adapted from the source document.
  2. Minkoff, Debra C. "The Sequencing of Social Movements." American Sociological Review; 1997, 62, 5, Oct, 779-799. Pop ecology model of diffusion of movements, women's movement and black movement are in competitive sequencing; organizational density is important. PDF copy
  3. # Meyer, D. S. and S. Staggenborg (1996). "Movements, Countermovements, and the Structure of Political Opportunity." American Journal of Sociology 101(6): 1628-1660. PDF file Movement-countermovement interaction has become a fixture in contemporary social movement challenges & in contemporary politics. Here, the developing literatures on political opportunity & on movement-countermovement interaction are reviewed & synthesized. A general framework is presented for understanding the interplay of social movements & their social movement opponents, offering a set of theoretical propositions to animate & guide subsequent research.
  4. David S. Meyer and Nancy Whittier. "Social Movement Spillover." Social Problems 41: 277-298. 1994. MS 480ff. How movements affect other movements.
  5. Mayer N. Zald and Bert Useem. "Movement and Countermovement Interaction: Mobilization, Tactics, and State Intervention." In Mayer N. Zald and John D. McCarthy, eds., Social Movements in an Organizational Society.
  6. Tahi Mottl. "The Analysis of Countermovements." Social Problems 27 (June 1980): 620-635. Countermovements are more likely to have state and/or elite support. Movements and countermovements take turns capturing different segments of the state. BC 408-423.
  7. James Jasper and Jane Poulsen. "Fighting Back: Vulnerabilities, Blunders, and Countermobilization by the Targets in Three Animal Rights Campaigns." MS 397-406. Sociological Forum 8: 639-657. 1993.

Repression & Policing Part I

  1. Della Porta, Donatella and Olivier Fillieule (2004). Policing Social Protest. The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule and H. Kriesi. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK, Blackwell Publishing: 217-241.
    changing patterns of policing. police characteristics and policing styles. consequences of policing.
  2. Donatella Della Porta and Herbert Reiter, editors. Policing Protest: The Control of Mass Demonstrations in Western Democracies. University of Minnesota Press. 1998. This collection has excellent articles.
    1. Introduction (della Porta & Reiter, Policing of protest in Western democracies ),
    2. *Chapter 2 (McPhail et al., Policing protest in the United States: 1960-1995 ), and
    3. * Chapter 10 (della Porta Police knowledge and protest policing) are in electronic reserves.
  3. White, R. W. (1999). “Comparing State Repression of Pro-State Vigilantes and Anti-State Insurgents: Northern Ireland, 1972-75.” Mobilization 4(2): 189-202. Secondary empirical & statistical data are drawn on to compare the repression of pro-state paramilitary violence with that of anti-state insurgent violence in Northern Ireland, 1972-1975. During this time period, pro-state Protestant paramilitaries & anti-state Irish Republican paramilitaries engaged in significant levels of violence. Among the state's responses to this violence were the internment, without charge or trial, of suspected paramilitaries, & the confiscation of illegally held weapons. How the state used these methods of repression differently for Protestant paramilitaries vs Republican insurgents is examined with time-series regression methods, employing data collected at monthly intervals. In general, the state was less repressive of Protestant paramilitaries; instances of their repression tended to reflect attempts by the state to find a political solution to the violence (by both Protestant paramilitaries & Republican paramilitaries) rather than Protestant paramilitary violence per se. In contrast, the state's repression of Republicans was more forceful & more directly linked to Republican violence. 3 Tables, 48 References. Library Reserves: White, Comparing state repression of pro-state vigilantes and anti-state insurgents
  4. Zwerman, G., P. G. Steinhoff, et al. (2000). “Disappearing Social Movements: Clandestinity in the Cycle of New Left Protest in the U.S., Japan, Germany, and Italy.” Mobilization 5(1): 85-104. Research on social movements has paid little attention to the dynamics of clandestine mobilization as an integral element of protest cycles. Here, studies of 16 New Left clandestine groups in Germany, Italy, Japan, & the US demonstrate strong commonalities in the processes of going underground & staying underground. Activists move from the public to the clandestine realm as a result of increased repression at the protest cycle's peak, commitment to specific ideological frames, & personal ties. Identity conflicts specific to underground roles & other aspects of underground life influence the nature of clandestine violence, further affecting the protest cycle's course. 1 Table, 56 References. Adapted from the source document
  5. Gary Marx. 1979. "External Efforts to Damage or Facilitate Social Movements: Some Patterns, Explanations, Outcomes, and Complications." In Mayer Zald and John D. McCarthy, The Dynamics of Social Movements. (He also has an old 1975 AJS article on agents provocateurs etc.) An inventory of methods. also BC 360-384.
  6. Steven Barkan. "Legal Control of the Southern Civil Rights Movement." MS 384-396. American Sociological Review 49: 552-565. 1984.
  7. John D. McCarthy, David Britt, and Mark Wolfson. "The Institutional Channeling of Social Movements by the State in the United States." Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 13: 45-76. 1991. Tax laws, postal regulations, etc. channel SMOs into legal, tame formations. I have copies of this.
  8. Policing Protest in France and Italy: From Intimidation to Cooperation? Donatella della Porta, Olivier Fillieule, and Herbert Reiter in David Meyer & Sidney Tarrow, eds, The Social Movement Society : Contentious Politics for a New Century. Rowman & Littlefield.
  9. Della Porta, D. (1996). Social Movements and the State: Thoughts on the Policing of Protest. CP: 62-92. Changes in the policing of protest, detailed case information on Italy and Germany. Her main point is the need for an interactive model, as the state changes in response to movements as much as movements change in response to the state.

Political Opportunities and Contexts Group II. Some Other Good Articles

  1. km-11. Mary Ruggie. "Workers' Movements and Women's Interests: The Impact of Labor-State Relations in Britain and Sweden." Feminists are marginalized in British labour politics, central in Swedish. Causes and consequences. PDF
  2. Amenta, Edwin, Bruce G. Carruthers, Yvonne Zylan. "A Hero for the Aged? The Townsend Movement, the Political Mediation Model, and U.S. Old-Age Policy, 1934-1950." American Journal of Sociology 98: 308-399. 1992. PDF file
  3. Amenta, E., K. Dunleavy, et al. (1994). "Stolen Thunder? Huey Long's "Share Our Wealth," Political Mediation, and the Second New Deal." American Sociological Review 59(5): 678-702. PDF file
  4. #Jenkins, J. C. (1995). Social Movements, Political Representation, and the State: An Agenda and Comparative Framework. In: The Politics of Social Protest: Comparative Perspectives On States and Social Movements. J. C. Jenkins and B. Klandermans. Minneapolis, MN, U of Minnesota Press: 14-35. Good theoretical overview. . NOTE: Many of the articles in this collection are excellent, especially on the relations between movements and parties.
  5. ^Rucht, D. (1996). The Impact of National Contexts on Social Movement Structures: A Cross-Movement and Cross-National Comparison. CP: 183-204. How national contexts affect movement structures. Compares the women's and environmental movements in France, West Germany, and the US. He argues that there are distinct national differences in political contexts, but that it is also clear that the structures change across time within countries, and argues that these changing structures are what should be meant by opportunities.
  6. Cress, D. M. and D. A. Snow (2000). "The Outcomes of Homeless Mobilization: The Influence of Organization, Disruption, Political Mediation, and Framing." American Journal of Sociology 105(4):1063-1104. PDF file
  7. Tarrow, S. (1996). States and Opportunities: The Political Structuring of Social Movements. CP: 41-61. Develops a typology of state-building as a source of social movements, giving examples from the US, France, etc. Critiques the idea of the political opportunity structure as one thing.
  8. ^Dalton, R. J. (1995). Strategies of Partisan Influence: West European Environmental Groups. The Politics of Social Protest: Comparative Perspectives On States and Social Movements. J. C. Jenkins and B. Klandermans. Minneapolis, MN, U of Minnesota Press: 296-323. 69 groups in 10 countries, compare relations to parties.
  9. Maguire, D. (1995). Opposition Movements and Opposition Parties: Equal Partners or Dependent Relations in the Struggle for Power and Reform? The Politics of Social Protest: Comparative Perspectives On States and Social Movements. J. C. Jenkins and B. Klandermans. Minneapolis, MN, U of Minnesota Press: 199-228. discusses why movements & parties need each other and what the dangers are.
  10. Nollert, M. (1995). Neocorporatism and Political Protest in the Western Democracies: A Cross-National Analysis. The Politics of Social Protest: Comparative Perspectives On States and Social Movements. J. C. Jenkins and B. Klandermans. Minneapolis, MN, U of Minnesota Press: 138-164. Comparisons. Argues that neocorporatist states not only meet needs, but repress protest.
  11. ^km-int Katzenstein. "Comparing the Feminist Movements of the United States and Western Europe: An Overview." broad-ranging. consciousness, political alliances, nature of state. comparative overview. Useful.
  12. Jo Freeman. "Whom You Know versus Whom You Represent" km-10. History of US women's movement and its relation to parties across time. Title refers to post-1960 differences between Reps and Dems. Very useful if you want to understand the US (including movements other than women's).
  13. ^km-12. Joyce Gelb. "Social Movement 'Success': A Comparative Analysis of Feminism in the United States and the United Kingdom." UK movt is more radical and more isolated; US movt more liberal. [cf Germany] PDF
  14. Schock, K. (1999). “People Power and Political Opportunities: Social Movement Mobilization and Outcomes in the Philippines and Burma.” Social Problems 46(3): 355-375. Assesses the relevance of the political opportunity framework for social movements in nondemocratic contexts by applying it to two people power movements that occurred in the Philippines & Burma during the 1980s. The movement in the Philippines culminated in the toppling of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship & a democratic transition. The movement in Burma was violently suppressed, &, although multiparty elections were subsequently held as a result of the protest movement, the military regime refused to honor them & remained in power. As expected by the political opportunity framework, influential allies & elite divisions influenced the mobilization & outcomes of the movements. Word Processor Copy of Article

The Sociological Forum Political Process Debate (republished as Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, Meaning, and Emotion, edited by Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, Rowen & Littlefield, 2003). The original Sociological Froum articles are available through the electronic library, either JSTOR or SocIndex.

  1. Goodwin, J. and J. M. Jasper (1999). “Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 27-54. The study of social movements has recently been energized by an explosion of work that emphasizes political opportunities - a concept meant to come to grips with the complex environments that movements face. In the excitement over this new metaphor, there has been a tendency to stretch it to cover a wide variety of empirical phenomena & causal mechanisms. A strong structural bias is also apparent in how political opportunities are understood & in the selection of cases for study. Even those factors adduced to correct some of the problems of the political opportunity approach, eg, mobilizing structures & cultural framing, are subject to the same structural distortions. Recommended here is social movement analysis that rejects invariant modeling, is wary of conceptual stretching, & recognizes the diverse ways that culture & agency, including emotions & strategizing, shape collective action. 3 Tables, 1 Figure.
  2. Tilly, C. (1999). “Wise Quacks.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 55-61. In agreement with many other students of social movements & related phenomena, the critique (1999) by Jeff Goodwin & James M. Jasper of political process theorizing about contentious politics rightly calls attention to the incomplete, provisional, & sometimes contradictory state of explanations in the field. However, it wrongly indicates that major analysts are unaware of these difficulties, adopts a flawed model of explanation, & proposes remedies that will actually hinder explanation of contentious political processes.
  3. Polletta, F. (1999). “Snarls, Quacks, and Quarrels: Culture and Structure in Political Process Theory.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 63-70. Political process theories of social movements have relied on a set of oppositions between culture & structure that has limited their capacity to capture the supraindividual, durable, & constraining dimensions of culture. The solution is not to abandon an emphasis on objective political structures in favor of potential insurgents' subjective perceptions of political opportunities, but rather, to probe the (objective) resources & constraints generated by the cultural dimensions of political structures. Such a perspective would pay closer attention to the cultural traditions, ideological principles, institutional memories, & political taboos that create & limit political opportunities, & would link the "master frames" that animate protest to dominant political structures & processes.
  4. Tarrow, S. (1999). “Paradigm Warriors: Regress and Progress in the Study of Contentious Politics.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 71-77. Paradigm warfare is a well-worn way of engaging in the polemics of research, but it frequently reduces paradigms to caricatures & turns complex reports of empirical research into cartoons. This is illustrated by two one-sided accounts of the Chiapas rebellion in Mexico: one based on a simplistic, political opportunity cartoon & the other on a foreshortened culturalist one. Reducing the many-sided (& in some ways ambiguous) approaches of the political process model to a supposedly hegemonic paradigm neglects many substantive contributions & cuts with too broad a stroke at social movements while ignoring the many-branched contributions of research & theory on contentious politics.
  5. Meyer, D. S. (1999). “Tending the Vineyard: Cultivating Political Process Research.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 79-92. Criticisms by Jeff Goodwin & James M. Jasper (1999) of various iterations of political process theory are incorrectly applied to the entire developing paradigm. Their indictment offers a rigid & narrow representation of the theory & rejects the social science enterprise of building theory altogether. At the same time, their criticisms raise important puzzles for scholars working on social movements, particularly about defining opportunities, & studying culture. Here, their criticisms of the theory are addressed, acknowledging useful questions & challenges that they offer & suggesting an agenda for future research on social movements.
  6. Koopmans, R. (1999). “Political. Opportunity. Structure. Some Splitting to Balance the Lumping.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 93-105. A response to Jeff Goodwin & James M. Jasper's "Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory" (1999) argues that, despite the inconsistency of their critique & invalidity of their solution, they have made a valuable contribution to the critique of political process theory. However, three of their claims are directly challenged: (1) the most important component of discrepancies in collective action is a variation in opportunity. (2) Such variations in opportunity are the product of the interaction between social movements, actors, & institutions. (3) Variations in opportunity are influenced by structural factors. Conceding that political opportunity structure is incapable of accounting for most social movements, strategies for correcting the flawed political process theory are offered (eg, clarifying the connection between structures & opportunities).
  7. Jasper, J. M. and J. Goodwin (1999). “Trouble in Paradigms.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 107-125. A response to comments by Charles Tilly, Francesca Polletta, Sidney Tarrow, David S. Meyer, & Ruud Koopman on the authors' "Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory," (all, 1999). Whereas Tilly recognized the significance of problems with invariant modeling, Tarrow, Koopman, & Meyer are criticized for failing to acknowledge the previous existence of invariant models. Rather than support the use of political process theory for explaining social movements, it is asserted that its application to civil rights & labor movements have distorted those forms of social action. Moreover, the contention that some movements can be described as nonpolitical because they do not challenge the state is refuted. Political process theorists are charged with disregarding the import of cultural constructionist approaches; delineations of culture as the solution for political process theory are also addressed. Commentators' recommendations for the future use of political process theory are evaluated.

Notes: 1) km=Mary Fainsod Katzenstein and Carol McClurg Mueller. 1987. The Women's Movements of the United States and Western Europe. Temple University Press. 2) CP= D. McAdam, J. D. McCarthy and M. N. Zald. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings.. New York, Cambridge University Press 1996

Sociology 924: Social Movements Calendar Pamela Oliver

Last updated October 7, 2009 © University of Wisconsin.