Social Movements: A summary of what works

Social Movements:
A summary of what works
Charles Dobson

What affects the success of social movements? What do the civil liberties,
feminist, environmental, gay rights, anti-nuke, gun control, don’t drink and
drive, and living wage movements have in common? Since the 1960’s a small
number of sociologists has been conducting research, trying to this question.
Research-based theory on social movements complements the limited, often
personal, perspective of activists and organizers because it looks at larger
numbers of people, longer periods of time, and major shifts in popular
attitudes.
At the time of this writing, little of this work has made its way out of
universities. The following is an attempt to present in simple language the
resource mobilization perspective of social movements. It summarizes and
updates Doug McAdam’s, John D. McCarthy’s, and Mayer Zald’s detailed
review article, Social Movements, published in the Handbook of Sociology,
edited by Neil Smelser. Their empirical approach is distinct from the heavily
theoretical approach to social movements linked to European intellectuals
like Jurgen Habermas, which focuses on symbolic production and cultural
conflict.
The authors identify three factors critical to social movements: political
opportunity, organizational capacity, and framing ability. They look at social
movements as politics by other means, often the only means open to
relatively powerless challenging groups. They argue for the constancy of
discontent and emphasize the variability of resources in accounting for the
emergence and development of insurgency. A reliable model of social
change, they say, must be able to account for both micro and macro
phenomena, and be able to explain not only the emergence but the
maintenance and development of social movement organizations.
In more detail, here is what works for social movements.
Favorable pre-conditions
Individual psychology not so important
Early work on social movements assumed that activism could be explained
by examining the psychological motivations of individuals. A popular theory
was that activism came from a perceived gap between what a person felt he
or she was entitled to and what he or she actually received. Research shows
that individual predispositions are at best insufficient to account for
participation in collective action.