Protest Beyond Borders: Contentious Politics in Europe Since 1945 by Hara Kouki & Eduardo Romanos

Author:Hara Kouki & Eduardo Romanos [Kouki, Hara & Romanos, Eduardo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, History, Europe, Modern, 20th Century
ISBN: 9781845459956
Google: RpzXuCR1Y34C
Goodreads: 23332616
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2011-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

An Interactive and Dynamic Framework for Assessing Social Movement Development

Collective action is not something outside of mainstream politics that must be studied on its own; on the contrary, “it is a complementary mode of political action”3 embedded in a complex web of socio and political relations that reciprocally varies over time. Its analysis then must take account of the political historical settings and of other instances of political action in which contention is rooted. As political opportunities/threats change over time, they could favor the mobilizing message of some groups or organizations over others, depending on their congruence with the master frame dominant at that particular stage. For instance, different components of a social movement network will see a possible situation somewhat differently and will propose dissimilar mobilizing messages on what can and should be done in anticipating the next move or reaction of other actors in the political system in order to achieve particular goals.4 Possible mobilizing messages are then the expression of different readings of what might be feasible in relation to certain sociopolitical situations, but they are also the outcome of ideologies, internal resources, and relevant purposes of determined cohorts. Competition as to what might happen when one is using a determinate repertoire of action, target or ideological frame instead of others is a constant process that takes place within social movements, in which groups and organizations battle to win ground from among the same support base and for similar sectors of public opinion whose interests they wish to represent.5 Determinate organizations and groups in the movement’s internal dynamic competition might also help through proactive processes to create political and cultural opportunities, which will favor their particular mobilizing message instead of others. In this sense, different mobilizing messages are not merely an instrument of competition with an enemy outside of the movement, but they are also a means of beating out political competitors within the movement itself.

Mario Diani6 has developed a conceptual framework that allows the systematic analysis of how movement mobilizing messages align with the dominant representation of the political environment present at a given stage (“master frames”)7 and how this congruence is shaped by changing political opportunities. Initially, he proposes a combination of two variables: “the opportunities created by the crisis of the dominant cleavages” and “the opportunities for autonomous action within the polity,”8 both of which depend on actors’ subjective evaluations. How does one measure these two variables? Diani has reformulated Tarrow’s work on political opportunities,9 in which the first variable relies on the stability of the socio and political alignments that structure political participation and aggregation, and the second one relies on possible conflicts within the ruling elite, accessibility to participation in the political system, and the availability of influential allies. The way in which the state polices social protest is, in my research, a further component of the opportunities for autonomous action within the polity that determines the mobilization of social movements.10 The cross-classification of these two variables results then, in Diani’s work,

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