Читать книгу How Social Movements (Sometimes) Matter - David S. Meyer - Страница 12

Social movements are not unitary actors. Because a movement contains a diversity of organizations and individuals, often including people with at least one foot in governance or mainstream politics, the politics of coordination and cooperation within a movement is critical to its development and its ultimate impact. Allied organizations argue about which issues are most pressing or promising, and how to address them most effectively. They argue about which political leaders to trust, and which ones to target. They argue about who will represent their efforts and who will be kept off the podium. And they argue about how to get things done. All of this matters.

Perhaps more significantly, movement activists are not the only ones who decide what they want, who their leaders are, and what constitutes acceptable progress. All of these issues are contested in public, with authorities, media, and supporters playing a role in advantaging some ideas and people at the expense of others. To take an example, while the organizers of a rally can decide who will appear on their speakers’ roster and when, outside coverage of those speeches need not follow the organizers’ preferences. Similarly, when social movements advance broad calls for social change, media outlets choose which to cover most extensively and which to ignore.

In democratic states, media generally follow public attention, and are likely to give the most attention to the most dramatic events, that is, actions that involve conflict and/or celebrities and/or theatricality (Rohlinger 2015, 2019). Organizers compete with the range of other events in life, as well as other contingents of activists, to capture the attention of mainstream media. Mainstream media are also likely to follow public interest in identifying spokespeople, which means gravitating toward celebrity, novelty, and clarity. Organizers who are media savvy know how to promote themselves and their cause, how to return inquiries quickly, and how to provide media outlets with the sort of quotes or appearances that will draw audiences. Thus, a movement that, like most, contains multiple factions, may see itself portrayed as offering a more radical or more modest set of claims than most at the grassroots support. Actually, media outlets face a clear choice: they can promote and cover radical or outlandish aspects of a social movement – and every movement has some – thus contributing to discrediting or marginalizing that movement. Alternatively, they can promote the most mainstream and least contentious elements of a movement, reducing the claims of those in the streets to those which are not too threatening. The nuclear freeze campaign, for example, a movement for nuclear disarmament and a reconfiguration of foreign policy, started in the 1970s and gained little political traction. In the early 1980s, however, it won widespread public support as politicians redefined it as a return to a superpower arms control process that accepted large standing nuclear arsenals as a reality of modern life (Meyer 1990).

Government officials also make choices about which people and proposals to legitimate by discussion and which to marginalize through neglect or ridicule. Like media, they face similar choices in emphasizing the outlandishness of a particular movement, or its utter reasonability and pragmatism. Those officials can also choose to recognize some individuals as spokespersons for a movement, ignoring others. There is an inherent difficulty in finding spokespeople who have sufficient credibility with the grassroots to still political protest, yet are willing to negotiate moderate policy reforms with authorities. For example, the minority white government in Rhodesia, facing domestic pressure, a guerrilla war, and international sanctions, sought to respond by designating Black leaders of moderate groups that it could negotiate with. The eventual negotiated agreement, however, did nothing to still either the guerrilla war launched by other Black leaders or even international pressure. The attractive negotiating partners couldn’t deliver the peace the white government wanted. Eventually, the government had to deal with the opponents who commanded armies (Matthews 1990).

In much of the world, activists launch effective movements without guerrilla armies, but the same sorts of dilemmas remain for authorities. Seeking to maintain a governing majority and reduce disruptive protest, they want to find opposition leaders who aren’t too oppositional, yet retain sufficient credibility with activists to be able to reduce disruptive protest. At the same time, movements at the grassroots struggle to hold their own leadership accountable to the ideas that motivated them in the first place.

Taken together, the elements of a movement suggest a stylized process through which a movement cycles. The prospect for potential impact is everywhere in that cycle, but it’s critical to recognize that movements don’t work in a vacuum, and that their influence is determined by their relations with other actors, inside and outside of government.

We might begin by acknowledging that there are always people who are trying to convince others that something in their society is drastically wrong, and to recruit those people into purposeful action to change it. The range of issues is virtually infinite: individuals can be upset about moral failures in the larger society; economic injustice; the prevalence of male circumcision; the persistence of female circumcision; the lack of civil liberties; the availability of guns; the use of public lands; the degree of civil liberties afforded most citizens; foreign policies; wars and preparations for wars; taxation; or the distribution of food. Discontent with a set of issues is normal. In any polity, some of those who are dissatisfied will be working through normal political channels – whatever they are – to secure their interests; others will be located well outside normal political actions, confined to the margins of mainstream discourse. Visibility is low, and there is little contact with a public that isn’t normally concerned with those issues. It’s not that everyone involved is happy or satisfied with the status quo, but rather that most people concerned with a set of issues view the established politics of the issue to be relatively stable, with changes on matters of policy taking place in increments. Political stability tends to reflect stalemate rather than satisfaction (Baumgartner and Jones 1993).

Social movements commence when institutional actors look to develop an outside strategy to pursue their aims – or those on the margins suddenly see greater success in reaching a broader audience – or both. This is usually a function of what’s going on in mainstream politics. They have to be convinced that additional means of politics are necessary and potentially effective. Those who are normally on the margins suddenly seem more relevant and potentially influential. Most interesting, those on the margins now can see common cause with those normally confined to mainstream politics.

When does this happen? Usually these moments are a reaction to regular politics and policy. When new leaders come to power and develop different coalitions of support, pushing some previously used to ostensibly meaningful political access out of political institutions, and welcoming those normally excluded in, the calculus of would-be activists changes. When political leaders offer new policies that depart from previous practices, partisans can sense a possibility of influence or the threat of severe losses. Most people take to the streets when they think their efforts are both necessary and potentially effective.

We can see reciprocal processes of mobilization coming from the mainstream and the margins. The public events of dissidents get larger, and generate more interest. Those who operate within more mainstream politics generally now take more time and effort to expand their audiences and explain their concerns to public groups they can normally ignore. As Schattschneider (1960) noted long ago, the important actors in a fight are usually the bystanders, who have the potential of taking sides. Successful social mobilization means engaging the crowd. Under normal circumstances, those at the margin have great difficulty doing so, and risk having the largest part of the public join on the side of the opposition. Under normal circumstances, those comfortable in mainstream institutional politics have no interest in doing so.

Like any overnight sensation, the sudden emergence of a social movement marks a long period of less immediately successful attempts to effect change and to reach a public. In authoritarian polities, those efforts might be secret, played out around kitchen tables and around the edges of work, with a samizdat literature circulation used to spread information. In democratic states, efforts to change the world can be extremely public, reflected by activists handing out leaflets, then making phone calls, and later, posting information on websites. When circumstances allow, that small core will extend to reach broader constituencies, convincing new people that organizing and taking positions is necessary and/or potentially effective.

Through literature, conversation, and through other events and products, organizers develop ideas. The work develops not only the ideas, but also commitment to them. People trying to recruit others to the cause use ideas, slogans, and symbols to do so (Rochon 1998). Even as ideas or demands expand, the depth of commitment or understanding needed to join in diminishes. Short-hand descriptions stand in for elaborated understanding.

The growth in support feeds the growth in support, creating a kind of bandwagon effect (Oliver et al. 1985). The presence of greater numbers of people engaged on the same set of issues serves to draw attention to both the issues and the activities of movement organizers. Visibility legitimates their efforts and their issues. More organization and more people mean more events, and more opportunities for potential supporters to join in, and make it far more likely that a prospective activist will already know people who are engaged. The movement seems to be more urgent, demonstrate a greater chance of making a difference, and thus more attractive to engage. It’s easy to walk past a single leafletter on the streets, and hard to imagine that this effort will make a difference. As the crowds grow, and as they generate attention, they are harder to ignore and easier to join. Bystanders join in as risks diminish, and as movements can offer more incentives for others to join. Importantly, one does not have to sign on to all elements of a movement’s campaign in order to join, particularly as it grows. Indeed, life within a social movement provides a basis for transmitting values and beliefs (Munson 2009).

The growth of a movement also feeds the supply of resources available to it. More people can do more. More money allows hiring full-time organizers, opening additional offices or outposts, producing more media, and creating more events. All of this aids visibility, aiding recruitment, and driving legitimacy. And the larger a movement becomes, the more imperative it becomes for authorities to respond, and the more visible those responses are. Growth makes subsequent growth easier.

As a movement grows, of course, diversity within it increases. Although successful campaigns may be able to coalesce around a central demand, the contours of their claims and the nature of their ultimate goals are going to be increasingly contested. As more diverse factions join, they come with different ultimate goals and different sets of commitments to ultimate aims. Importantly, people are more likely to sign on to a movement as a vehicle for sending a message, when that movement appears capable of conveying a message. Others, who may start with no commitment to the cause, may sign on simply because the movement appears as the strongest expression of any kind of political alternative.

Authorities’ responses become increasingly critical to a movement’s future. When a campaign succeeds, those in authority are forced to answer questions about it, and about the issues activists press. Institutional political opponents of the government will adopt the concerns of a movement for their own purposes, and mainstream journalists will continually demand that government officials explain what they’re doing. Even when authorities justify the policies activists protest, the role of social movements in setting the agenda for institutional politics is the place where influence can take place.

Authorities respond to both the actions and the ideas of social movements. Those responses matter, and they are not necessarily seamlessly connected.

In response to the actions of activists, authorities typically draw lines that separate permissible or accepted modes of dissent from those that they will not tolerate. In liberal democracies, governments give most causes ready access to the tools of protest. Democracies allow participation in all sorts of other ways as well. Organizations can develop permanent and visible offices, raise money, contribute to campaigns, and lobby elected officials. Demonstrations, marches, and rallies have become routine for all concerned in liberal democratic polities. Organizers generally negotiate with authorities before an event on parade routes, likely crowd sizes, and the amount of sound produced, and the number of portable bathroom facilities needed. Police monitor the boundaries of the demonstration, often keeping distance between protesters and their opponents, and arresting people who would violate whatever the negotiated protocol might be. Even civil disobedience can be managed through elaborately choreographed, ritualized performances, in which the time, place, and manner of arrests can be negotiated in advance (Earl et al. 2003).

Liberal democracies generally claim to allow a broad spectrum of protest tactics, regardless of the causes they are meant to advance. But governments don’t always live up to the content-free ideal. European democracies sometimes ban the symbols and rhetoric or Nazism, or other hate speech. In the United States, the protest actions of groups with radical ideas – on the left and right – are policed more aggressively, and with far less tolerance. State authorities manage policing differentially, targeting protesters they view as the most threatening with particularly harsh treatment. But the level of threat is assessed not only by a protest campaign’s tactics, but also its claims and its constituencies. Violence and arrests are also more likely when the protesters represent minority groups (Davenport 2007; Davenport et al. 2011; Reynolds-Stenson 2017).

Authorities also make decisions about how to respond to the ideas expressed by social movement activists. In any polity, there is a spectrum of legitimate discourse and policy proposals, although that spectrum can shift over time. Authorities are generally not compelled to respond seriously to claims that fall outside that spectrum. Thus, the British parliament would not have to respond to the calls for ending the National Health Service, and – until relatively recently – American leaders haven’t had to respond to claims to create an American version of that service.

Social movements set an agenda for discussion, but institutional political figures choose which elements of that agenda to respond to and with how much seriousness. Political leaders can embrace aspects of a movement’s claims, redefining them in the process, or reject them outright. Their responses provoke challenges within a social movement coalition, as factions that win acceptance have to calculate whether it’s worthwhile to ditch their social movement connections to try to enhance their access to people with power (Amenta 1998; Amenta et al. 1994).

Harsh state responses to protest in the streets can crush the public expression of social movement ideas. Thus, in 1989, when democracy demonstrators filled Tiananmen Square in Beijing, everyone carefully watched the response of the state and of the police. The national government, run by the Chinese Communist Party, had supported policies of economic liberalization without concomitant political openings. In response to the death of former leader, Hu Yaobang, young activists filled the square to mourn, and to support policies that promoted democracy and freedom, which they said reflected Hu’s ideals. Protesters moved in and out of the public square over weeks, receiving mixed signals from authorities about how their protests were being received. In May, a group of students commenced a hunger strike, which generated both international and national attention. When the protests began to spread across China, authorities cracked down harshly, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of troops, including mobilized military units based in the countryside, and aggressively dispersed the crowd, leading to hundreds of deaths, and dramatic pictures of unarmed activists standing up to military tanks (Zhao 2001).

The crushing of the Tiananmen protests essentially stifled protest in China for years, and economic liberalization proceeded apace.

But sometimes harsh repression spurs activists to do more. When governments crack down on protest violently, they challenge their own military forces to engage in conduct they may find deplorable. They also expose themselves to international scrutiny and, generally, approbation. The harsh repression of the Iranian government under the Shah served largely to undermine public support for the regime, helped build dissident networks, and essentially encouraged opponents of the regime to organize more effectively. Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos, faced with a domestic insurgency, found that he could not count on the support of his own military. Rather than repress the protesters, the military joined them. Robbed of his support within the military, Marcos was essentially forced to cede power and leave the country with as much wealth as he could carry (Boudreau 2004).

There is, then, a paradox, in which harsh repression can still dissent, or it can stoke it, depending upon the effectiveness of the repression, the solidity of governance, and the resources the opposition has. Similarly, in democratic polities, reform efforts can encourage further mobilization and broader goals, or they can undermine the organization of a protest movement.

The key to unpacking these apparent contradictions lies in the nature of the challenging coalition. When authorities respond to protesters, their prime strategic goal must be to split their challengers. Because movements are comprised of diverse factions with a range of concerns and commitments to different sorts of tactics, government moves provide the chance to reconsider alliances. Government repression challenges those who are less committed or have more to lose to ask whether it makes sense to continue to tie their fate to others less popular. Government concessions, in terms of policy reforms or political inclusion, challenge coalitions in exactly the same way, but with opportunities for change rather than the threat of repression. In both cases, those on the radical edge of a movement and those in its more moderate wing, constantly have the opportunity to rethink how loyal they should be to each other, particularly in the context of potential risks and potential gains. Strong protest is polarizing, pushing bystanders to take sides, and the nature of the schism, particularly how extensive and how large and powerful the forces on each side of the divide are, determines the likely outcome.

Social movements, although ubiquitous, represent commitments and levels of engagement that are, for most participants, unusual. The stalwarts continue mobilizing even when there’s some kind of accommodation with power, but for most people, there is a process of coming to terms with partial solutions, and moving onto other issues or other elements of life (see Hirschman 1982). We can think about that process as institutionalization, that is, setting up a set of relationships with other people, with authorities, and with a cause, that becomes routine, where the costs are limited and predictable (Jepperson 1991).

At peak mobilization, social movements are defined by ongoing engagement with mainstream political life. That moment is always limited, and the outcomes of movements are described by the character of mobilization. One component of institutionalization is entering the political system in some organized way, such as a political party, a stable interest association, or the bureaucracy. Another is marginalization, when those in power are no longer compelled to pay attention to what activists want or what they do. In liberal polities, the decline of social movements is generally defined by both processes. When the margins and the mainstream become more distant from each other, there is a decline in visibility, and the imagination of broad goals and extensive engagement diminishes as well (Meyer 1993).