Brokers between distinct social movements, such as the labor and environmental movements, often face what James Jasper (2004) calls the “bridge-builder's dilemma”—they must find ways to build trust among powerful movement institutions with diverging goals and structurally differentiated interests. This article expands Jasper's concept through a study of Environmentalists for Full Employment (EFFE), a labor-environmental bridging organization active between 1975 and 1984. I argue that brokers can initially navigate the dilemma by pursuing a strategy of niche construction: they identify ways to serve powerful incumbents in both movements and channel their activities accordingly. But this can create a new variant of the problem if a contradiction emerges between their niches and their long-term goals. For some organizations, like EFFE, this situation leads to frustration, surprising strategic innovations, or even dissolution. By comparing this case with others in the literature, I demonstrate that the bridge-builder's dilemma and niche construction are concepts with broad applicability that can help explain the trajectories of a variety of inter-movement brokers.
This study examines the effects of social protest on the ideological repositioning of parliamentary elites through three social protest episodes in Latin America. After identifying and defining the mechanisms by which these effects are generated, we examine variations in the ideological response of parliamentary elites along a left-right spectrum. Such a left-right spectrum is considered appropriate given Latin America's contemporary political history. The study uses the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method to identify the ideological orientations among parliamentary elites after episodes of transgressive political contention. The analysis relies on three indices: polarization, overlap, and ideological niches. By examining these indices, we find concrete evidence of the presence and strength of the parliamentary elites’ ideological stances.
This study examines how individual protesters perceived and responded to subtle police repression during South Korea's Candlelight Protests, where unprecedented cooperation between protesters and police emerged despite latent potential for confrontation. Drawing on forty semistructured interviews, I argue that protesters’ contextualized perceptions of police generated diverse motivations for cooperation with police. Situated within protest-specific cultural, institutional, and historical contexts, protesters used the cultural framework of police legitimacy, the awareness of auxiliary police system, and the collective memory of past violent repression to assess police as active allies (protecting and helping protesters), silenced allies (auxiliary police compelled to control protests), and conditional allies (whose response depends on protesters’ characteristics). Each perception provided differential motivations for cooperation: to protect and help active and silenced allies or to prevent potential coercive repression from conditional allies. This study contributes to the repression-resistance literature by revealing understudied microlevel dynamics of protester-police relations.
Protest hesitancy remains a significant barrier to participation in social movements. This article examines how gender shapes protest hesitancy and how it can be strategically leveraged to overcome it by analyzing the Flower Demo movement against sexual violence in Japan. Interviews with 72 participants reveal how the movement's feminization of tactics, strategies, and leadership helped overcome protest hesitancy. First, Flower Demo's feminized protest actions countered stereotypes of protests as masculine and combative. Second, Flower Demo decoupled protests from politics by emphasizing inclusive goals and emotional strategies, in which simply showing up signified success. This addressed the norm that one should remain apolitical and avoid criticism and pressure, particularly for women. Third, Flower Demo's participatory leadership structure challenged the perception that activists exercise autocratic leadership. This research illustrates how normative masculine views of social movements suppress broader participation and how gender can be used as a resource to overcome protest hesitancy.
This article examines how Palestinian nonviolent resistance is understood, practiced, and evaluated by activists under conditions of settler colonialism, with a focus on the case of the Popular Struggle Committee (PSCC) in the South Hebron Hills of the Occupied West Bank. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2022 and 2024, including interviews conducted both before and after October 7, 2023, we examine how grassroots actors perceive the strategic and symbolic value of nonviolence. Our discussion situates these findings within the broader scholarship on civil resistance and social movement outcomes, while grounding them in their specific historical context. The article argues that assessments of efficacy must move beyond instrumental outcomes to include maintenance, mobilization, continuity on the ground, and value changes. By grounding these dimensions in the lived experiences of Palestinian communities confronting overlapping forms of repression, this study aims to enrich broader debates on nonviolent resistance.
This study investigates the impact of exposure to protest and violent hate crimes on changes in support for identity groups. Social identity theories have explained how mechanisms of social comparison encourage outgroup hostilities, leading to hate crimes against targeted identity groups. Social movement theories have suggested how mobilization by identity movements for expanded rights often initiates reciprocal action against them by opponents. These theories suggest hypotheses that exposure to protests, hate crimes, and hate groups increases ingroup solidarity, raising support for the focal identity group. Analyzing panel data from the American National Election Surveys conducted in 2016 and 2020, this research examines shifts in attitudes toward four distinct identity groups: Black, Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual, Transgender, and Jewish individuals. Contrary to expectations, peaceful protests by identity groups did not affect their levels of support. The findings show that hate crimes or hate group activity increased support for Black, Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual, and Transgender individuals.
Do online echo chambers suppress debate? This study examines when and how extremist movements engage in ideological dissensus. Through digital participant observation of the largest Incel forum, we find that disagreement routinely surfaces when positions align with the movement's settled ideological core and public scrutiny is low. Incels enforce unanimity on the "Black Pill" ideological core but debate three peripheral questions: (1) the possibility and desirability of "ascending"from Inceldom by improving relationships with women; (2) whether the group should expand its membership; and (3) the justifiability of violence as apolitical tactic. Adapting Freeden's core-periphery framework, we argue that consensus on essential principles facilitates dissensus on unresolved questions. Our study clarifies how movement ideologies are actively constructed and complicates portrayals of online extremist groups as ideologically homogeneous echo chambers.
The United States'post-Roe anti-abortion movement is generally understood as politically and socially conservative. However, a faction of anti-abortion individuals who stand in contrast to mainstream organizations exists; some embracing pro-LGBTQIA+ and feminist ideologies, and many identifying as queer, women of color, or otherwise systematically disadvantaged in U.S. society. Conceptually extending Patricia Hipsher's (2007) "heretical social movement organizations" (HSMO) to "heretical social movement individuals" (HSMI), we explore these individuals who do not resemble mainstream anti-abortion identities as defined by its leaders but still identify as anti-abortion themselves. We investigate how HSMIs negotiate their identities and engage in moderation (or not) to seek influence in the mainstream anti-abortion movement. We triangulate data from participant observation and interviews with anti-abortion HSMIs to understand how HSMIs negotiate their own identities in concert with mainstream anti-abortion positions. We argue that HSMIs vary in willingness or refusal to deprioritize or compartmentalize their 'heretical' identities for inclusion in mainstream anti-abortion spaces.
Why do people join protests, and what sustains their protest participation over time? Drawing on in-depth interviews with participants in the 2020 George Floyd protests in Minneapolis-St. Paul, this article compares the distinct motives for initial and sustained protest participation. The analysis reveals that initial protest participation was fueled by three emotional processes: sadness and anger at injustice; a quest for social solidarity; and the emotional energy generated at protest sites. By contrast, after more than two years of activism, sustained participation was anchored in fictive kinship that operated in two forms: identity fusion among committed activists and family-like loyalties to activist peers. Taken together, these results reveal distinct mechanisms of protest participation at different stages of activism, challenge static social movement theories, and identify fictive kinship as a mechanism for explaining sustained participation.
Revolutionary situations are characterized by high contingency as social interactions intensify under radical uncertainty. Transformative events provide structuring moments for these volatile dynamics by shaping the conditions of possibility for social interaction. These events are thus an opportunity to study the contingency of revolutionary situations, including affective solidarities, shifting alliances, tactical adaptations, and the transformation of social claims. This article addresses these considerations by presenting an event-centric and discourse-sensitive framework for analyzing revolutionary situations that centers the interplay between discursive and material arenas of social struggle. This nested framework integrates poststructuralist insights about the constitutive effects of discourse on social interaction into an eventful sociology of contention, approaching revolutionary situations as constituted by a complex interplay of material interactions and symbolic struggles. The analytical purchase of this framework is illustrated by three revolutionary situations in WestAsia and North Africa.
Social movements are shaped by the stories that activists and organizers tell about them. As movement stories are told and retold, codified into narratives and woven together, they structure collective understanding around a movement's shared history and imagined future. We unpack three prominent narratives of the modern United States environmental movement which are often pegged to the first Earth Day in 1970 as representing: (1) a shifting focus towards "new" issues of pollution and human health, (2) the birth of a new movement amidst a groundswell of extrainstitutional protest, and (3) popular political pressure that induced a wave of national-level policy change. Longitudinal data on environmental organizations and collective action events, along with secondary readings of historical studies, are used to critically assess these narratives. Broad acceptance of these intertwined narratives has transformative potential, influencing how scholars study the movement and revealing how social movements reimagine the past to construct the future.
The article explores how grassroots women leaders in Gujarat, India, enact intersectional consciousness, the strategic deployment of intersecting identities, during the micropolitics of everyday advocacy. While intersectionality has been widely theorized as an analytical lens for understanding inequality, less is known about how activists do intersectional analysis to address immediate needs rather than advance broad policy reform. Drawing on 251 interviews with women leaders, we explore how intersectional consciousness is enacted in everyday activism, how spatial contexts shape tactical repertoires, and how its strategic use connects micro-level acts of resistance to movement continuity. We find that rural leaders employ intersectional consciousness as a survival and negotiation strategy, while urban leaders use it to build legitimacy, gain institutional access, and sustain collective claims. These findings reframe intersectionality as an action-oriented resource, advancing social movement theory by linking strategic identity negotiations to spatial context and everyday resistance.
South Asian diaspora populations occupy a complicated position in U.S. racial politics. Their racialization subjects them to hate and discrimination that might motivate participation in social movements; however, their heterogeneous socioeconomic and immigration status may discourage them from political action. Prevailing theorizations of minority mobilization do not fully explain South Asian American (SAA) interest and participation in activism. Drawing on twenty-seven interviews, this study argues that the circumstances that shape SAA life lead those interested in social movements to confront the problem of the two perfects: the projection of (1) the perfectly successful and politically apathetic South Asian achiever and (2) the perfectly committed and fully engaged social activist. Study participants expressed a wide range of relationships with the term "activist."SAA civic engagement thus evades legibility under binary narratives of identity and activism but also illuminates previously understudied understandings of what activism is and who an activist may be.
This article considers how debates over antiracist identity in Norway were energized after a critical event-the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter demonstrations and public debates. The analysis draws on 54 in-depth interviews with antiracist activists and allies, fieldwork during antiracist demonstrations, and on-and offline seminars. Three identity dilemmas emerged within the Norwegian antiracist movement during this time: the genuine engagement dilemma, the difference-in-sameness dilemma, and the spokesperson dilemma. This article analyzes each dilemma and concludes with notes on how collective identity and its dilemmas differ within and beyond antiracist movements.
We argue that social movement efforts can be derailed when there is a mismatch between a movement's demands for structural change and concessions that instead offer individualized remedies. We refer to this as "contested reform." We focus on sexual harassment policy as an important illustrative case. Findings from a large-scale experiment reveal the fundamental problem with contested reform. Privileged actors, men in this case, are less likely to perceive that the same rules apply to everyone in the workplace. They develop a gendered interpretation of what behaviors are inappropriate. We propose that social movement opponents commonly respond to movement pressure with concessions that produce contested reform that undermines the movement's efforts to bring about enduring change.
This study focuses on the question of changing protest repertoires and asks what explains the emergence of extreme repertoires (a protest form that is lone in nature, accompanied by a high level of self-imposed danger and pain, and staged for a collective cause) in labor movements in times of institutionalized democracy and capitalist affluence in South Korea. Social movement scholarship has emphasized that massive structural transformations, such as nation-state building, industrialization, and regime types, give birth to renovated protest forms. This study moves beneath these nation-state oriented, structural arguments for protest repertoire change, and explicates how the varied positions of the sectoral movement within power relations vis-avis state institutions, corporations, and civil society inform activists to choose alternative protest methods. The arguments are based on protest repertoires data collected and coded from newspaper reports in 1999-2019 as well as interviews with labor activists and their published writings in 2017-2022.
Recent decades have witnessed the rise of antiestablishment movements, which often criticize the power elite's inability or reluctance to represent ordinary citizens. This article explores the participation dynamics within such movements, focusing on the concept of outsiderness. Drawing from the resource model of political participation, we develop a multidimensional conceptualization of outsiderness, focusing on socioeconomic resources, political experience, antiestablishment attitudes, and preferred modes of political participation, exemplified through a comparative analysis of the trajectory of activists within the Five-Star Movement (5SM) in Italy and the Yellow Vests (YV) in France. By examining the articulation of these four dimen-sions, the research identifies four activist types in anti-establishment movements: conventional, marginal insiders, self-trained, and first-timers. Through individual trajectories, the article offers a nuanced understanding of the different motives for joining antiestablishment movements and the diverse profiles that coexist in these movements.
State repression's effect on protest behavior is theorized to depend on two key dimensions: its severity (level of harm imposed) and selectivity (whether targeted or indiscriminate). While scholars have developed sophisticated theoretical frameworks around these dimensions, most empirical evidence comes from authoritarian contexts. Moreover, we lack systematic evidence about how specific combinations of severity and selectivity influence protest dynamics. Using data from Chile's 2019 protest cycle, I examine how different tactical combinations shape subsequent mobilization. Through models accounting for spatial dynamics and temporal effects, I find patterns that challenge theoretical expectations. Contrary to predictions, selective high-severity tactics generated short-term mobilization rather than deterrence, while low-severity tactics produced significant protest increases regardless of their selectivity. Survey evidence reveals that these effects operated partly through public attitudes. These findings demonstrate the need to revise theoretical frameworks around severity and selectivity, particularly in democratic contexts.
This study examines the global spread of antiracist activism following 2020 through a comparative analysis of Black Lives Matter (BLM) movements in Sweden and the UK. Rather than treating nation states as isolated units, as dominant models of transnational diffusion typically do, this study emphasizes the role of supranational political identities and global civil society in shaping movement development. Through discourse analysis of movement texts, the research demonstrates how BLM actors in both countries connect local grievances to shared histories of colonialism, slavery, and racial capitalism, positioning themselves within a global Black political consciousness. The research demonstrates how these movements both draw from and contribute to a transnational repository of Black resistance, circulating ideas and building solidarity through informal digital and diasporic networks. By examining diffusion through the framework of global power structures and diasporic identification, this study provides a more historically grounded and multiscalar understanding of BLM's international impact.
Dual engagement, the phenomenon in which party loyalists participate in antisystem protests, emerged as a defining feature of Lebanon's 2019-2021 period of civil unrest. This cross-partisan participation revealed the strategic role that opposition parties play in shaping mass mobilization efforts. To explain this phenomenon, this study investigates both the political conditions and individual-level factors that enabled such seemingly contradictory participation. Using Arab Barometer data, various political participation theories are tested to identify the key predictors of dual engagement. The findings demonstrate that partisan factors are more significant predictors than traditional protest motivations, suggesting that partisans engage in antisystem mobilizations strategically to advance their parties' interests. As a result, opposition parties emerge as the primary drivers of their supporters' protest participation. This dynamic underscores how partisan commitment can strategically redirect protests from an antisystem orientation to an antigovernment focus. These findings have important implications for understanding political behavior in antisystem mobilizations and illuminate the complex interplay between political parties and social movements throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
