Social Movements

In a comprehensive sense, the concept of social movement refers to (a) mostly informal networks of interaction, based on (b) shared beliefs and solidarity, mobilized around (c) contentious themes, through (d) the frequent use of various forms of protest. This entry begins with a discussion of the elements of this definition. Next, specific forms of (nonconventional) participation, mobilization, and organization of social movements are identified. Their impact in recent decades on political systems, democratization, public policies, and even the international sphere is then highlighted. Finally, the consequences for normative political theory and deliberative or direct forms of democracy are discussed.

Social movements are constituted by networks of informal relations between a plurality of individuals and groups, which are more or less structured from an organizational point of view. While political parties and pressure groups have relatively well-defined organizational boundaries, such as card-carrying members of specific organizations, social movements are composed of scattered and weakly connected networks of individuals who feel they are part of a collective effort. While organizations that refer to movements exist, movements are not organizations but rather networks of relations between diverse actors that often also include organizations with formal structures.

These networks of relations are considered as constituting a social movement when their members [Page 2432]share a system of beliefs that nourish solidarity and collective awareness. In fact, one characteristic of movements is the elaboration of alternative world visions and value systems that differ from those dominating at that time. For this reason, movements have been considered as protagonists of social change.

These emerging values form the basis of the definition of conflicts around which actors mobilize. In particular, from the 1970s onward, new social movements were defined as actors in new conflicts. While Marxist analyses traditionally posited the centrality of capital–labor conflicts, the transformations that followed World War II stressed the relevance of social criteria—such as gender or generation—that were not based on class position. Scholars of the new movements, such as the French sociologist Alain Touraine, agree in highlighting the declining relevance of the conflict between capital and labor. As Alberto Melucci has observed, in complex societies, which require increasing integration and extend their control even over the motivations for action, new social movements (e.g., ecological, feminist) try to oppose the penetration of the state and the market into social life, reclaiming individual identity and the right to shield one's private and romantic life from the omniscient manipulation of the system.

Finally, social movements are characterized by their adoption of “unusual” forms of political behavior. Many scholars pinpoint the fundamental distinction between movements and other political actors in the use by the former of protest as a form of exerting political pressure. Protest is defined as a nonconventional form of action that interrupts daily routine. Protestors generally address their actions to public opinion over elected representatives or public bureaucracies. In fact, movements are characterized by their fundamental critique of representative democracy, and they challenge institutional assumptions about conventional ways of doing politics in the name of participative democracy.

Over the past few years, the analysis of social movements has been approached through the concept of contentious politics, defined as episodic, public, collective interaction among claims makers and their targets (when at least one government is a claimant, an object of claims, or a party to the claim and the claims would, if realized, affect the interests of at least one of the claimants). Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly developed a broad research project that addressed the similar mechanisms at play in social movements, revolutions, democratization processes, and ethnic conflicts. Advocating a dynamic use of concepts, the scholars involved in this project have tried to single out general mechanisms of contention. Although social movement studies first developed in the field of sociology, they have also contributed, as will be discussed below, to the main disciplinary subfields of political science.

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