Comparative Politics 5

What 4 elements define a social movement?

Rechts definition: a social movement is a collective actor, a unit of analysis in its own right. It is defined by 4 elements.

1. Networked structure: a mobilised network of groups and organisations. It may contain formal organisations, but as a whole it has no clear membership and no center that commands it.

2. Collective identity: a shared ‘‘we-feeling’’ that keeps being negotiated and reshaped.

3. Aim to bring about or resist fundamental change in society.

4. Public, collective protests as its main form of action (its ‘‘repertoire’’)

Extra point: social movements are a modern phenomenon. They are tied to Enlightenment idea of ‘‘making history’’ and creating a new social order. Older peasant revolts or slave rebellions aimed to restore a natural of divine order.

Give 2 explanations or theories for why social movements form.

Starting point:

• Grievances are everywhere, but movements are rare. Relative deprivation, not absolute deprivation, is the main source of protest.

Resource mobilisation:

• Grievances alone don’t produce movements.

• Movements arise when ‘‘movement entrepreneurs’’ collect resources (money, volunteers’ time, expertise), build organisations and act strategically.

Political opportunity structure:

• Outside political conditions enable or restrict movements.

• Examples: How open the political system is wether elites are divided, wether allies are available, and how much the state can repress.

List 3 functions of social movements.

Disruptive:

• Movements can be seen as troublemakers who cause turmoil, spread anxiety and polarise society.

• Opponents often push this image to undermine a movements’s unity and credibility, as established classes did with the socialist labor movement.

• Sometimes the label is justified: when one ethnic or religious group seizes power and suppresses others, it can end in civil war.

Indicator of deep social problems:

• Movements act as an alarm for problems that were denied, underestimated or ignored, even democracies with a free press.

• Examples: illegal ‘‘backyard’’ abortions only became visible when women raised their voices collectively.

Not just a spoiler, but a source of new ideas:

• Movements don’t only reject things. They can propose constructive solutions and start reforms that power holders had blocked.

• Example: the anti-nuclear movement began by simply saying ‘‘no’’, it later became a driver of renewable energy and of energy saving.

Challenging power holders and misuse of power:

• Movements act as watchdogs that signal misuse of power and push to deepen democracy.

• They demand structural reforms: elements of direct democracy, freedom of information laws, getting a movements party into parliament, or pushing corrupt or incapable leaders out of office.

Can be for specific issues, or a wide agenda:

• Some movements work on specific, often highly complex policy issues, such as banning land mines or debt relief.

• Others act as general critics of the whole system and of privileged groups, aiming at a fundamental change of society.

Sources of slow and fast change:

• Slow change builds up gradually and is often only visible in hindsight. Examples: the transition from feudalism to capitalism to democracy, and greater gender equality through laws and everyday practices such as gender-sensitive language.

• Fast change can seem to come out of nowhere. Example: rebellions and revolutions such as the fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989.

What is the difference between old and new social movements?

Old movements (e.g. the labor movement):

• Focused on economic production: wages, hours, control of the means of production.

• Made up of the working class, especially blue-collar workers.

• Hierarchical, organised and disciplined (unions, left-parties), with a clear split between leaders and follower.

• Ideologically coherent (Marx, Lenin), with a revolutionary aim to overcome capitalism.

• A smaller repertoire: mainly the strike, and for radicals, violence

New movements (from the 1970s on: environmental, peace, women’s movements):

• Focused on quality of life: environment, health, participation, education.

• Carried by the well-educated middle class, especially human-service professions.

• Decentralised, loose grassroots networks of local groups and coalitions of interests.

• Diverse ideology, aiming for reform rather than revolution.

• Creative répertorie (humant chains, protest camps, street theatre) and a strong role for mass media and discourse.

• Often shorter-lived

What 3 factors distinguish different forms of participation?

• Site (arena) of participation: where it happens, i.e. the public forum, contact with policymakers, or elections.

• Intensity of involvement: how much time and resources are committed. It ranges from low (voting, public advocacy) to high (activist or volunteer, up to paid leader or career politician).

• Riskiness: the danger to freedom, life and limb. It depends on the regime. In democracies voting and lobbying are low-risk, while violence is punished. In authoritarian or despotic regimes even petitions or strikes can be severely punished.

• Rule of thumb: the more effort a form takes, the more risk it usually carries.

Name 3 contexts or sites of political participation.

Community, street and media politics (‘‘forum politics’’):

• Demands expressed in public, e.g. demonstrations, rallies, public advocacy.

• This is typical of social movements.

Communicating preferences to policymakers:

• in the legislature and executive, e.g. lobbying, petitions, contacting officials.

• This is typical of interest groups.

Choosing legislative and executive policymakers:

• Voting, campaigning, running for office.

• This is typical of political parties.

Extra point: each site has a ladder of effort from occasional participation up to leadership.

What is the collective action paradox?

Olson (1956):

• Politics mostly produces collective goods.

• Once a collective food exists, nobody can be excluded from enjoying it, wether or not they helped produce it.

The logic:

• A rational, self-interested person minimises costs, so they let others bear the cost of participating.

• If everyone reasons this way, the good is never produced.

The paradox:

• In theory participation shouldn’t happen.

• Yet people do participate in large numbers.

Example of the ‘‘paradox of voting’’:

• The chances that one vote decides an election is almost zero, voting costs time, and still millions vote.

Kitschelt & Rehm: participation is a ‘‘miracle’’ and a ‘‘choice of last resort’’, used when markets, families or communities fail to solve a problem.

What is free riding?

Definiton:

• Enjoying the benefit of a collective good without contributing to its cost.

Why it happens:

• Collective goods are non-excludable.

• A worker gets the union-won wage raise or the cleaner air without joining the strike or protest.

Why it matters:

• In large groups each person’s contribution seems irrelevant while the personal cost is real, so free riding is rational.

• That is exactly why collective action is hard to start.

Consequences:

• If everyone free rides, the good is never produced.

• Free riding is the core to the collective action paradox.

Give 2 solutions to the collective action paradox.

Selective incentives for participation:

• Private benefits only participants receive, which outweigh the cost of taking part.

• Example: The Ghent system, where unions administer unemployment insurance and that drives up union membership.

• Limitation: this solution is only partial. It doesn’t explain why millions vote without any selective incentive.

Political entrepreneurs:

• People driven by moral passion or a desire for glory who don’t see participation as a cost.

• They pay the costs themselves or provide selective incentives to others.

• They also organise the movement and frame its goals to attract new allies and supporters.

Participation is enjoyable:

• This flips Olsons’s statement assumption: participation can be a benefit in itself, not a cost.

• People can enjoy the solidarity of acting together with many others, the experience of deliberating together over goals and strategies, or even the excitement of a protest.

• In these cases, taking part is the reward, so there is nothing to free ride on.

People are bad at math:

• People underestimate the costs of participating or overestimate the chance of success.

• This can be simple misperception. Or political entrepreneurs persuade them that costs are low and a big payoff is ‘‘just within reach’’ if a few more people join.

• The cost-benefit balance then looks positive, so people participate when a strict calculation would say otherwise.

Social networks and monitoring:

• Networks (family, friends, coworkers, neighbourhoods, online contacts) let people with each other, socially pressure or sanction free riders, and reward participation with social approval. For example, people vote because their network expects it.

• When people see more people joining than expected and repression failing, they join too. This makes repression even more costly, which pulls in still more people the next round.

How do ease of access and ease of entry affect how often people participate?

Ease of access: (how open authority structures are to new demands)

• If existing parties or interests groups take up new demands, the new cause leaves little mark on participation.

• If established actors refuse, outside entrepreneurs start independent mobilisation, which means more protest.

• Two-party systems with weak internal discipline (e.g. the US) give new demands access inside the parties, so there is less need for outside movements.

Ease of entry: (how easy it is for new actors to enter)

• Proportional representation, low thresholds and fragmented multiparty systems make it easier to found new parties, so a movement can enter electoral politics.

• Majoritarian or single-member systems raise barriers, so demands stay in the street (e.g. the British Greens failed)

What explains wether participation becomes a social movement, a political party, or an interest group?

The nature of political stake (what is at issue):

• A single issue with a one-off, discrete decision → a social movement. →It has a little organisational structure, and people mobilise until the decision is made

• A narrow set of issues that persists over time → an interest group. → It is formal and has members, and centralisation lets it make credible.

• A complex agenda of interdependent issues → a political party. → A party can’t survive on one issue because its legislators must decide on everything

What are 3 variables that explain why some individuals are more likely to participate?

Resources:

• Time, education, income, and ‘‘time sovereignty’’ (control over when you work).

• Education helps people process information, builds self-confidence and leads to higher income.

• Students and young retirees have the most time.

Recruitment:

• Associations such as churches and unions draw people in, even those with few resources.

• Large factories with workers concentrated nearby make it easy to communicate and monitor free riders.

Social networks:

• Family (political ‘‘dynasties’’, early socialisation), friends and online networks.

• People vote or protest for social approval.

Orientations:

• Political interest, ideology and belief system combine a view of how politics work and an ideal goal for society.

• A well-organised ideology predicts participation.

Contextual cues:

• Electoral rules, the Ghent system, corporatism and party-system fragmentation.

• These explain cross-country differences (Sweden vs. Americans, Belgians vs. France)

What is the present’s subsistence ethic, and what conditions cause peasant rebellion?

The subsistence ethic (Scott):

• Peasants live so close to margin, ‘‘up to the neck in water’’, that one bad harvest can ruin them.

• So they follow a ‘‘safety-first’’ risk-averse logic: avoid disaster rather than maximise profit.

• Examples: using several seed varieties, farming scattered strips, communal land, reciprocity, and expecting the rich to be generous.

Moral economy: What began as a practical adaption became moral rules, namely a right to subsistence and the norm of reciprocity.

How peasants judge exploitation: They ask ‘‘What is left?’’ rather than ‘‘How much is taken?’’ A fixed rent or tax that ignores a bad year feels more exploitative than a larger but flexible one.

What causes rebellion:

• Violation of this ethic, i.e. when landlords, moneylenders or the state claim more than the culturally defined subsistence minimum.

• Colonial capitalism turned land and labor into commodities, made peasants tenants and wage labourers exposed to the market, and destroyed traditional social insurance.

• The modern colonial state imposed fixed head and land taxes and pressed harder in slumps.

• Crisis triggers such as the Great Depression (e.g. the Saya San rebellion in Burma and the Nigh-Tinh soviets in Vietnam).

• Rebellions are defensive and backward-looking: peasants want back ‘‘what is rightfully theirs’’.

Anger alone isn’t enough. Rebellion also depends on alliances wit

Define a social revolution as Skocpol outlines it.

Definiton:

• a rapid, basic transformation of a society’s socio-economic and political structures that is accompanied and partly carried out by class upheavals from below.

What makes it distinct:

• It combines thorough structural transformation with massive class revolt.

• This separated coups, rebellions, political revolutions and independence movements.

She builds on two quotes: Huntington (‘‘rapid, fundamental, violent domestic change’’) and Lenin (‘‘festivals of the oppressed’’)

Cases:

• only a handful exist, mainly France 1789, russia 1917 and China 1911-1949.

Method:

• She uses the comparative historical method.

• She contrasts these cases with modernisers that had no revolution (Japan, Germany) and failed revolutions (Russia 1905, Prussia 1848). This tackles the ‘‘small-n’’ problem.

Outcome:

• A more centralised, rationalised state, with the landed upper class removed from local power over peasants.

What international environment and political structure led to social revolutions, according to Skocpol?

International environment:

• Agrarian states were caught up in competition with stronger, more economically modern foreign rivals (above all Britain and Germany).

• Military and fiscal pressure (wars, debts) forced them to try to modernise and raise more resources.

• Examples: France was ruined by the American War of Independence. Russia collapsed under World War I. China suffered imperialist intrusion and indemnities.

Political structure, the ‘‘agrarian bureaucracy’’:

• A semi-bureaucratic state shared control with a landed upper class.

• In France and China, landed elites sat inside the state /the French parlements, the Chinese gentry), so they blocked reforms.

• Japan and Prussia had bureaucrats without landed interests and could reform ‘‘from above’'.

The result:

• the administrative and military machinery broke down. ‘‘Not oppression, but weakness, breeds revolution.’’

Agrarian structure:

• Peasants had solidarity and autonomy (village communities, no close landlords supervision) and sanctioning power was centralised.

• Once the state collapsed, peasant revolts spread. Peasant revolts plus marginal elite movements made the revolution.