Organizations, coalitions, and movements (original) (raw)
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Social movements rely on coalitions to help mobilize the mass numbers of people necessary for success. In this article, we review the literature on social movement coalition formation, longevity, and success. We identify five factors critical to coalition formation: (a) social ties; (b) conducive organizational structures; (c) ideology, culture, and identity; (d) the institutional environment; and (e) resources. Next, we explore the extent to which coalition survival is influenced by these same factors and argue that emergent properties of the coalition, such as commitment and trust, also facilitate longevity. Our review of the literature reveals that two factors specific to coalitions influence their success: coalition form and the nature of institutional targets. Interaction, communication technology, and the availability of physical and virtual spaces that facilitate communication are themes that run throughout our discussion, as they undergird many of the elements that shape coa...
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Alliance building across social movement groups is an important aspect of social movement dynamics, contributing to their viability and capacity to promote social change. Yet, with few exceptions, cross-movement coalitions have received little sustained theoretical or empirical attention. This article contributes to an understanding of cross-movement coalition building through the examination of a successful case of alliance: a coalition of environmental justice and peace and anti-weapons proliferation groups to stop a federally funded U.S. biodefense laboratory from being built and operated in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Cross-movement collaboration was challenged by tensions arising from differences in positionality. Positional differences reflect status distinctions such as race, class, gender, and place and the differential experiences and expectations that result. Nonetheless, this coalition was able to resolve positional tensions and, as a result, remained a viable protest vehicle. We found this was accomplished through a cross-movement bridging process that involved (1) cause affirmation, (2) strategic deployment, (3) exclusion, and (4) co-development of cross-movement commitments. We extend existent accounts of cross-movement coalition by providing both a culturally founded and fine-grained account of coalition work in the maintenance of alliance relations. The article and its conclusions also address the broader implications of understanding successful trans-positional cross-movement alliances.
This paper considers the variant roles that differing forms of social network relationships play in supporting collective action and linking community-representing associations to political resources. It extends a literature that has tended to focus on broad egocentric networks or service networks, and that often conceptualizes social capital in largely metaphorical terms. This paper argues that differing forms of network resources will support distinct types of activities undertaken by participatory organizations. It analyzes the relationship between different network structures and self-assessed efficacy of neighborhood councils in the City of Los Angeles. The findings suggest that that different network structures have varying effects on perceived efficacy of the neighborhood councils, while suggesting that civil society organizations must overcome basic organizational hurdles related to internal conflict in order to leverage latent network resources.
Social Movements and Networks, 2003
It is difficult to grasp the nature of social movements. 1 They cannot be reduced to specific insurrections or revolts, but rather resemble strings of more or less connected events, scattered across time and space; nor can they be identified with any specific organization, rather, they consist of groups and organizations, with various levels of formalization, linked in patterns of interaction which run from the fairly centralized to the totally decentralized, from the cooperative to the explicitly hostile; persons promoting and/or supporting their actions do so not as atomized individuals, possibly with similar values or social traits, but as actors linked to each other through complex webs of exchanges, either direct or mediated. Social movements are, in other words, complex and highly heterogeneous network structures. Since the 1970s, analysts of social movements and collective action have tried hard to make sense of these structures, and their dynamics. That collective action is significantly shaped by social ties between prospective participants is not a recent 2 discovery (e.g.