In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

2 Political Opportunity Structures and Progressive Movement Sectors Michelle Beyeler and Dieter Rucht It is widely argued that social movements are influenced by stable structural features of the political systems in which they are embedded. This is our starting point. We are interested in these nation-specific structures that, via a set of intermediary variables, ultimately may have an impact on the size, forms, and other properties of the antiwar protests that are at the center of this book. While it may be impossible to find a direct link between general political structures and specific protest incidents, we can at best explore a potential causal bridge between these general political structures and the structures of a large social movement sector or even specific kinds of movements. These, in turn, are expected to influence issue-specific protest campaigns or protest events. In this chapter, we shed light on structural features of political systems and their possible influence on social movement sectors in the eight countries under study. The structural context of specific protests can be conceptualized at two levels. First, every protest is a manifestation of an extended mobilization structure that, in the case of antiwar protests, has developed over a long period. Such a mobilization structure encompasses two layers, that of the directly involved movement and that of a set of affinity movements. The directly involved movement, commonly referred to as the peace movement, is not at the center of this chapter (but see chapter 4). Rather, here we will focus on the broader set of movements (of which the peace movement is only one element ), which are sympathetic to and potentially supportive of the cause of peace. Typically, large antiwar protests recruit from a cluster of movements and, to some extent, even attract people who are not affiliated with any social 20 movement network but share the core protesters’ worldviews and values. Such a cluster of movements can be referred to as a social movement family (della Porta and Rucht 1995, 230). Peace movements, notably in the societies we are investigating, draw on a mobilization potential whose core for the most part consists of progressive and leftist groups. Accordingly, one element we are interested in is the size and character of the progressive left in the countries under study, hereafter labeled the “progressive movement sector.” This movement sector, in turn, is influenced by general political structures , the second level of the structural context of the antiwar protests. Even in this era of internationalization and globalization, social movements and their activities are still profoundly marked by nation-specific factors, such as a regime type. We will turn first to the description of the nation-specific political context and then to the corresponding movement sectors in an attempt to explore the question of how the former might influence the progressive movement sector. Political Structures as a Context for Protest Activities The activities of protest groups and social movements are influenced in several ways by a number of environmental factors, among which, for good reasons , so-called political opportunity structures have by far attracted the most attention (Tarrow 1983; 1998; Kitschelt 1986; Kriesi 1995; 2004). The concept of political opportunity structures is not undisputed. Some scholars criticize it on more principal grounds (Goodwin and Jasper 1999); others acknowledge its value but emphasize additional dimensions beyond those included in it (Goldstone 2004). Yet most scholars agree that this concept comprises a set of factors that potentially and actually shape movement activity. Among these are formal institutional structures, informal procedures in relation to a given challenge, and the configuration of power as regards a given challenger (Kriesi 1995), or, according to McAdam’s comprehensive account: “1. the relative openness or closure of the institutionalized political system, 2. the stability or instability of that wide set of elite alignments that typically undergird a polity, 3. the presence or absence of elite allies, 4. the state’s capacity and propensity for repression” (1996, 27). The concept of political opportunity structures was mainly used as a set of independent variables at the national level to explain, commonly in a crossnational comparative perspective, general features of social movements, for example, the movements’ strengths or prevailing strategies.1 Over time, the concept has been refined and amplified. For instance, dimensions beyond those of the political opportunity structure have been considered: Brand (1985) has pointed to the importance of deeply rooted societal...

Share