The Future of Social Movement Research: Dynamics, Mechanisms, and Processes

Discussion: Meaning and Movements in the New Millennium: Gendering Democracy

419 Discussion: Meaning and Movements in the New Millennium: Gendering Democracy With so many dimensions to the changes in the terrain of political contention today, it is hardly surprising that each essay in part IV identifies these central challenges differently. Yet all focus fairly narrowly on material conditions and organizational actors. Della Porta (chapter 17) argues that state institutions, and thus mobilizations, are eclipsed by transnational ones that address the seat of real power, in her view. McCarthy, Rafail, and Gromis (chapter 18) see the terrain as shifting down rather than up, with national institutions less targeted than local ones in the United States, because American domestic politics has transferred power to the individual states. Mayer (chapter 19) stresses the extent to which change in level depends on context: France has a strong national social movement tradition that is regularly evoked for mobilizations, especially by labor. McAdam and Tarrow (chapter 16) address the relationship between national state institutions and proclivity to mobilize by showing how contending political parties within national party systems operate variously as partners for and alternatives to social movement organizing. These essays indicate that a major part of what alters movement dynamics is the changes in states and what they do, as Koopmans suggests in his introduction to part IV (chapter 15). Unquestionably, shifts in power between states and transnational economic actors like the World Bank, CitiBank, and Toyota matter; so do regional shifts of political power such as supranational policy integration by the European Union (EU) and the ascendancy of states’ rights in the United States. Politics responds to such institutional shifts, as governments, parties, and movements all compete for power in a context in which the stakes are high, the rules are uncertain, and alliances are in flux. Myra Marx Ferree myra marx ferree 420 Still, the general principle seems stable: follow the money. The flows of money and thus power are changing, all authors agree, reconfiguring the material terrain of opportunity. The essays also emphasize that macrolevel strategic situations affect both sides of any struggle. Rises in corporate power combined with declines in corporate accountability make banks and transnational corporations targets of global justice movements, as della Porta shows, while corporate funding of parties (both Democratic and Republican) explains some of the shift to the right in U.S. politics since the 1980s, including the increase in surveillance and repression directed at protest mobilizations on the left, as McCarthy, Rafail, and Gromis note. Party structures, and their potential funders and allies, also respond to movement mobilizations, as McAdam and Tarrow emphasize. Indeed, the EU’s control over currency may affect the national strategic situations for Greek, French, and other European mobilizations more similarly than Mayer’s comparison of different cultures of contention suggests. Still, political culture matters. The “Frenchness” of the French includes a willingness to resist state actions that impoverish ordinary citizens, an attitude toward the welfare state that European social movements have cultivated over generations. Conversely, U.S. right-leaning movements, from the John Birch Society in the 1950s to Focus on the Family in the 1990s to the Tea Party in the 2010s, have cultivated an attitude of anxiety about the welfare state. The perception—constructed over time by movement framers—that the EU is itself a unitary, neoliberal actor helps to mobilize national resistance movements in many contexts at various times: in Denmark in the accession process; in Ireland, in rejecting the proposed constitution; in Greece about the euro; in Poland about gender equality directives. The single-minded focus on institutions, whether economic or political, as shaping the context for mobilizations leaves out the discursive frames that give meaning to politics. This essay attempts to bring meaning back in. The Politics of Discourse Issue framing, along with institutional situations, defines the terrain on which movement mobilizations take place. I define framing as an interaction in which actors with agendas meet discursive opportunities as structured in institutionally authoritative texts. Frames that resonate with particular populations pick up and adapt ideas that are part of their (still predominantly national) discursive frameworks. Movements on the left and right do discursive politics with the cultural tools available to them in that time and place. They are not the only actors with agendas. As della Porta argues, institutional actors promote a minimalist and procedural conception of democracy that discussion of part iv 421 is challenged by movements pressing for a broader inclusion of...