The Women's Movement Inside and Outside the State (review)

Who are social movement activists and where are they located? In The Women's Movement Inside and Outside the State, Lee Ann Banaszak examines the location where social movements and states intersect. Using the U.S. feminist movement as her case, Banaszak argues that social movements cannot be assumed to be "outside" the state, but that social movement activists link social movements and the state by their physical presence in positions of state power, in "a network of movement actors or organizations... located within the state."(8) Her focus on the movement-state intersection means that the extent to which state actors and social movement activists constitute separate groups becomes an empirical question, rather than a conceptual distinction, and it directs scholars to questions about political opportunities (both existing and created), about social movement tactics and strategy, about alliances and coalitions, and about policy outcomes.

Based on semi-structured interviews with "forty women's movement activists who held positions in the U.S. bureaucracy between 1960 and 2000,"(26) the book examines the processes that brought these activists into the state, how they operated as social movement actors within and outside the bureaucracy, the range of tactics they were able to employ, and the impact these women had in three policy arenas: educational equity, equal pay and women in development. Banaszak samples activists: "individuals who identify themselves with the movement during their government service and are activists in one or more women's movement organizations."(12) This definition permits Banaszak to detach social movement activism from activist location, and allows her to examine the social movement tactics and strategies as "insider" feminists act both within and outside the state to promote feminist public policy.

The Women's Movement Inside and Outside the State contributes to our understanding of women's movements specifically and to social movement theory more generally. Once inside the state, feminist activists did not, as social movement theory and organizational behavior might predict, become more moderate in their goals or more institutionalized and conventional in their tactics. Instead, their choice of tactics, their strategic behavior, and their impact on policy varied in regard to the political opportunities available. Those insider women who were not already feminists found all the reasons and support from their feminist colleagues that they needed to become feminists. Their impact on policy, however, was shaped less by their type of feminism and more, according to Banaszak, by the opportunities and constraints provided by the state – or created by the activists themselves.

Banaszak suggests that social movement activists are strategic in acting within the state to advance their issues and to shape political opportunities to their advantage. This involved networking across the bureaucracy, linked by feminists at key nodes, and by drawing upon their networks outside the state as well. Social movement theory that draws strong distinctions between government actors and movement activists in civil society obscures these connections, and is more likely to assume a template of social movement tactics for state engagement than to investigate tactical development and strategic interaction of social movements and states. A strength of the book is the recognition of social movement activists who are simultaneously inside and outside the state, a distinction that permits the subsequent disentanglement of goals, strategies and tactics.

The Women's Movement Inside and Outside the State implicitly argues for the importance of who the actors are in understanding social movement success and failure in state policy-making. Banaszak misses an opportunity to link her findings explicitly to the broader literature about women's political opportunities for policy initiatives. Although she recognizes that some institutional venues are more propitious than others for advancing policy issues, Banaszak is not as explicit as she might be about the opportunities presented by the absence of established practices and lifetime civil servants as new agencies are established. Banaszak's cases also reveal the impact of "old" actors (that is, experienced female bureaucrats) upon new institutions (that is...