International Donor Funding and Social Movement Demobilization: The Barabaig Land-Rights Movement in Tanzania

From the 1960s to the 1990s, Barabaig pastoralists sustained a vibrant grassroots social movement that agitated to reclaim the grazing land from which they had been removed under Tanzania's post-independence nationalization program; however, by the year 2000, the movement had largely fizzled out, even though many of its goals remained unmet. Why did such a long-standing movement demobilize so rapidly? Employing the mechanism-process model of analyzing social movements, I argue that its leaders' pursuit of foreign donor funds led to the depoliticization of the movement's goals and separated the leaders from their base. This caused rank-and-file members to feel alienated, leading to movement demobilization. Demonstrating the link between donor funding and movement decline adds to our understanding of causes of demobilization, an undertheorized phase of the cycles of contention.