Power and Protest: How Marginalized Groups Oppose the State and Other Institutions 9781839098352, 9781839098345, 9781839098369

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POWER AND PROTEST

RESEARCH IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, CONFLICTS, AND CHANGE Series Editor: Lisa Leitz Recent Volumes: Volume 24: Volume 25: Volume Volume Volume Volume

26: 27: 28: 29:

Volume 30: Volume 31: Volume 32:

Volume 33: Volume 34: Volume 35: Volume Volume Volume Volume

36: 37: 38: 39:

Consensus Decision Making, Northern Ireland and Indigenous Movements, Edited by Patrick G. Coy Authority in Contention, Edited by Daniel J. Myers and Daniel M. Cress Edited by Patrick G. Coy Edited by Patrick G. Coy Edited by Patrick G. Coy Pushing the Boundaries: New Frontiers in Conflict Resolution and Collaboration, Edited by Rachel Fleishman, Catherine Gerard and Rosemary O’Leary Edited by Patrick G. Coy Edited by Patrick G. Coy Critical Aspects of Gender in Conflict Resolution, Peacebuilding, and Social Movements, Edited by Anna Christine Snyder and Stephanie Phetsamay Stobbe Media, Movements, and Political Change, Edited by Jennifer Earl and Deana A. Rohlinger Nonviolent Conflict and Civil Resistance, Edited by Sharon Erickson Nepstad and Lester R. Kurtz Advances in the Visual Analysis of Social Movements, Edited by Nicole Doerr, Alice Mattoni and Simon Teune Edited by Patrick G. Coy Intersectionality and Social Change, Edited by Lynne M. Woehrle Edited by Patrick G. Coy Protest, Social Movements, and Global Democracy since 2011: New Perspectives, Edited by Thomas Davies, Holly Eva Ryan and Alejandro Peña

Volume 40: Volume 41: Volume 42: Volume 43:

Narratives of Identity in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Edited by Landon E. Hancock Non-State Violent Actors and Social Movement Organizations: Influence, Adaptation, and Change. Edited by Julie M. Mazzei Edited by Patrick G. Coy Bringing Down Divides: Special Issue Commemorating the Work of Gregory Maney (1967 – 2017). Edited by Lisa Leitz and Eitan Alimi

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RESEARCH IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, CONFLICTS, AND CHANGE VOLUME 44

POWER AND PROTEST: HOW MARGINALIZED GROUPS OPPOSE THE STATE AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS EDITED BY

LISA LEITZ Chapman University, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

Emerald Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2021 Copyright © 2021 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. Reprints and permissions service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-83909-835-2 (Print) ISBN: 978-1-83909-834-5 (Online) ISBN: 978-1-83909-836-9 (Epub) ISBN: 0163-786X (Series)

For my precious family: My parents David and Judy Hassall, and my sister Jane. Katayoun and our sons Hyde and Thomas.

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CONTENTS About the Authors

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List of Contributors

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Introduction to Power and Protest, RSMCC Volume 44 Lisa Leitz and Paige N. Gulley

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SECTION I THEORIZING THE POWER OF PROTESTORS The Reclamation Master Frame: A Visual Study of the Arab Uprisings Mounira M. Charrad, Amina Zarrugh and Hyun Jeong Ha

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Understanding Strikes in the 21ST Century: Perspectives from the United States Chris Rhomberg and Steven Lopez

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Group Size and the Use of Violence by Resistance Campaigns: A Multilevel Study of Resistance Method Christopher J. Cyr and Michael Widmeier

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Marginalization and Mobilizing Power in Nonviolent Social Movements Selina Gallo-Cruz

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SECTION II POWER OF INSTITUTIONS AND TRADITION Illegitimacy, Political Stability, and the Erosion of Alliances: Lessons from the End of Apartheid in South Africa Eric W. Schoon and Robert J. VandenBerg

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CONTENTS

Whaling in Korea: Heritage, Framing, and Contention against International Norms Bradley Tatar

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Mobilizing for Religious Freedom: Educational Opportunity Structures and Outcomes of Conservative Christian Campus Activism Jonathan S. Coley

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Epilogue: Updates to Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change Lisa Leitz

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Index

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Mounira M. Charrad (PhD, Harvard University) is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas-Austin. Her book, States and Women’s Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, won national awards. Her articles have appeared in major scholarly journals. Her current research focuses on secular feminists and authoritarianism in Tunisia. Jonathan S. Coley received his PhD in Sociology from Vanderbilt University and is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. His research focuses on social movements, politics, religion, and sexuality. His first book, Gay on God’s Campus, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2018. Christopher J. Cyr is an Associate Research Scientist at OCLC. His research looks at how public and private services are provided to communities in several contexts. Christopher holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Colorado, and he is also a Senior International Fellow at the World Engagement Institute. Selina Gallo-Cruz is Associate Professor of Sociology at College of the Holy Cross. Her research has been published in European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, Interface, Social Movement Studies, Sociology Compass, Sociological Forum, and other volumes. In Political Invisibility and Mobilization, Selina examines women's movements against war. Paige N. Gulley has an MA in War & Society from Chapman University. She has written on French colonialism in Algeria, and she enjoys studying colonial theory, hermeneutics, and the lives of women in nontraditional fields. Her current research focuses on female recreation workers during World War II. Hyun Jeong Ha (PhD, University of Texas-Austin) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Duke Kunshan University, China. Her research focuses on the experience of sectarianism among Christian minorities in Egypt. Her work has appeared in Ethnic and Racial Studies and on the blog of the Baker Institute, Rice University. Lisa Leitz is the Delp-Wilkinson Professor and Department Chair of Peace Studies at Chapman University. Her book, Fighting for Peace: Veterans and Military Families in the Anti-Iraq War Movement, won the 2015 American Sociological Association’s Peace, War and Social Conflict Outstanding Book

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Award. She serves as the Series Editor of Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change. Steven H. Lopez is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Ohio State University. His research focuses broadly on work, labor, employment, and society. He has studied and written about auto work, route sales, union organizing, and nursing home work. His current work focuses on experiences of precarity and unemployment. Chris Rhomberg is a Professor of Sociology at Fordham University. His research focuses on historical and contemporary issues of labor, race, urban development and politics in the United States. He is the author of The Broken Table: The Detroit Newspaper Strike and the State of American Labor (Russell Sage, 2012). Eric W. Schoon is Assistant Professor of Sociology at The Ohio State University. His interests include political sociology, social movements, comparative historical sociology, culture, and research methods. His work has appeared in outlets including the Journal of Politics, Social Forces, Sociological Methods & Research, Social Problems, and Sociological Science. Bradley Tatar, Associate Professor in UNIST, is a cultural anthropologist who has researched revolutionary movements in Latin America. Presently based in South Korea, he researches social movements that are changing human interactions with nature. His publication includes Transnational Frontiers of Asia and Latin America since 1800 (with Jaime Moreno Tejada). Robert J. VandenBerg is an assistant professor of criminal justice at Norwich University – The Military College of Vermont. His work focuses on violent extremism and contentious politics, and he is the author most recently of “Legitimating Extremism: A Taxonomy of Justifications for Political Violence,” published in Terrorism and Political Violence. Michael Widmeier is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of North Texas. He also serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Webster University in the History, Politics, & International Relations Department. His research interests include civil conflict, political violence, rebel group organization, social movements, and terrorism. Amina Zarrugh (PhD, University of Texas-Austin) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Texas Christian University. Her research focuses on politics and forced disappearance in North Africa and race/ethnicity in the United States. Her work has appeared in Ethnic and Racial Studies and The Journal of North African Studies.

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Mounira M. Charrad Jonathan S. Coley Christopher J. Cyr Selina Gallo-Cruz Paige N. Gulley Hyun Jeong Ha Lisa Leitz Steven H. Lopez Chris Rhomberg Eric W. Schoon Bradley Tatar Robert J. VandenBerg

Michael Widmeier Amina Zarrugh

Department of Sociology, University of Texas-Austin, USA Department of Sociology, Oklahoma State University, USA OCLC, USA Department of Sociology and Anthropology, College of the Holy Cross, USA Department of History, Chapman University, USA Division of Social Sciences, Duke Kunshan University, China Department of Peace Studies, Chapman University, USA Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University, USA Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Fordham University, USA Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University, USA Division of General Studies, UNIST, Korea School of Justice Studies and Sociology, Norwich University – The Military College of Vermont, USA Department of Political Science, University of North Texas, USA Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Texas Christian University, USA

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INTRODUCTION TO POWER AND PROTEST, RSMCC VOLUME 44 Lisa Leitz and Paige N. Gulley

All discussions of social movements and social change revolve around power: Who has it? How is it imposed? How can we change its dynamics? Often our analysis is clouded by assumptions built into contemporary knowledge structures and ideas of the “other.” In order to move scholarship forward, we have to take inequalities seriously, consider new forms and expressions of power, and carefully examine when challenges to power fail or thrive—just as the chapters of this volume do. During the COVID-19 global pandemic, individuals across the United States and many other nations came out of lockdown and took to the streets to protest police killings of Black people. These protests, reminiscent of the 2014 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests which began in Ferguson, Missouri, reignited global conversations about racialized policing, as well as numerous forms of structural, cultural, and individual racism (see Beaman, 2017, 2019; Bonilla & Tillery, 2020; Clayton, 2018; Duncan-Shippy, Murphy, & Purdy, 2017; Gallagher, Reagan, Danforth, & Dodds, 2018; Hayward, 2020; Ince, Rojas, & Davis, 2017; Mundt, Ross, & Burnett, 2018; Ray, 2020; Szetela, 2020; Taylor, 2016; Yang, 2016). The marches, sit-ins, and petitions demonstrate what Sidney Tarrow’s (1998) extensive overview of the ways people have challenged the state simply called Power in Movement. Online video conferences, social media, and artistic campaigns centered minority voices and sought to empower people to resist inequity and state power and violence. Furthermore, the lead organization described one of its goals as “build[ing] local power,” which can create a world “where every Black person has the social, economic, and political power to thrive” (Black Lives Matter, 2020). Activists’ signs and words have illuminated the racialized operation of power in numerous institutions and highlighted the implications of these power dynamics on both individual and group psychology. Power comes in many forms, even the bare human body, as seen in Portland, Oregon, where a young woman, dubbed “Naked Athena,” struck yoga and ballet Power and Protest Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Volume 44, 1–8 Copyright © 2021 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X20210000044001

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poses in front of federal authorities until they left (Read, 2020). Despite the intense repressive tactics of the police, she was neither arrested nor harmed. Much can be made of her light skin color, whereby this woman’s racial position allowed her to elude harm and to obtain largely positive media attention (see also Jackson, 2020). Such protests urge us to examine not only the power wielded by police and stripped from minorities but also the powerful role of racial and institutional identities of individuals, which can be wielded in politics and other arenas. The global reemergence of the BLM Movement encourages scholars to reexamine state, people, embodied, and identity-based power. So too, the chapters in this volume focus on the various ways power operates in conflicts, including how individuals utilize it despite identities that many believe would lack power. The breadth of the authors’ analyses of power demonstrates the interdisciplinarity of the Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change series, incorporating numerous theoretical and research traditions. Many chapters continue this series’ history of building novel and interdisciplinary conceptions, which demonstrate the insufficiency of the dominant theories and move beyond them to suggest new ways of understanding conflict.

THEORIZING MOVEMENT POWER The first section in this volume, entitled “Theorizing the Power of Protesters,” focuses on how we understand protestors’ demands and their use of the resources available to them. Chapters by Gallo-Cruz and Rhomberg and Lopez particularly draw attention to the need to reconsider how power is theorized in movements. Drawing on examples from around the world, this section examines how culture shapes the ways protestors frame their messages and choose their strategies based on their own potential sources of power. The papers in this section provide new insights into how and why protestors succeed against governments initially unwilling to provide concessions. In the first chapter of this volume, Mounira M. Charrad, Amina Zarrugh, and Hyun Jeong Ha examine how protestors frame their demands in ways that are both universal and highly personal. This framing offers powerful motivation, which sustains protestors for extended periods of time, even in the face of intense repression. Focusing on the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, the authors examine over 3,500 photographs taken during the protests to identify individual demands, as depicted on signs and through other visual symbols. They find that the antigovernment messages expressed by protestors focused on the government depriving its citizens of what they believed was rightfully theirs. This leads the authors to develop the reclamation master frame, in which people demand that the government return stolen rights or satisfy unfulfilled promises. Charrad, Zarrugh, and Ha discuss three specific areas in which protestors demanded reclamation: (1) their right to trustworthy leaders, (2) the ability to take pride in their nation, and (3) the public memory of the victims of state repression. By framing the government’s actions as a betrayal of its people,

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protestors asserted the legitimacy of their struggle and characterized their demands as a return to, rather than a break from, the norm. Their demands were also highly personal, especially those invoking the memory of victims of state violence, and this personal investment in the protests encouraged average citizens to continue protesting for weeks, despite ongoing state repression. Charrad, Zarrugh, and Ha’s research broadens our understanding of the ways in which protestors can frame their demands and the correlation between framing and success in social movements, suggesting the need for further research on the potential power of movements to shape collective memory in ways that shift the balance of governmental power. While framing plays an important role in protestor success or failure, equally important in understanding movements’ power is their use of the resources available to them. In the second paper in this section, Chris Rhomberg and Steven Lopez utilize a case study of fast food workers’ living wage campaign to demonstrate the need for a more comprehensive understanding of the various types of power available to protestors. Focusing on labor movement theories, Rhomberg and Lopez argue that traditional understandings of labor disputes prove insufficient when applied to modern-day strikes. They expand upon the power resources approach to argue that workers rely primarily on their ability to organize collectively, which the authors call “associational power.” Workers then build upon their associational power by deploying the power resources, or points of leverage, available to them. Contrary to other scholars who link specific power resources to specific periods or industries, Rhomberg and Lopez argue that all types of power resources exist in all struggles and that it is the interplay between the various power resources and workers’ collective action that leads to a movement’s success or failure. Though Rhomberg and Lopez highlight the need for labor-specific forms of analysis, their study demonstrates the importance of delineating mechanisms within types of protestor power and the centrality of collective action to social change. Continuing the focus on the power of collectivity, Christopher Cyr and Michael Widmeier study the correlation between group size and campaigns’ use of violent or nonviolent tactics. Examining data on over 250 instances of protests against the state in the second half of the twentieth century, Cyr and Widmeier test several hypotheses, which provide important nuance for the general conclusions that have come out of the extensive quantitative analysis comparing nonviolent and violent campaigns in the work of Erica Chenoweth and her collaborators (Chenoweth, 2008; Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011; Day, Pinckney, & Chenoweth, 2015). Cyr and Widmeier find that nonstate actors with broader support, such as pro-democracy campaigns, are less likely to employ violence, while groups less reflective of their nation are more inclined to utilize guerilla tactics and other violent means. If a country is already democratizing, that increases the likelihood that a campaign is nonviolent. Organizing along ethnic lines, particularly if the ethnic group is a small proportion of the population, or around Marxist ideology is correlated with the use of violence, likely as a result of these groups’ limited support base. Further, campaigns opposing occupation by foreign states are less likely to be violent only when the population they fight for

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is large. Cyr and Widmeier’s conclusions about the correlation between population size, ideology, and state conditions suggest avenues for future examinations of when and which groups will believe that power can be obtained nonviolently. In the final chapter of this section, Selina Gallo-Cruz proposes a new framework for understanding marginalized groups’ use of nonviolent power. Challenging existing understandings of protestor power that emphasize the universality of strategies and motivations across cases, Gallo-Cruz uses a social constructionist lens to highlight the significance of a group’s specific origins and position in society as it relates to their goals, the state’s repression of them, and the resources available to them. She uses the Mothers of the Plaza Mayo’s struggle during the Argentine Dirty War to demonstrate that marginalized groups can derive power from their social and historical position. In the case of the Mothers, she finds that their lack of power in the eyes of the regime allowed them to successfully organize without becoming targets of repression themselves. Their lack of political experience also gave them greater credibility as they spoke out in the international arena, drawing global attention to their struggle and increasing international pressure on the regime. Gallo-Cruz urges us to consider not only actors’ socially constructed position but also the specifics of the conflict itself, highlighting how the Mothers’ strategies and use of power evolved with the conflict. Further, their tactics continued after the conclusion of the Dirty War, as the women continued to seek justice for their loved ones and hold perpetrators responsible for their crimes. This first section of the book offers important directions for theorizing how participants in social movements that seem to lack power may utilize it to make social change. Throughout this section, the authors demonstrate the need to broaden our understanding of the sources and use of protestor power and its correlation with movement success. In the chapters that follow, we expand the examination of power to some of the other powerful forces in social movements.

POWER OF INSTITUTIONS AND TRADITION From a focus on protestor power, we move into Section II, which examines the role of institutions and traditions, which are not always synonymous with one another. Institutions work to govern those under their control, be it the students at a university, the citizens of a nation, or the governments of the world. The standardized rules that they apply do not take into account the variations within these populations, and sometimes directly contradict the traditions of certain communities. In a clash between the institution and tradition, which contextual factors and strategies determine the outcome? This section will interrogate the sources and strength of institutional power, allowing us to better understand the circumstances that contribute to or challenge that power. The first chapter in this section examines the ability of an institution to maintain power despite overwhelming opposition, demonstrating that the sources of institutional power are not always immediately apparent. Eric Schoon and Robert VandenBerg focus on the apartheid government of South Africa, an

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institution long recognized as illegitimate by both the majority of the South African population and the international community. Challenging the predominant understanding that illegitimacy breeds political instability and is a catalyst of regime change, Schoon and VandenBerg highlight that the apartheid regime remained in power for decades despite both national and international opposition. Drawing on a variety of media reports, government records, United Nations transcripts, and memoirs published by key actors, they examine the rise of the ruling National Party in the late 1940s, its success in maintaining power for decades, and its defeat in the first all-race election in 1994. Rather than focusing on individual factors like international pressure or economic recession, the authors synthesize these various forces to analyze their cumulative effect on the regime’s power. Schoon and VandenBerg find that the National Party relied on the support of allies from various sectors, including academia, business, and international politics, that allowed it to maintain power despite its illegitimacy. Only when these relationships began to crumble did the apartheid regime begin to lose power. Significantly, Schoon and VandenBerg assert that the National Party’s illegitimacy did not directly affect its hold on power; rather, illegitimacy eventually destroyed the regime’s relationships with its most important allies, which were the source of its power. Their analysis provides important insight into the indirect effects of illegitimacy on political regimes, laying theoretical groundwork for the examination of similar conflicts. The next two chapters in this section focus on the use of tradition to challenge the power of institutions, analyzing the conditions under which such challenges are successful. Bradley Tatar’s chapter takes us to South Korea to examine a traditional practice in conflict with international norms. Tatar details the rise of the pro-whaling movement in the South Korean city of Ulsan and the movement’s strategic use of heritage and tradition to oppose the international ban on whaling. Focusing on the confrontation between Korean pro-whaling protestors and Greenpeace activists during the 2005 meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Ulsan, Tatar draws on media reports and interviews with protestors on both sides. He finds that Korean pro-whaling protestors strategically framed their position as an issue of local heritage, constructing a tradition of whaling that has become an important part of the community’s identity. In doing so, pro-whaling activists acknowledged that anti-whaling is the global norm and framed their demands as an exception to, not the removal of, the norm. Tatar argues that by using the language of heritage and local tradition, protesters were able to garner support from those outside of their community and eventually succeed in their efforts to gain an exemption from international regulations. His work highlights the ways in which tradition can be strategically constructed and employed by protesters who wish to challenge institutionalized norms. Appeals to the power of tradition do not guarantee the success of a movement, however. In the final chapter in this section, Jonathan Coley analyzes the efforts of conservative Christian activists on college campuses to gain exemptions from university policies, specifically as they relate to the inclusion of LGBTQ1 students. Coley details how conservative Christian student organizations at Vanderbilt

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University asserted that the ability to discriminate based on sexual orientation and religious belief was an issue of religious freedom. Drawing on campus newspaper reports, policy statements, and ethnographic observations made during the protests, Coley outlines students’ ultimate failure to gain the exemptions they demanded. He finds that the conservative Christian activists were unsuccessful due to certain characteristics of Vanderbilt University itself. Developing the concept of “educational opportunity structures,” Coley argues that a combination of university factors, namely the institution’s prestige, wealth, religiosity/secularism, and public/private nature, shapes the likelihood that a university will ultimately prevail over student activists.

EXAMINING POWER This volume continues Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change’s multidisciplinary and multimethod examination of both how social movements challenge power structures and the ways that power shapes the context and range of experiences in a conflict. Moving beyond international relations scholars’ continued emphasis on states, as noted in previous volumes of Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change (e.g. Coy, 2017), this volume emphasizes the complex web of actors in international and national conflicts and the power in collective action, or what many within the nonviolence tradition refer to as “people power” (Ackerman & Kruegler, 1994; Carter, 2013; Elwood, 1997; Schock, 1999, 2004; Zunes, 1999). In fact, many of these chapters highlight the limits of governmental power and demonstrate the power of marginalized groups. Analyses of power are necessary beyond academic circles and political discourse, and such examinations are often a critical aspect of the strategic work of nonprofits, social movements, community organizations, and other agents for social change. We invite submissions to Volume 46, which will examine these organizations’ engagement in power struggles, and particularly welcome those examining the role of race and ethnicity in conflicts and social movements. As mentioned earlier, BLM offers many important avenues for examining the continuing significance of race, and we invite analyses of this movement. The summer of 2020 has seen waves of antiracism protests around the globe, which have sparked relatively rapid changes to police policies and evoked promises from parliamentary bodies, companies, universities, and artistic stakeholders in Europe and the United States to be more inclusive (King, 2020; McAuley, 2020; Rich & Hida, 2020). These developments offer exciting opportunities for examining protestors’ use of violence/nonviolence, as well as other aspects of strategy, tactics, mobilization, and resources, in order to better understand what methods lead to success, failure, or placation. While Volume 46 will be open to all submissions, one section will be devoted to BLM and other movements for racial equity and the operation of race in social movements, and we encourage submissions examining these issues in social change organizations beyond those considered protest groups.

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REFERENCES Ackerman, P., & Kruegler, C. (1994). Strategic nonviolent conflict: The dynamics of people power in the twentieth century. Westport, CT: Praeger. Beaman, J. (2017). Citizen outsider: Children of North African immigrants in France. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Beaman, J. (2019). Where do Black Lives Matter? Police violence and antiracism in France and the United States. Social Science Research Council. Retrieved from https://items.ssrc.org/insights/ where-do-black-lives-matter-police-violence-and-antiracism-in-france-and-the-united-states/ Black Lives Matter. (2020). What we believe. Retrieved from https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-webelieve/. Accessed on July 4, 2020. Bonilla, T., & Tillery, A. B. (2020). Which identity frames boost support for and mobilization in the #BlackLivesMatter movement? An experimental test. American Political Science Review, 1–16. doi:10.1017/S0003055420000544 Carter, A. (2013). People power since 1980: Examining reasons for its spread, success and failure. Sicherheit Und Frieden (S F)/Security and Peace, 31(3), 145–150. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/ stable/24233235 Chenoweth, E. (2008). The nonviolent and violent campaigns and outcomes (NAVCO) dataset, version 1.0. Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. Retrieved from https:// www.du.edu/korbel/sie/research/chenow_navco_data.html Chenoweth, E., & Stephan, M. J. (2011). Why civil resistance works: The strategic logic of nonviolent resistance. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Clayton, D. M. (2018). Black Lives Matter and the civil rights movement: A comparative analysis of two social movements in the United States. Journal of Black Studies, 49(5), 448–480. doi: 10.1177/0021934718764099 Coy, P. G. (2017). Foreword. In J. M. Mazzei (Ed.), Research in social movements, conflicts and change Volume 41: Non-state actors and social movement organizations: Influence, adaptation, and change (p. ix). Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited. Day, J., Pinckney, J., & Chenoweth, E. (2015). Collecting data on nonviolent action: Lessons learned and ways forward. Journal of Peace Research, 52(1), 129–133. Duncan-Shippy, E. M., Murphy, S. C., & Purdy, M. A. (2017). An examination of mainstream media as an educating institution: The Black Lives Matter movement and contemporary social protest. The Power of Resistance (Advances in Education in Diverse Communities, 12, 99–142. Elwood, D. J. (1997). Philippines people power revolution, 1986. In R. S. Powers, & W. B. Vogele (Eds.), Protest, power and change: An encyclopedia of nonviolent action from ACT-UP to women’s suffrage (pp. 412–414). New York, NY: Garland Publishing. Gallagher, R. J., Reagan, A. J., Danforth, C. M., & Dodds, P. S. (2018). Divergent discourse between protests and counter-protests: #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter. PloS One, 3(4), e0195644. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0195644 Hayward, C. R. (2020, April). Disruption: What is it good for? The Journal of Politics, 82(2), 448–459. doi:10.1086/706766 Ince, J., Rojas, F., & Davis, C. A. (2017). The social media response to Black Lives Matter: How Twitter users interact with Black Lives Matter through hashtag use. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(11), 1814–1830. doi:10.1080/01419870.2017.1334931 Jackson, M. S. (2020, July 25). Who gets to be a “naked Athena”?: On weirdness, whiteness and federal agents in Portland. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/ opinion/sunday/portland-protests-white.html King, E. (2020, June 10). Europe seeks own response to Black Lives Matter. Politico. Retrieved from https://www.politico.eu/article/us-style-civil-rights-protests-come-to-europe-george-floyd-blacklives-matter/ McAuley, J. (2020, June 12). The woman behind France’s Black Lives Matter movement wants a race-blind society to recognize its racism. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/ world/europe/assa-traore-black-lives-matter-france/2020/06/12/45c0f450-aa87-11ea-a43b-be9f64 94a87d_story.html

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Mundt, M., Ross, K., & Burnett, C. M. (2018). Scaling social movements through social media: The case of Black Lives Matter. Social Media 1 Society, 4(4). doi:10.1177/2056305118807911 Ray, R. (2020). Setting the record straight on the movement for Black Lives. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 43(8), 1393–1401. doi:10.1080/01419870.2020.1718727 Read, R. (2020, July 19). Out of Portland tear gas, an apparition emerges, capturing the imagination of protesters. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/ 2020-07-19/portland-protest-naked-athena Rich, M., & Hida, H. (2020, July 1). In Japan, the message of anti-racism protests fails to hit home. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/world/asia/japanracism-black-lives-matter.html Schock, K. (1999, August 1). People power and political opportunities: Social movement mobilization and outcomes in the Philippines and Burma. Social Problems, 46(3), 355–375. Retrieved from https://doi-org.libproxy.chapman.edu/10.2307/3097105 Schock, K. (2004). Unarmed uprisings: People power movements in nondemocracies. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Szetela, A. (2020). Black Lives Matter at five: Limits and possibilities. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 43(8), 1358–1383. doi:10.1080/01419870.2019.1638955 Tarrow, S. (1998). Power in movement: Social movements and contentious politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, K.-Y. (2016). From #blacklivesmatter to Black liberation. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books. Yang, G. (2016). Narrative agency in hashtag activism: The case of #BlackLivesMatter. Media and Communication, 4, 13–17. Zunes, S. (1999). The origins of people power in the Philippines. In S. Zunes, S. B. Asher, & L. Kurtz (Eds.), Nonviolent social movements: A geographical perspective (pp. 129–157). Oxford: Blackwell.

SECTION I THEORIZING THE POWER OF PROTESTORS

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THE RECLAMATION MASTER FRAME: A VISUAL STUDY OF THE ARAB UPRISINGS Mounira M. Charrad, Amina Zarrugh and Hyun Jeong Ha

ABSTRACT We examine frames expressed during the Arab Uprisings that toppled authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya in 2011. Through a visual analysis of 3,506 photographs taken at protest sites, we identify a new type of master frame, the “reclamation” master frame, in which protestors assert their right to what they feel they should have but has not been delivered or has been stolen from them by dictators. In the cases we consider, protestors reclaimed their right to (1) integrity of governance; (2) a proud nation, and (3) the dignity of the victims of state violence. They framed their struggle as a redefinition of the relationship between state and citizens. Identifying the master frame of reclamation as central to the Arab Uprisings, we argue that it helps us understand how protestors sustained mobilization over days and weeks in the face of brutal repressions. We suggest that it opens avenues for research on protests in authoritarian regimes. Keywords: Master frame; protests; social movements; authoritarianism; reclamation; visual analysis

INTRODUCTION The protests of the Arab Spring shook an entire world region. They represent a mass mobilization that occurred with breathtaking rapidity, swept through

Power and Protest Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Volume 44, 11–35 Copyright © 2021 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X20210000044004

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several countries, faced brutal repression, involved diverse constituencies, succeeded in bringing down authoritarian regimes, had no robust self-declared organizational leadership, and erupted as a surprise to most national and international observers. As such, they warrant continued investigation by social movement analysts. A key contribution of our study is the focus on discourse and emotion in the mobilization of protestors during the Arab Spring in contrast to existing approaches that focus on examining the structural conditions of the uprisings, such as economic injustices and lack of political freedom. The study illuminates how protestors mediated and expressed their demands regarding the structural violence of the previous regimes. We identify the meanings that protestors used to convey the sense of despair, and also the hope, that they experienced as is reflected in their willingness to risk their lives. Disdaining any idea of reforms, they quickly moved to ask for an end of the regime. They also expressed deep seated revulsion toward the leadership in place. What frames captured their anger? What shared meanings sustained mobilization and unified protestors in the face of danger? What constructs did protestors bring to the site of demonstrations? What messages did they voice? We consider these questions by focusing on the common themes that appeared in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, where regimes rapidly collapsed following the Arab Uprisings (in contrast to other states in the region where regimes remained in place or protracted civil conflicts ensued).1 We offer a case study by considering a set of protests that influenced each other and had common features. Once protests started in Tunisia, there was a cascading effect with protests in Egypt and Libya. The three countries developed common themes of protest and it is these common themes that we seek to capture in formulating the master frame of reclamation. Our findings suggest that, with remarkable consensus in demanding an end to the regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, protestors centered their protests on a master frame of “reclamation” in which they reclaimed what they felt was their right to have and that the dictators never delivered or took away from them: integrity of governance; commitment to the nation; and dignity of the victims of state violence. The protestors used three frames to voice their demand for regime change. Taken together, the frames amount to a master frame, an umbrella that we call a “reclamation master frame.” As one protest sign poignantly read, “You killed our brothers. You stole our wealth. You burnt our oil. Go to Hell.” The assertion of right combined with the notion that the ruler violated it is central to the reclamation master frame. Reclamation is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as “the process of claiming something back or of asserting a right.” In being driven by “a desire for a redefinition of the relationship between state and citizens” (Masri, 2017, p. 51), people asserted their right to all they saw as rightfully theirs. The reclamation master frame involves the notion of a perpetrator (in this case a dictator) who has stolen or never delivered what the

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protestors feel is their right to have (integrity, nation, loved ones). The right to have may apply to something that people once enjoyed, but not necessarily so. It may apply as well to something that people think they should have, regardless of whether they had it in the past. A dominant narrative of the 2011 Arab Uprisings has emphasized economic demands, such as limited job opportunities for educated youth and rising food costs, as well as the repression of Islamic expressions under authoritarian regimes. We agree that economic conditions and religious repressions are underlying structural conditions that led to the protests, a point that has been well-documented (Achcar, 2013; Amin et al., 2012; Campante & Chor, 2012; Hoffman & Jamal, 2014; LaGraffe, 2012). We address here a different question, however. We wish to find out how protestors framed their protest and what themes they expressed day after day when they took to the streets and risked their lives in mass protests. In considering this question, we did not find direct and widespread reference to economic demands or religious themes. Meanings that people shared in coming together in repeatedly bloody protests did not express simply and directly the structural hardships that brought them to the brink. With all the accounts on the Arab Spring, which we discuss below, we believe that key puzzles remain. A major question is how the protests persisted for days and weeks, even though they were not clearly directed by a strong single organization. Equally puzzling is the rapidity of the cascading effect from one country to the others. We suggest that framing motivated protestors and kept them motivated in the face of repression. Furthermore, the particular frame of reclamation resonated in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya alike, which shared a brutally repressive, pervasively corrupt, long-standing presidential regime pursuing neoliberal economic programs with extreme inequalities and deep suffering. Agreeing with Yaghi (2018 on innovative tactics in Tunisia) that frame resonance can substitute for lack of resources or unified leadership, we focus on the frames that sustained protests. Another contribution of the study resides in its methodology and the use of photographs. We employ a qualitative method based on visual analysis by considering thousands of photographs of protests showing posters, props, drawings, and other ephemera. As Gould (2015) suggests, “The ephemera that materialize and instantiate a movement’s collective action frames – its leaflets, fact sheets, T-shirts, stickers, buttons, posters, banners…are particularly rich sources” (p. 255) for exploring meanings and frame making. We see the method as innovative with the possibility of opening new opportunities for research on frames in protest under conditions where the printed word is silenced, as in authoritarian regimes that repress freedom of expression. This method is uniquely suited to illuminate dimensions of activism that would otherwise go overlooked. The discussion that follows begins by outlining features of the Arab Uprisings as a dramatic outburst suited for our methodological approach and by reviewing the literature. We then consider the conceptualization of the reclamation master frame and our methodology. The analysis proceeds with our findings and concludes with implications for further research.

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DRAMATIC OUTBURSTS IN AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES A series of dramatic outbursts, the protests of the Arab Spring, took analysts by surprise. As Goodwin (2011) notes, …no social scientist or political analyst in either the West or the Arab world itself claims to have predicted these uprisings…. We were all taken by surprise (p. 452; see also Gause III, 2011; Kurzman, 2012, p. 379).

Metaphors of earthquake, bombshell, or explosion abound. Sustaining themselves by becoming a daily occurrence and spreading across cities and countries, the uprisings brought, in a remarkably short time, the rapid collapse of regimes that had for decades appeared unshakable in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya (see timing in Table 1). Even though “broad-based popular mobilization is difficult to achieve because it requires bridging … disparate interests” (Goldstone, 2015, p. 398), the Arab Spring succeeded in fostering such broad-based popular mobilization, bringing together diverse groups (Goldstone, 2011). Some groups participated more than others and there were variations in the constituencies of participants in different countries (Kandil, 2012). For example, providing detailed evidence on the basis of surveys fielded in Egypt in June 2011 and in Tunisia in October 2011, a few months after the protests, Beissinger, Jamal, and Mazur (2015, p. 2) write: Whereas participants in the Egyptian Revolution were disproportionately middle-aged, middle class, and professional, participants in the Tunisian Revolution were younger and significantly more diverse in social composition, with workers, students, and the unemployed also mobilizing in significant numbers.

Nevertheless, the groups that participated were able to come together in protest and in demanding the end of the regime. The extent to which the protests were spontaneous with “people coming together in concert,” to use Hannah Arendt’s phrase – or organized by leadership – has been much debated. No single organization claimed leadership for each and every event of the mass uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and people in the streets used cell phones and social media profusely to communicate and network (Khondker, 2011; Lotan et al., 2011). Some scholars have emphasized spontaneity and grassroots mobilization (Pearlman, 2013; Pilati, Acconcia, Suber, & Chennaoui, 2019). Other scholars, however, have discussed mesolevel institutions that undergirded the uprising, including youth movements in all the three countries under study, Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and trade unions like the UGTT (Union G´en´erale des Travailleurs Tunisiens) in Tunisia. For example, considering “first movers,” Clarke and Koçak (2018) show how youth groups used the Internet as a tool of mobilization in Egypt. El-Ghobashy (2011) indicates how the uprisings in Egypt involved a combination of spontaneity and organization among protestors who had over time gained experience with “street action.” Gunning and Baron (2013) argue that the protests in Egypt were the culmination of several distinct waves of social protest, which had

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engaged political, labor, general economic/wage, and religious protests over the preceding decade, and that the coming together of these previously distinct movements, all driven by police brutality, made the revolution of January 25, 2011 possible. Charrad and Reith (2019) show how what started as local spontaneous protests in rural Tunisia later evolved into a larger movement with partial involvement of the national labor union and exiled activists. The Arab Spring occurred in a context of long-term dictatorial presidencies, which we refer to as authoritarian regimes. By “authoritarian regime,” we mean broadly political systems in which the general population has limited and/or circumscribed influence on politics either formally or informally, and in which dissidence is repressed, sometimes brutally. Ben Ali assumed the presidency for 23 years (1987–2011) in Tunisia, Mubarak for nearly 30 years (1981–2011) in Egypt, and Gaddafi (1969–2011) for 42 years in Libya. In each of the regimes, political dissidents were forced underground, incarcerated, exiled, or forcibly disappeared by the state. Although with variations over time among countries, the absence of freedom of press and of an independent judiciary accompanied political repression for decades across all the three states (Chomiak, 2011; Dickinson, 2011; Moumneh, 2010; Swed & Weinreb, 2015; Vandewalle, 2006). With only limited attention to framing, recent studies of the Arab Spring have pointed toward factors that influenced the course of the uprisings including international relations and regime type (Menaldo, 2012; Ritter, 2015), the role of old and new forms of media (Cherribi, 2017; Howard & Hussain, 2013; Tufekci & Wilson, 2012), and democratization (Bellin, 2018; Moghadam, 2013). Other foci include the role of the military and police (Barany, 2011; Ismail, 2012; Ketchley, 2014), historical parallels to other revolutionary movements (Keddie, 2012; Weyland, 2012), and the role of religion (Hoffman & Jamal, 2014; Madhi, 2013). Focusing on social class, scholars have pointed toward the weight of economic inequality, especially in rural areas and poor urban zones (on the history of tensions between central states and rural areas, see Charrad, 2001, 2011), crossclass coalitions, and the significance of labor-related demands in the years preceding the Arab Spring (Beinin, 2012; Buehler, 2014; Goldstone, 2011). Other scholars have addressed the gendered dimensions of the uprisings and their aftermath (Allam, 2017; Charrad & Zarrugh, 2014; Langhi, 2014; Rizzo, Price, & Meyer, 2012). Other studies still have questioned the role of minority groups (Ha, 2017; Maddy-Weitzman, 2015; Matthiesen, 2012). In considering framing during the Arab Uprisings, existing studies have focused primarily on selected news channels in the Middle East and the world (Bruce, 2014; Karyotakis, Panagiotou, Antonopoulos, & Kiourexidou, 2017), on how the social media of political groups of different persuasion revealed political fragmentation in a single country (see Moore-Gilbert, 2019 on the case of Bahrain), or on how framing helped the development of innovative tactics in the particular case of Tunisia (Yaghi, 2018). While the studies above on framing all examine some important aspect of the Arab Spring protests, more attention needs to be paid to the substance of the

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frames that motivated and sustained the protests in the three countries. In focusing on frames and on the reclamation master frame, we aim to address issues that we still find puzzling despite the contributions in the literature. One issue is what themes, meanings, and emotions sustained the protests for days and weeks in the face of brutal repression and in the absence of a strong, clearly identifiable organization. The other is the cascading effect and shared meanings among countries. Since the literature has focused on structural forces or on the use of social and news media often in one country, we still have questions about these two issues. We are therefore shifting the focus away from structural factors that have contributed to the Arab Uprisings toward the types of frames and meanings that mobilized protestors during the time of the protests and in three countries where regimes rapidly collapsed. Rather than considering news channels, and social media or tactical innovation in a particular country, we center the attention on constructs as they existed at the site of mass protests in all three countries. We find framing to offer an in-depth, qualitative analysis of meaning-making as an important source of solidarity among protestors across several countries.

MEANINGS AND THE RECLAMATION MASTER FRAME Framing is what leads many people to go from “the balcony to the barricades” (Benford & Snow, 2000, p. 615). Our analysis of the Arab Spring protests rests on perspectives that emphasize frames, meanings, and emotions. We take at heart Kurzman’s (2012) suggestion not only to recognize long-term structural factors but also to “attempt to understand the lived experience of the uprisings (p. 377) … through the process that Max Weber called verstehen” (p. 385; see also Kurzman, 2004), often translated as interpretive understanding of social action. In relying on verstehen and searching for meanings expressed in the Arab Uprisings, we build on a major line of scholarship that has focused on the communicative work of social movements. Using a theory of “framing” as essential to mobilization (Benford & Snow, 2000; Johnston, 2005; Snow, Benford, McCammon, Hewitt, & Fitzgerald, 2014; Snow, Rochford, Worden, & Benford, 1986), scholars have underlined the importance of meanings and emotions in the dynamics of social movements (Barberena, Jimenez, & Young, 2014; Collins, 2001; Goodwin, 1997; Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta, 2001; Jasper, 1999; Kurzman, 2008, 2012; Pearlman, 2013; Polletta, 2009). Insufficient in themselves, however, individual emotions must be channeled into meanings and frames that provide collective justification for continued resistance (see Benford & Snow, 2000; Gamson, 1992; Gould, 2015; Kurzman, 2008, 2012). Frames furnish reasons for protest. They offer particular vocabularies that help individuals connect with each other while articulating why the injustices exist and why mobilization should occur. We find the following characterization useful: Like a picture frame, an issue frame marks off some part of the world. Like a building frame, it holds things together. It provides coherence to an array of symbols, images, and arguments, … (Ryan & Gamson, 2006, p. 14).

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Examples of frames from our analysis are reviling dictators as tyrants and thieves; mobilizing the flag in new and unexpected ways; and reclaiming the deceased from years earlier. When scholars have addressed frames under authoritarian regimes, they have generally considered a single frame of “injustice” in one country, as in China’s land rights protests (Hess, 2010), the Cuban online blogosphere (Vicari, 2014), the opposition to the Mexican regime of Echeverria in the 1970s (Neria & Aspinwall, 2016), the single case of Egypt (Clarke, 2013) and commentary on YouTube channels covering protests in Bahrain (Al-Rawi, 2015), or the theme of dignity in Egypt from 1956 to 2011 (El Bernoussi, 2015). Master frames are broader than single frames, however. According to Snow and Benford (1992), master frames “provide the interpretive medium through which collective actors associated with different movements within a cycle [of protest] assign blame for the problem they are attempting to ameliorate” (p. 139). Some well-documented master frames include the “equal rights and opportunities” frame of the civil rights movements in the United States and the injustice and justice frames, among others (Benford, 2013; see a list of master frames in Benford & Snow, 2000, p. 619). Benford and Snow (2000) point out that there are only a handful of frames that are “sufficiently broad in interpretive inclusivity, flexibility, and cultural resonance to function as master frames” (p. 619). Of the studies they identify, most examine master frames in liberal democracies, with the exception of Noonan (1995) who considers women’s movements in Chile. These master frames, shaped by the conditions of liberal democracies where protest had in principle been allowed over the long run, are not directly applicable to the Arab Uprisings, which emerged all of a sudden in authoritarian contexts that repressed any form of public opposition. We see the reclamation master frame as an important complement to the types of master frames that have been prevalent in other settings. Benford and Snow (2000, p. 619) indicate that, according to Swart (1995, p. 446), “frames that have been adopted by two or more distinctive movements, and thus function as master frames, exist…because they are ‘culturally resonant to their historical milieu.’” With its focus on reclaiming what dictators never delivered or took away, the master frame of reclamation has been “culturally resonant” in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya in the historical moment of the Arab Uprisings, as a culture of having been deprived and morally violated had developed for several decades (on morality in protests, see Jasper, 1999) in all three countries. Like other master frames, the reclamation master frame is an analytic construct that encompasses single frames. Inductively derived from our analysis of the photos and observations of the single frames we identified in them, the reclamation master frame offers the theoretical advantage of providing a synthetizing concept that is broader than any one of the single frames that constitute its parts at the same time as it expresses their common denominator.

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METHODOLOGY: VISUAL ANALYSIS Our methodology allowed us to examine signs, props, and materials that protestors utilized during demonstrations. We selected photographs only if they exhibited all of the following criteria together: (1) the photograph had to include at least one person who could be clearly identified as an antiregime protestor based on captions, (2) the person(s) shown in the photograph had to mobilize signs, props, or physical behaviors and gestures communicating a meaning, and (3) the signs had to be legible to the authors, i.e., complete, clear, and large enough to be understandable.2 More specifically, we define a protest sign as any material featuring writing, art, or images. A prop is any item mobilized during the protests, such as flags, effigies, bloody garments, or coffins. Physical behaviors are gestures used to communicate a message, such as a crowd mimicking being handcuffed or tying flags together. Using our three criteria indicated above, we examined 3,506 photographs in the photograph archives of the sources we considered and describe below. Our choice to examine photographs has allowed us to observe the salient visual images that protestors used in framing grievances. As Simonds (2013) suggests, the art of activism can inform sociology. In considering photographs, we join a group of scholars who have relied on visual resources utilized by actors in protests and activism and have called attention to the contribution of visual analysis to the study of social movements (Adams, 2002; Doerr, Mattoni, & Teune, 2013; Kubik, 1994; Santino, 1999; Taylor, Kimport, Van Dyke, & Andersen, 2009; Tschabrun, 2003; Zuev, 2010). The sources we consulted include Reuters and McClatchy Tribune (via Factiva database), Getty Images, and the Associated Press. We chose these sources because they collectively provided image data for both U.S. and international print and online news media and were the main sources with extensive publicly available photographic coverage of the protests. Two of the authors collected all 3,506 photographs from photograph archives in each source by using the search term “protest” for each country during each respective period of antiregime protests (for example, “Tunisia, protests”). We focus on the period preceding regime collapse. By regime collapse, we refer to the resignation, escape, or death of the state leader and not to basic transformations in state and class structures as studied by scholars of social revolutions (Skocpol, 1979). We also focus on rapid regime collapse, which occurs over the course of weeks or a few months rather than years. In the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, we consider the onset of protests until the escape or resignation of the state leadership. In Libya, we take the period between the onset of protests and the beginning of an armed uprising supplemented by NATO aerial bombardment (which later culminated in the death of Muammar Gaddafi) as the period of preregime collapse. See Table 1 for details regarding periodization and the cities photographed across sources.

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Table 1. Periodization and Geographic Location of Photographs. Cases

Total Number of Days

Cities Featured in Photographs

Tunisia December 17, 2010–January 14, 2011

29

Egypt

January 25, 2011–February 11, 2011

18

Libya

February 15, 2011–March 19, 2011a

33

Primarily capital city of Tunis but also Cit´e Ettadhamen, Regueb, Tala, and Sidi Bouzid Primarily in Cairo but also in Alexandria, Giza, Sheikh Zuweid, Sinai, and Suez Primarily in eastern city of Benghazi but also in Ajdabiya, Derna, Massa (sometimes referred to as “Masaed” in media captions), Nalut, Tobruk, Zawiya, and Zintan

a

Periods for which Data were Collected

Although Gaddafi’s death on October 20, 2011 represents the fall of the regime in our operationalized definition of regime collapse, we understand NATO’s intervention to demonstrate the incompetence of state leadership to assume its duties and maintain control of the state. The revolutionary scene in Libya shifted in late March from a popular uprising to a militarized, internal conflict aided by foreign military intervention. In addition, we focus on this period of roughly one month for Libya in order to collect data for a comparable period as the Tunisian and Egyptian cases, while still ensuring the integrity of the case by examining Libyan protestor responses to the anticipated, and subsequently implemented, no-fly zone by the United Nations, Resolution 1973.

As a qualitative method of analysis, the coding proceeded on the basis of Glaser and Strauss’ (1967) constant comparative method of grounded theory. This method aims to generate theory through the iterative process of comparing and evaluating data. Grounded theory approaches to visual data are a relatively new focus in scholarly work and are predicated on symbolic interactionist understandings of interaction as a key site for the construction of meaning in social life (Konecki, 2019). Drawing from his study of existing scholarship employing grounded theory to examine visual empirical data, Konecki (2019) proposes that scholars employing grounded theory perform “multislice imagining” to the analysis. “Multislice imagining” refers to the acknowledgment that “visual data are multilayered” and that any analysis of a photograph should consider layers including (1) the context in which an image has been created, including by whom and for what purpose, intent, and motivation, (2) the mediation of the image, including where it has been presented and to what audiences, (3) the content and style of the image, including all details of the image and its structure, and (4) how the image has been received, including reflecting upon the implicit audience that may have been anticipated when the image was circulated (Konecki, 2019). In keeping with the grounded theory approach to visuals, we outline our methodology along these important points above. We acknowledge the context in

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which the image was created in selecting photos from professional photography agencies. Professional photographers may offer their own constructions of reality that reflect their professional interests or world views. As Goldstein (2007) states in regard to employing visuals in research, “Every photograph represents the photographer’s choices, hence his interpretation of reality” (p. 75). This is reflected in part in the distribution of photographs across the three cases we consider here. Across the sources, we examined 111 photographs for Tunisia, 2,829 for Egypt, and 566 for Libya, totaling 3,506 photographs, as we found them in our sources. The discrepancy in numbers is due to a number of factors. Since the Tunisian uprisings occurred first in rural and remote areas (Charrad & Reith, 2019) and came as a surprise, it took a number of weeks until the media understood them as a major protest “worth” covering. The larger number of photographs for Egypt is due to the fact that protests there started later than those in Tunisia, that they occurred largely in cities, and that the country attracted greater media attention in part because of an existing infrastructure of photojournalists who had a base in Egypt, from which they produced coverage of the entire Middle East and North Africa. In Libya, the state responded to the uprising with greater violence than in Tunisia or Egypt, which delayed the entry of professional photographers for quite a while. Additionally, because of its size and tradition of leadership in the Arab world, Egypt has historically attracted more international attention. In drawing on professional photographs, we acknowledge both the strengths and boundaries of our approach. We believe that the strengths prevail when one aims to understand framing during unexpected protest under conditions of brutal repression. The strengths of professional photographs include that they are publicly disseminated and provide details about the locations and dates of the events depicted, which contextualizes the photographs. Accessibility and details on location and date make photographs amenable to systematic collection in a way that other photographs, as for example those on social media, are not, since important information about the latter (such as city and date of the photograph) can be extremely difficult to collect. In addition, photographs offer insights on a broad scale during unexpected moments of upheaval and danger, when the collection of other forms of data, such as interviews, is less feasible. We recognize that photographs are mediated in particular ways that may influence the substance of the photograph. Professional photographers circulate photographs to international audiences, from whom they seek to command attention and viewership. In the case of commercial photography and photojournalism, photos that portray conflict and violence tend to receive greater accolades (Greenwood, 2012), especially perhaps in coverage of the Middle East and North Africa, where stereotypes of violence prevail. Accordingly, the professional photographs to which we have access do not represent the entire set of photographs that may have been taken during the uprisings. While other media, such as videos of protests, would further enrich and complement the photographic data collected here, such media also suffer from similar

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shortcomings as professional videographers determine which scenes and settings are worthy of being filmed.3 However, despite the selective aspects of photographic production, photographs nevertheless represent important aspects of reality (Becker, 1974). Several considerations help mitigate the limitations of the photographs we used. The sheer, large number of photos, 3,506, suggests that we captured a broad range of photographers’ interpretations of the protests, not those of a selected few. Many photography agencies considered here, which sell photographs to widely circulated newspapers such as the New York Times, purchased photographs directly from citizen journalists who had immediate access to sites of protest and whose perspectives directed the agencies toward what they deemed significant in the course of the demonstrations (Batty, 2011). The point was further affirmed in the examination of the websites of the news agencies, which indicates that the professional photographers included a number of Tunisian, Egyptian, and Libyan nationals. This offers a greater range of possible constructions of reality than would be the case if the photos only reflected those of foreign photojournalists. Given the considerations above, we are confident that the photos we analyzed constitute a reasonably accurate representation of an important reality that took place during the Arab Uprisings. In regard to the content of the image, we closely analyzed all aspects of each image in accordance with the grounded theory approach (Konecki, 2019). We did “open coding,” a process that involves the “‘opening up’ of the text in order to uncover ideas and meanings it holds” (Benaquisto, 2008, p. 86). Just as text is analyzed as closely as possible, line-by-line in the case of interviews, we analyzed images thoroughly, including from the top of a photograph to the bottom, and made observations about its composition and features. Among the many features we observed in the photographs, we closely analyzed settings, the embodiment of participants, and the props mobilized during demonstration. Following the principles of open coding, we created and modified categories of themes throughout the analytical process until we identified key themes. Two of the authors divided the 3,506 photographs and independently open-coded them in an effort to identify common themes. The authors then met to discuss the themes that they observed in the photographs that each reviewed. They openly coded a small selection of the photographs together to ensure intercoder reliability. We concluded that three themes – reclaiming integrity of governance, the nation, and dignity of victims of state violence – emerged as common across the countries of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya in the period under consideration. With these three themes, the authors conducted focused coding in the second stage, and each author proceeded to code half of the total number of photographs to determine which of the three themes they exhibited. The photograph is treated as the unit of analysis. The protest signs, posters, and slogans were written in Arabic, French, English, and Italian. The authors of this article, who together have proficiencies in all languages above, undertook the translations.

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FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION: RECLAMATION MASTER FRAME ENCOMPASSING INTEGRITY, NATION, AND PEOPLE Based on our analysis, we document and discuss here the three frames of protest that we found predominant in the protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya and that, together, we see as constituting the “reclamation” master frame. First Frame: Reclaiming Integrity of Governance from Corrupt Tyrants Protestors expressed moral outrage at the corruption and depravity of their leadership. They showed revulsion toward their leaders whom they depicted as tyrants who had violated the country and stolen its wealth. We see the intense revulsion as a longing for a different form of governance, one that has integrity and respect for the people. In reclaiming the integrity of governance from corruption, protestors sought to reclaim wealth and resources of the country that they considered owed to them but denied because of clientelism and enrichment by the governing elite. The theme of leaders as diabolic thieves was associated with corruption at the highest levels of the state. A poster in Egypt read: “We want our money back.” Tunisian protestors referred to Ben Ali’s financial misconduct, as illustrated by a sign reading “Plus de dictateur! Plus de voleurs!” (“No more dictator! No more thieves!”) and accused the regime of corruption, fraudulence, and embezzlement. Grievances about corruption were directed not only at Ben Ali himself but also at the members of his family for alleged illicit use of public assets, as an extreme form of patrimonialism was widely perceived to pervade the allocation of resources in the country (Lawson, 2015). During a protest in early January, one sign specifically condemned the “privileges of Trabelsi,” in reference to Ben Ali’s wife, Leila Trabelsi, who was reported to own 1,000 pairs of shoes and 1,500 pieces of jewelry (Middle East Online, 2011). Protestors projected the deep sense of violation that they had experienced. The messages addressed directly the immorality of the corrupt leader. As Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta (2000) remind us, frames “generally only work when they have an emotional impact on people” (p. 78). Moral outrage at leaders’ corruption was emotionally resonant with protesters in all three countries. The protestors depicted state leaders in terms of depravity, greed, cruelty, and exploitation. We interpret photographs showing instances of leader defacement, the hanging of effigies, and the burning of material associated with the regime (such as books, flags, and money) as revulsion toward the leader, who is depicted as having stolen the wealth and dignity of the country, and thus deserving punishment and loathing. Dictators were portrayed in photographs and posters through animalistic or satanic depictions, in mass burnings of government-made signs representing heads of state, and in the hanging of effigies meant to symbolize collective rejection of the leadership. Common were the depictions of Mubarak and Gaddafi as vampires and demons, as exemplified in the representation of the Libyan leader in Fig. 1. In

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a similar vein, a Tunisian protestor held a sign stating in Arabic “The party [Ben Ali’s] is an enemy of the people” and showing Ben Ali adorned with a Nazi swastika and a skull, common symbols of a poison or fatal substance. The message of enmity posited Ben Ali and his party as lethal to the health of the country and, in the imagery of a skull, as hellish or as a grim reaper. Likewise, Mubarak was depicted wearing a German army uniform or Hitler’s hairstyle.

Fig. 1. Example of Frame No. 1. Benghazi, Libya. February 23, 2011. A Libyan holds a poster featuring a caricature of Gaddafi who sits in a trashcan labeled in Arabic “Dustbin of History” with a blood-drenched raised hand and writing above him that reads “I am the only Satan.” His teeth are notably pointed to indicate a venomous character or Dracula and a Star of David is featured prominently on his chest. © Reuters.

Shoes, which often signify filth and disgust in the Middle East, were used in multiple ways to humiliate and reject the leadership. People waved their shoes

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collectively as a gesture of insult to Mubarak, especially during his frequent appearances on late-night national broadcasts announcing that he would not resign. In other instances, an Egyptian protestor raised his shoe in which he had put a photograph of Mubarak and, in the eastern city of Suez, several Egyptians carried a large carpet with shoes placed atop an image of Mubarak’s face. Meant to reject state leaders by expressing how much protestors reviled them, animal portrayals pervaded the protests. In Libya, Gaddafi was depicted as a pig, a dog, and a monkey. In direct response to Gaddafi’s reference to dissidents as “rats” and “cockroaches” when he addressed the nation one week after the initial uprisings, several protestors represented him as a rat or cockroach, inverting and reappropriating the language that Gaddafi had used to degrade them (Spencer, 2011). Protestors mocked Gaddafi also as a monkey by inverting his name to “Girdaffi,” as “gird,” in Libyan Arabic pronunciation, is the term for monkey. A message that transpired through the protests is that only by getting rid of their leaders would people regain a sense of the integrity of their own country. This is reflected in the heavy use of the term “Degage” (French for get out), which first appeared in Tunisia to become later a common slogan of the Arab Uprisings in other countries. Second Frame: Reclaiming the Nation Reclaiming nation and state constituted a resounding second frame in all three countries. Protestors used national flags not only to express anger with the present and but also hope for a better future. The overwhelming theme we found was an assertion of belonging to the nation, attachment, and commitment to it. The theme of reclaiming the nation and the state appeared with several related meanings: absolving the nation and state that had been soiled, vitiated, deformed, crippled while in the dirty hands of the dictators; reappropriating the nation and state away from the dictators and giving it back to the people; and gaining pride in the nation and state by making them better than what they had been. The dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, which followed from national independence movements at the end of colonial rule by European powers, placed state power in the hands of a few and excluded input from ordinary citizens who generally felt left out of national politics. Protestors sought to claim a voice in politics as a legitimate right, one that they should have, even though they never experienced it in the postcolonial nation state. They showed pride in and hope for a new nation. We found the message of reclaiming nation and state to be powerful during the protests and to be strikingly future-oriented. Across the photographs, protestors mobilized a range of flags such as fabric flags, handmade paper flags, face paintings in the color and shape of their national flags, and flags used as headscarves. Flags were, at times, demonstrably homemade or simply drawn on poster board. People waved flags, hung them around the protest site, and, in many cases, draped their bodies in them or kissed the flags in a demonstration of love for the nation. Protestors showed imaginative

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ways of using the flag. Many photographs featured images of the national flag painted on cheeks, foreheads, arms, and faces. Many showed young people with flags painted on them or carrying flags. Tunisians in the streets chanted the national anthem at the same time as they carried flags, stirring strong emotions of those witnessing the scene. Demonstrators used national flags along with their written signs. For example, in Egypt, they waved flags printed with Arabic and English words, “25 JAN” and “Yanāīr 25,” to commemorate the mass mobilization that ignited 18 days of protest starting on January 25, 2011. Fig. 2 offers an example of how flags were mobilized during protests in Egypt.

Fig. 2. Example of Frame No. 2. Cairo, Egypt. January 30, 2011. Protesters mobilize an Egyptian flag with handwritten messages. © Getty Images.

Protestors in Libya shunned the solid green flag that flew over Libya during Gaddafi’s rule. Instead, they mobilized around the pre-Gaddafi flag, characterized by red, black, and green stripes with a white crescent and star in the middle, the national flag of the postcolonial period when a weak monarchy ruled from 1951 to 1969. Its mobilization can be regarded as a direct rejection of Gaddafi and his visions for the country. Although one could read nationalist overtones in the display of the pre-Gaddafi flag, we did not detect references to an idealized past state characteristic of the literature on nationalism (Herder, 1968; Hobsbawm, 1983). Since Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya went from a longlasting colonization to decades of authoritarianism until the Arab Spring, it should come as no surprise for the protestors to ignore the past and focus instead on creating a new day for themselves and their country.

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Third Frame: Reclaiming the Dignity of Loved Ones In the third frame, protestors reclaimed the dignity of the missing and deceased. They demanded justice for their loved ones. They wanted acknowledgment of the state’s violence, including the release of people who were unjustly detained, and the acknowledgment of the disappearances and deaths of people who were killed by the regime. The reclamation of loved ones had multiple meanings. These included (1) the release of individuals imprisoned for political opposition, such as bloggers; (2) the return of bodies of individuals disappeared and never acknowledged by the state; and (3) the recognition of loved ones as martyrs rather than criminals as the state would contend and as activists for justice. Protestors expressed the pain that their leaders had inflicted on them by killing or abducting their loved ones. We have included in this regard all instances of photographs depicting mobilization around coffins, bloodied garments, protestors brandishing bullets, or references to imprisonment of specific individuals who remained missing or were abducted by the regime. In order to reclaim the deceased or missing, protestors often raised photographs of their relatives. Though many of the relatives had died 30 or 40 years earlier, protestors brought with them framed photographs of their loved ones, sons, brothers, and fathers, to the site of protest. In Tunisia, advocacy for the release of political prisoners was a common feature of protest signs in both the capital city of Tunis and the city of Regueb, close to Sidi Bouzid, where Bouazizi’s self-immolation precipitated the Arab Spring. For example, during a protest a large group of protestors raised their fists in unison, placing one hand across another to mimic being handcuffed (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Example of Frame No. 3. Tunis, Tunisia. January 14, 2011. Protesters collectively hold hands up as if handcuffed, in solidarity with relatives and fellow citizens who have been victims of state violence. © Getty Images.

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In other instances, the demands for freedom of political prisoners applied to specific individuals, including Slim Amamou, Hmadi Kaloutcha, and Azyz Amamy, many of whom were young bloggers or journalists who had openly criticized the regime, written in newspapers that had been banned and were imprisoned by the state or forcibly disappeared (PEN America, 2011). In Libya, a primary protest location of a courthouse alongside the beach in the eastern city of Benghazi became the site of an extensive mural of photographs, primarily those of individuals killed in 1996 in what is regarded as a killing of over 1,200 political prisoners incarcerated in Abu Salim Prison in Tripoli (Zarrugh, 2018). Individuals mobilized personal photographs, often kept in the ornate framing that had adorned the walls of their homes, thus transforming the protest site into a commemoration of dead or disappeared relatives and a vivid symbol of state brutality under Gaddafi. The wall of photographs not only acknowledged the brutality of the past but also reiterated the continuity of regime violence, as new photographs of the recently deceased were hung alongside the old when the regime intensified its violence to quell the uprisings. Photographs showed symbols of contemporary violence, such as bloodied shirts and garments, also being mobilized, as protestors waived them during protest or displayed them in the streets in both Egypt and Libya to demonstrate the continuity of state aggression against the citizenry. Photographs in Egypt captured men holding spent bullet casings in their palms or showing empty bullet cartridges to prove the presence of gunshots by riot police during protests. Egyptian protestors also commemorated victims of the mass protests by marching with photographs and real or symbolic coffins of victims. People hung portraits of victims at Tahrir Square with signs describing them as “heroes” whose deaths will never be in vain. One of the signs read “We will not forget you, … Mustafa Samir al-Dawa.” Yet another sign featured the claim that the “blood of the martyrs will not be lost” alongside photographs of two brutally killed men. In the Arab Uprisings, the protestors held their leaders accountable for the death of their loved ones, a radical political act in itself to express anger at regime violence. Three Frames Constituting the Reclamation Master Frame Every one of the three single frames we found conveys the notion of protestors reclaiming what they see as their right which a perpetrator violated, deprived them of, or stole from them. Together they constitute a reclamation master frame. In accusing the previous regime of stealing, appropriating, corrupting, or destroying integrity of governance, nation, and human lives, the protestors formulated a master frame. The central concept is that of reclaiming what protestors see as a right that has been violated. In another context, the reclamation master frame could encompass other single frames while the concept of violation of rights and reclaiming them may itself remain applicable. To highlight a master frame as encompassing several single frames aims at helping us understand messages protestors expressed overall in a given set of protests. It does not follow that other themes were never expressed. For instance,

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protestors in Egypt occasionally mobilized bread during protests in a gesture communicating economic insecurity and expressing the poverty that a large proportion of Egyptians have endured across the country. In contrast, this frame was observed once or twice in Tunisia and not at all in the Libyan case. In another example, the third frame was most evident in Egypt and Libya most likely because these two countries had exhibited more or better documented stateorchestrated extrajudicial killings and forced disappearance than Tunisia. Indeed, most protests involve a multitude of single frames, as they are complex, messy, confusing, and often bloody events. Single frames, however, do not necessarily connect to other single frames to amount to a master frame. Only some do. Our analytic objective has been to capture the similarities in framing among the three countries and the overall master frame that encompasses single frames. A detailed discussion of variations among the countries is outside the scope of this article. The reclamation master frame meets the criteria for master frames offered by Snow and Benford (1992) in that it provided the interpretive medium for movements in several sites within a cycle of protest during the Arab Uprisings. It involves several key dimensions of framing identified by frame theorists. All collective action frames must “serve to identify social injustices, to focus and to summarize grievances, to organize disruptive action and to express disruption, and to posit oppositions and solutions” (Beckwith, 2001, p. 301). Snow and Benford (1988) refer to these aspects of framing as diagnostic framing, prognostic framing, and motivational framing. Gamson identifies the important work of collective action frames as defining the identities and agency of an aggrieved group and the injustice to which they are responding (Johnston & Noakes, 2005). While these approaches are largely complementary, we find Snow and Benford’s (1988) vocabulary productive for our case because it points to the dimension of motivating publics who have been enduring injustice for decades to act. The reclamation master frame involves diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing. Diagnostic framing communicates new interpretations of existing reality to potential movement participants. The reclamation master frame communicates that the prevailing regime, and specifically the dictator in charge, has taken something of value from the people and that it is rightfully theirs. Prognostic framing compels participants to identify a solution to the problem or social injustice. The reclamation master frame offers the solution of reclaiming that which is valuable and that people have a right to have by demanding the resignation of the leadership in place. It is precisely the framing of a vast scope of injustices that leads participants to see a solution in demanding resignation of the leadership. Social movement scholarship often finds, however, that diagnostic and prognostic framings are insufficient to compel people to avidly join social movements. In addition, prospective participants must feel motivated to join in some way and feel that there is a reason for their personal contribution. Motivational framing in the reclamation master frame reasserts to participants that they should have ownership of their country and their livelihoods and that the only way to do so is to participate in reclaiming the political system from the existing regime in the hope of creating a new one.

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CONCLUSION Throughout the first months of 2011, people occupied the streets and risked their lives to demand the ousting of authoritarian leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Using a visual analysis of thousands of photographs taken of protests during the uprisings, we find that protestors commonly produced across the three countries what we interpret as a “reclamation” master frame focused on reclaiming what they felt was their right to have: integrity in governance, nation, and dignity of loved ones. First, through depictions of Ben Ali, Mubarak, and Gaddafi as rabid villains, evil thieves, malicious vampires, and corrupt criminals, protestors framed their protests as total rejection of their leaders. Secondly, mobilizing national flags to emphasize their love for their country and their trust in a better future, protestors claimed their intent to redeem the nation from the leaders they despised. Thirdly, they framed their protests as reclaiming the dignity, memory, and identity of relatives and fellow citizens disappeared or killed by the state. We have found the three frames we have identified to be dominant and common in all three countries and to appear repeatedly in the period leading to regime collapse. Demands for jobs and calls for Islam as motivating the protests remain valid explanations for the underlying structural causes of the uprisings. It is remarkable, however, that protestors in all three countries framed their protests in other terms when they channeled their moral outrage during demonstrations. The frames were constructed in terms centered on the overall theme of having been wronged by state leaders and wanting a redefinition of the relationship between ruled and ruler. Since the protests lacked a robust, single, nationally present, organizational leadership even though different mesolevel groups gave guidance, we suggest that framing is likely to have sustained mobilization in the face of bloody repression. It took courage to encounter the security forces in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya day in and day out. Protestors had to share meanings and emotions to keep going and bring these together in a master frame that made enough sense to motivate them over days and weeks. We suggest that the reclamation master frame did that in the climate of repression that prevailed. We see the reclamation master frame as opening avenues for further research. We should expect it to apply to a range of other uprisings, but not all. More than specific to the Arab Uprisings, it is likely to appear in settings where corruption, authoritarian governance, and state violence characterize the political system. In considering the Arab Uprisings, we have identified a combination of the three frames that captured the meanings expressed by protestors and together constitute the reclamation frame common to Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. In other settings, although the particular frames or their combination may vary depending on context, they may still amount to a reclamation master frame. The particular frames that appear in any given context can only be assessed through careful empirical investigation. The key point is that the core dimension of the reclamation frame is a claim against the state or a political regime expressed as a demand that what protestors see as rightfully theirs be either returned or delivered. Reclamation can apply to something of value that protestors feel they had

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at some point but was taken away from them or to something that they see as rightfully theirs but was never delivered by the authoritarian regime. The violation of a right previously enjoyed, or never enjoyed but considered legitimate, thus serves as the basis for a reclamation master frame. The analysis adopted in this article reveals the extent to which protestors used visual representations, including inscriptions on their own bodies and multiple props, to express and frame their demands. The use of visual imagery by demonstrators themselves represented one major strategy of meaning-making during the protests. State authorities or social movement leaders in repressive regimes cannot readily control the proliferation of visuals, which, therefore, offer the potential for observers to witness the expressions and meanings of ordinary movement participants. The visual approach we take here represents the beginning of a number of possible projects on protests beyond the Arab Uprisings, including other instances of uprisings in similarly highly authoritarian contexts where political expression through the written word and in news media is severely repressed and where collective protest comes to the fore at a rhythm and in forms that few expect. Future research may extend the visual methodology we have outlined here to consider photographs circulated by citizen journalists on social media platforms or in videos filmed of the protests. One could analyze videos alongside photographs to provide additional context for a protest, including the audible chants and dialogue that would enrich the narrative. By focusing on the period immediately preceding regime collapse in each country, we do not suggest that the same frames will necessarily surface in the future. It is precisely here that the strength and contributions of this study rest. The empirically based discussion of the frames in a moment in time during the protests offers us insights into the nuances of protestor demands and expressions before they become tainted later in ideological reconstructions of the events. Photographs have allowed us to capture frames as protestors shared them, in a way that other forms of evidence would make difficult. This approach is particularly significant in the study of periods of rapid and unexpected political upheavals such as the Arab Uprisings. The reclamation master frame may be a useful concept to analyze other authoritarian contexts where protestors allege that a powerholder has unrightfully deprived them of something or someone that they feel they should have and risk their lives to demand change. NOTE: Photos are available upon request from the authors.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For helpful suggestions and comments on earlier versions, we are grateful to anonymous reviewers, Ari Adut, Ron Angel, Javier Auyero, Michael Brenner, Sheldon Ekland-Olson, Mary Freifeld, Becky Pettit, Bryan Roberts, Nestor Rodriguez, Michael Young, and members of the Power, History and Society Faculty/Student Network at the University of Texas, Austin. We also wish to thank members of the Comparative and Historical Sociology seminar at the University of Texas, Austin,

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and of the New School for Social Research 2012 Annual Sociology Conference for feedback on early formulations of ideas presented here.

NOTES 1. We chose to focus on the cases of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya for several reasons. All three countries experienced a regime collapse that occurred rapidly after the onset of protests and demonstrations. Other states that ultimately experienced a regime collapse endured popular demonstrations that took place over the course of several more months. In Yemen, for instance, the regime ultimately collapsed but this occurred after over a year after protests began. 2. We include a discussion of props and symbolic behaviors, such as mobilizing a mock coffin or emulating handcuffed wrists, because they constitute examples of enacting framing. Benford and Hunt (1992), drawing on a dramaturgical approach to social movements, examine how social movement actors engage in performances that are essentially motivated by “scripts” constructed and inspired by the ideas implicit in framing: “While framing provides actable ideas, scripting moves these ideas one step closer to enactment. It casts roles, composes dialogue, and directs action” (p. 39). The symbolic gestures and behaviors in the photographs are poignant illustrations of the ideas embedded in the three frames identified in this article. 3. An important avenue for future research might include the analysis of photographs and videos posted to social media platforms by citizen journalists, who might offer alternative interpretations of the protests and demonstrations. This, however, is beyond the scope of this study.

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UNDERSTANDING STRIKES IN THE 21ST CENTURY: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE UNITED STATES Chris Rhomberg and Steven Lopez

ABSTRACT After decades of declining strike rates in the industrialized world, recent years have seen a surge of militant walkouts in the global South, political strikes in Europe, and unconventional strikes in nonunion sectors in the United States. This new diversity of strike action calls for a new theoretical framework. In this paper, we review the historical strengths and limits of traditions of strike theory in the United States. Building on the emerging power resources approach, we propose a model based on a multidimensional view of associational power, power resources, and arenas of conflict in the economy, state, and civil society. We demonstrate the utility of our approach via a case analysis of strikes in the “Fight for $15” campaign in the United States. Keywords: Labor movement; strikes; power resources; social movements; Fight for $15; alt-labor; unions; labor unions

INTRODUCTION What has happened to the strike? Globally, the first decades of the twenty-first century have shown a diverse set of patterns diverging from traditional strike theory. In the United States, large, conventional strikes nearly disappeared: an average of 269 major work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers occurred annually during the 1970s, but by the 2000s that number had fallen to 17, and in 2009 there were no more than 5 (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019). In Europe, the decline of economic strikes has coincided with a rise in mass political strikes aimed at government austerity policies (van Der Velden et al., 2007; Hamann, Power and Protest Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Volume 44, 37–62 Copyright © 2021 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X20210000044005

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Johnston, & Kelly, 2013). At the same time, recent years have seen surges of strike activity in countries like China, without any established institutions of collective bargaining (Zhang, 2015). Even in the United States, some unions have continued to strike and win (Lopez, 2004; Martin & Dixon, 2010). Led by strikes of public school teachers, the 20 major work stoppages that began in 2018 were the highest number since 2007, and the 485,000 workers involved the most since 1986 (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019). And thanks to the ongoing “Fight for $15” campaign, led by short, demonstration strikes of fast food workers, a demand that only recently seemed politically impossible has been swiftly adopted in major American states and metropolitan areas: By mid-2019, seven states and the District of Columbia, representing around 30% of the US workforce, had approved measures to phase in a $15 minimum wage, more than twice the current federal level (Marr, 2019). How are we to understand these events? In the postwar era, the field of industrial relations (IR) viewed strikes as a strategic weapon within institutionalized systems of collective bargaining in advanced capitalist countries (Kochan, Katz, & McKersie, 1994) – but today’s strikes are emerging in regions where those institutional frameworks have never existed, where they are no longer normative, and where they are under attack. Traditional theory seems no longer very relevant, or at least is confined to limited historical and geographic conditions. As Godard (2011, p. 282) observes, “even within the field of IR the topic of strikes seems largely to have been forgotten.” Instead, many labor studies scholars have turned to more general theories of social movements, finding a useful tool kit for understanding opportunity structures, resource mobilization, discursive framing, and other social movement processes (Dixon & Martin, 2012; Fantasia, 1988; Gentile & Tarrow, 2009; Lopez, 2004). But simply borrowing concepts from social movement theory, while providing many insights, does not help us understand what is distinctive about labor mobilization and especially strikes. For that, we need an analysis of the patterns of inequality and conflict in the employment relationship. Fortunately, labor scholars have begun to put labor unrest back at the center, by carefully theorizing the sources of worker’s power as workers and developing new frameworks for understanding strike mobilization in the contemporary period. An emerging approach, dubbed the “power resources approach” or PRA (Schmalz, Ludwig, & Webster, 2018), draws on analyses by Wright (2000), Silver (2003), and Chun (2009) of structural, associational, and symbolic forms of worker power in the employment relationship. This framework, developed from global case studies and internationally comparative research, emphasizes how workers and their organizations can act strategically in the face of changing capitalist employment relations. The PRA is an exciting approach, particularly because it promises to clarify how the resources available to labor movements are embedded in specific social structures. Unfortunately, however, it suffers from several important, interconnected shortcomings. First, it tends to conflate power (the ability to act collectively) and power resources (the sources of leverage) (see Brookes, 2018). Second, scholars studying different cases have come up with proliferating lists of different kinds of power resources, leading to sometimes incommensurate or

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confusing terms of debate. Third, despite identifying new and diverse power resources, the PRA falls short of theorizing the terrain upon which these resources are deployed. Researchers agree that context is important, whether historical, geographic, institutional, or otherwise, but we still lack a sufficient framework to identify and compare different contexts. Finally, the PRA does not have a coherent account of the relationships among different types of power resources. Some scholars highlight those resources emergent in a given case, while others associate particular forms with specific historical periods, industries, or struggles, without theorizing how multiple power resources are always at play and interact with each other. In this article, we build on the PRA to address each of these shortcomings. First, we make a fundamental distinction between the ability of workers to act collectively (associational power and its organizational forms) and power resources, which we define as sources of leverage rather than forms of power in their own right. Second, our approach reduces the proliferating taxonomies of power resources to three key types: structural, legal, and discursive, which we believe can contain the more nuanced or intermediate definitions. We conceive of associational power as activating structural, legal, and discursive resources within and across three analytic dimensions or arenas: structural position from the economy, law from the state, and discursive power from civil society. Unlike some writers, we view associational power as the central fulcrum of worker power, the key to activating various power resources spanning the economy, state, and civil society. Finally, rather than locating different power resources in different periods, industries, or struggles, we insist that associational power and all three forms and arenas of power resources are implicated in every episode or wave of labor unrest. Understanding the conjuncture of associational power and structural, legal, and discursive resources is both necessary and sufficient (i.e., contains other intermediate types of resources) for understanding concrete cases. In what follows, we begin by addressing the historical context of our own theoretical traditions in the United States. We trace the development from traditional IR or economic theory to the political critique of institutionalization and the turn from labor relations to social movement theory. We then take up the PRA approach and offer our critical reconstruction of it. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of our approach by applying it to the current case of American fast food workers and the “Fight for $15.”

STRIKES IN CONTEXT: THEORETICAL TRADITIONS Strikes vary across countries and national contexts, and likewise strike theories have reflected distinct conditions of historical development in the employment relationship and its governing institutions (van Der Velden et al., 2007). In late nineteenth century US, strikes often centered on broad economic grievances (e.g., demands for an eight-hour working day) or basic rights of unions to be recognized by employers. With few established procedures for collective bargaining, large strikes were seen by elites as a fundamental threat to public order and the

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structure of society (Brecher, 1997; Montgomery, 1980). This reaction gave rise to a legal regime of “judicial repression” (Hattam, 1992; Dubofksy, 1994). For decades, federal courts repeatedly struck down workers’ rights to organize and act collectively as violations of property rights and combinations in restraint of trade. Meanwhile, the state had little administrative capacity to regulate labor relations, and all too often employers and authorities responded to protest with armed guards, police, or troops. As Lipold and Isaac (2009, pp. 178, 200) report, in the United States between 1877 and 1947, more than 1,000 strike-related deaths were recorded across a dozen industries, and “the vast majority of strike deaths were suffered by strikers (or their sympathizers) and the overwhelming majority of death was produced by state agents.” In the industrializing countries of Europe, nascent workers’ unions forged alliances with social democratic or labor parties around demands for citizenship rights, bringing working-class mobilization into electoral politics and targeting the central state (Hyman, 2001; Shorter & Tilly, 1974). In the United States, however, federal government hostility led to the doctrine of “voluntarist” economic trade unionism (Forbath, 1991). In the vast, decentralized, and fractured American polity, organizers focused on the workplace as the site of greatest potential leverage and power. The unions that most successfully adopted this approach (and hence survived) were often those that possessed critical skills in production, like the craft unions of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Such unions could strike against a limited number of specific employers and extract material concessions without threatening the entire social order and attracting the hostility of the state (Edwards, 1981, pp. 234–237). Voluntarism did not prevent conflict from spilling over into civil society, and bitter struggles persisted into the twentieth century. For some unions, mobilization included outreach to workers through local (often immigrant) community networks. Maintaining solidarity during strikes was often a contest that implicated neighbors, friends, and family, and, in urban consumer sectors (like breweries and bakeries), protests included boycotts that relied on popular support. Yet even the more radical syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World shared the voluntarist focus on exercising power through the workplace, independent of state intervention (Kimeldorf, 1999). Strike Theory I: The Economic Model The focus on the workplace led to the rise of an alternative view of strikes in the early twentieth century. For reformers such as John R. Commons, William Leiserson, and others who founded the discipline of IR in America and whose ideas underpinned the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), no fundamental conflict of interest existed between labor and capital. Rather, labor strife signaled an unnecessary breakdown in relations between employers and workers, caused not by capitalism but rather industrial dictatorship (Vinel, 2013). Replacing industrial dictatorship with democratic institutions capable of managing conflict would provide a rule-based framework that would allow disputes to be settled without resort to violence.

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The New Deal reformers, therefore, sought to establish a “constitutional government in industry” that would stabilize relations between employers and workers to allow for greater cooperation and harmonization of their interests (Vinel, 2013, p. 71; see also Lichtenstein & Harris, 1996). Through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB, the administrative agency established under the NLRA), the state set rules for negotiations but did not intervene to ensure settlements. To maintain the integrity of the bargaining relationship, the right to strike was explicitly protected in the language of the NLRA and affirmed by the Supreme Court. Yet a tension remained between the Act’s goals to protect workers’ rights and equalize their bargaining power with employers and its legislative justification of protecting the flow of commerce and reducing industrial strife (White, 2016). Like voluntarism before it, state regulation did not eliminate conflict. American employers continued to resist unions in the workplace, and the number of strikes per million employees in the United States was actually higher during the postwar decades than during the 1920s or ‘30s (Edwards, 1981, p. 13). Nevertheless, the procedural infrastructure established under the NLRA channeled the resolution of labor disputes away from politics and from other actors in the community. As labor relations solidified around contractual negotiations between unions and individual employers, strikes were no longer seen as catastrophic breakdowns of social order. Rather, the institutional context was largely taken for granted as postwar strike theory focused on the economics of the bargaining relationship. Economic theories assumed a market transaction in which labor and management each possessed organizational security and calculated the costs and benefits of the decision to strike. Work stoppages imposed pain on both sides, as employers lost production and profits and workers lost wages and subsistence (Reder & Neumann, 1980). Ideally, through negotiation each side could estimate the other’s room for concessions and reach agreement without enduring the actual costs of a strike. Strikes were seen as an accident or mistake, reflecting a failure in bargaining due to imperfect information or behavioral psychology (Hicks, 1963). At the macrolevel, observers also noted the strong correlation of strike frequency with short-term fluctuations in the business cycle; that is, strikes increased in a growing economy when labor markets were tight and wages lagged behind inflation (Ashenfelter & Johnson, 1969). In the workplace, the postwar system of collective bargaining delivered economic gains to unionized workers and directly contributed to the reduction of income inequality in the United States (Western & Rosenfeld, 2011). At the same time, the theoretical assumptions of organizational security and cost-benefit calculation relied on a historically contingent formation of strong institutions governing relations between business and labor. Indeed, the economic model of strikes was strongest in the United States in the post–World War II period, after the implementation of the NLRA (Snyder, 1975, p. 265; Rubin, 1986). The theory had less to say about nonunionized workers excluded from institutional protections, however, and eventually it lost much of its explanatory power once those protections began to break down (Kaufman, 1992).

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Strike Theory II: The Institutionalist Critique In the wake of the social movements of the 1960s, new left critics began to question the orientation of traditional strike theory. Instead of celebrating the peaceful resolution of labor disputes, they argued that institutionalization had led to the co-optation of unions and a “taming” of the strike (Aronowitz, 1973; Serrin, 1973). This was followed in social science by a turn to a more political/ organizational perspective that focused on how law and political institutions shape workers’ capacity to mobilize (Shorter & Tilly, 1974; Snyder, 1975). Under the postwar labor management “accord” strikes became highly regulated, with profound effects on their form and content. For example, the 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments to the NLRA outlawed strikes for recognition as well as secondary boycotts and picketing, while the courts enjoined most “wildcat” strikes during the life of the contract (McCammon, 1990). Employers adamantly resisted union efforts to bargain over the managerial control of the firm, and the law did not protect workers who struck for such demands (Kochan et al., 1994). As a result of these limits, most walkouts took the form of the “contract strike,” limited mainly to issues of compensation and work rules and arising at moments of contract renewal. The postwar accord represented an historic shift in the US government policy from repression to what McCammon (1993) called a legal regime of “integrative prevention.” Ironically, however, the institutionalist critique emerged just as a wave of deindustrialization and job loss undercut union membership and as the regime itself was about to collapse. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired the striking federal air traffic controllers and busted their union, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). The outcome of the PATCO strike announced a critical change in the American government’s attitude to workers’ rights (McCartin, 2013). As implemented by Reagan’s appointees to the NLRB and reinforced by the federal courts, it marked the rise of a new anti-union legal regime in the federal government and the return of a form of “judicial repression” of workers’ rights to act collectively (Rhomberg, 2012). In that context, the law no longer steered the actors toward peaceful, negotiated settlements within institutional channels. Rather, the meaning of the strike shifted from an economic tactic and protected legal right to a more high-risk confrontation over the continued existence of the collective bargaining relationship. Many strikes became in effect “recognition” strikes, in which the stakes were not only the economic issues on the table but whether employers were willing to negotiate with unions at all. Thus, as with the economic model of strikes, the institutionalist critique of the postwar system became less relevant as the regime of labor relations itself was transformed. Post-strike Theory: Social Movement Analysis By the end of the twentieth century, private sector union membership in the United States had fallen below 10% of employed workers (Hirsch & Macpherson, 2019). Meanwhile, alternative forms of mobilization began to appear among groups of marginalized workers previously unorganized by unions or denied

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collective bargaining rights under the law, like immigrant (including undocumented) workers, day laborers, domestic workers, and others in a range of independent, informal, or precarious jobs (Clawson, 2003; Fine, 2006). Such efforts often necessarily organized away from the workplace, as in nonprofit worker centers based in ethnic communities, coalitions of unions with churches or minority and women’s groups, and corporate campaigns aimed at the consuming public. Forgoing traditional strike tactics, these “alt.labor” strategies often went outside the framework of the NLRA though they did not ignore the law as a whole. Instead, campaigns often targeted local and state governments, seeking court enforcement of claims for back pay for wage and hour violations or passage of “living wage” laws and other state legislative or regulatory reforms (Milkman & Ott, 2014). As interest in strikes and labor disputes fell among economists and legal scholars (Estlund, 2006), labor movement studies enjoyed a rebirth in sociology. Departing from both the economic and institutionalist paradigms, researchers drew increasingly from social movement theory developed outside the traditional labor relations field. Such concepts have greatly influenced sociological research on strikes. Scholars have drawn on the resource mobilization perspective to study the dilemmas and conditions under which trade unions seek to mobilize external allies as resources during strikes (e.g., Dixon & Martin, 2012; Lopez, 2004; Mirola, 2003). Others have examined the role of internal trade union resources (Dixon, Roscigno, & Hodson, 2004; Manky, 2018). Ganz (2009) takes this further by developing the concept of strategic capacity, i.e., the characteristics of social movement organizations (SMOs) conducive to the production of innovative and creative action. Processes of social movement framing during strikes have been examined in numerous studies (Schmitt 1993; Conell & Conn, 1995; Martin, 2003; Coley, 2015; Danaher & Dixon, 2017; Levine, Cobb, & Roussin 2017). These studies have treated strikes as rich case studies for describing how social movement actors seek to mobilize meaning in intentional ways. Related to this is a stream of research focusing on how strikes both galvanize and rely on processes of collective identity (Fantasia, 1988). Researchers have traced processes of collective identity formation by investigating strikes as “protest waves” in themselves (e.g., Conell & Conn, 1995; Roscigno & Danaher, 2004), as well as processes of intermovement influence through which other social movements affect the propensity of workers to engage in strikes (Isaac & Christiansen, 2002). Finally, scholars have investigated the role of the political context on labor militancy, showing that, like other movements, strikes as episodes of collective action can emerge as responses to both opportunities and threats (Stillerman, 2003; Martin & Dixon, 2010; Elfstrom & Kuruvilla, 2014; Barrie & Ketchley, 2018). Taken together, this body of research adds to our understanding of American workers’ struggles, allowing a closer analysis of the relations among labor, community, and other cultural movements across civil society as a whole. Yet the analysis of strikes sits uneasily within the social movement paradigm, as is sometimes recognized by movement scholars themselves. Tarrow (2011, p. 217), for example, acknowledges that the conditions affecting workers’ strikes are

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different than in other social movements, leading to different patterns of outcomes. In their comprehensive study of American collective protest events from 1960 to 1986, Soule and Earl (2005, p. 362n8) deliberately excluded strikes and work stoppages “because the dynamics of institutionalization in labor likely differ from the rest of the protest sector given the legal institutionalization of collective bargaining and laws governing strikes.” This recognition that labor mobilization may have distinctive dynamics points to an important conundrum in social movement theory highlighted by Walder (2009): while movement-specific differences in social and political structures are necessary for understanding particular movements and episodes of protest, such differences appear as accidental, untheorized background elements in a social movement paradigm focused on general “processes of mobilization.” But since processes of mobilization are always embedded in specific social and political structures, understanding those processes requires theorizing the social and political structures that comprise movement context. To their credit, scholars of social movements have begun to confront the question of context. Tilly (1998, pp. 86–91) saw exploitation as a basic driver of categorical inequality between those who control and profit from labordemanding resources and those excluded from the full value of their labor on those resources. For Tilly, exploitation “plays a part in almost all processes that generate durable inequality,” while its inherent volatility leads to conflict, bargaining, and struggle among the actors involved. From the resource mobilization perspective, Edwards, McCarthy, and Mataic (2018, p. 88), for example, urge scholars to attend to “durable patterns of inequality in the social, economic, and spatial distribution of resources” and invite attention to the way that “specific SMOs, coalitions, issue campaigns, or event organizers mobilize resources” (Edwards et al., 2018, p. 89). In the case of strikes, this would mean theorizing not only the institutionalization of organized labor but also the employment relationship that gives labor mobilization its unique context. The employment relationship – i.e., the structure of the production process and the labor market and the forms of state regulation that govern them – distinguishes workers’ struggles as struggles in and about work. This context, and the power relations within it, affects the availability of resources and their relationship to one another. Fortunately, we do not have to start this analysis from scratch: labor researchers have recently developed a model that explicitly theorizes these relations, in what has come to be called the PRA.

THE POWER RESOURCES APPROACH The idea that wage workers have the potential collective power to disrupt production by withholding their labor can be traced back as far as Adam Smith and perhaps beyond. More recently, Perrone et al. (1984) proposed the concept of workers’ positional power – i.e., the extent to which labor has the power to disrupt downstream production by virtue of its strategic location within the division of

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labor. This concept, developed further by Wallace, Griffin, and Rubin (1989), was influential in Wright’s (2000) distinction between workers’ associational and structural power. For Wright, associational power describes the various forms of power that result from the formation of collective organizations of workers [including] unions and parties but [also] a variety of other forms, such as works councils or forms of institutional representation of workers on boards of directors in schemes of codetermination, or even, in certain circumstances, community organizations (2000, p. 962).

Structural power consists in “the power of workers as individuals that results directly from tight labor markets or from the strategic location of a particular group of workers within a key industrial sector” (2000) Wright then focuses on associational power as a means for achieving institutional class compromises that include the possibility of durable positive-sum outcomes as in social democratic or neocorporatist regimes like postwar Sweden and Germany. Silver (2003), on the other hand, takes Wright’s notion of structural power – especially what she calls workplace bargaining power arising from strategic locations within a production process, such as an assembly line or supply chain – and makes it central to her analysis of global labor unrest in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Silver grounds workers’ power in the development of the capitalist economy across historic waves of industrialization. She shows how employers responded to militancy with both concessions and a range of temporary “fixes,” including spatial fixes to relocate production away from areas of labor strength; technological fixes aimed at controlling the shop floor; and boundary-drawing fixes to limit the scope of concessions along lines defined by gender, race, or geography. Such tactics postponed but did not resolve capital’s confrontations with labor, as every new site of major industrial development led to new waves of labor unrest and the formation of powerful new working classes demanding change. Silver’s theory successfully predicted that rapid industrialization in China, for example, would lead to large-scale labor unrest – as it soon did in the historic strike wave there beginning in 2010 (Zhang, 2015). Silver acknowledged that most of her analysis focused on structural rather than cultural relationships (2003, p. 33). Chun (2009) filled this gap by adding symbolic power as a distinct, third type of worker power. Chun argued that lowwage, marginalized immigrant, minority, and women workers are often excluded from social and legal protections and face a prior struggle for recognition of the legitimate standing of their labor and rights as workers. Such workers can mobilize using symbolic power, not within formal institutional channels but through the moral order of the public sphere. This takes the form of “classification struggles” aimed at “redefining what it means to be a ‘worker’ and an ‘employer’ in the eyes of the public” rather than in the workplace or the state. Workers exert symbolic leverage by organizing “public dramas” that transform workplace disputes into “moral crises” for the larger community, pressuring employers to respond to public opinion (2009, pp. 17–18). A paradigmatic illustration of symbolic power in the United States is the Justice for Janitors (JfJ) strategy developed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Rather than organizing for NLRB elections at each

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janitorial subcontractor, the JfJ strategy targeted the building owners or corporations who were the prime contractors for the cleaning firms. Organizers focused on the urban community, building solidarity among often immigrant workers and mobilizing public support through media-oriented protests designed to pressure owners to provide the resources for a standard agreement for all contractors (Rolf, 2016; Rosenblum, 2017). Together, Wright, Silver, and Chun identified three types of workers’ power in the employment relationship: structural, associational, and symbolic. Clearly, there is much conceptual congruence here with elements of social movement theory, e.g., structural opportunities and threats, organizational resources and repertoires, and symbolic framing and collective identity. The advantage of the PRA, however, is its firm grounding in the interdependencies of the employment relationship, the analysis of capitalist development, and workers’ mobilization as workers. As the PRA has gained salience, others have continued to expand on the framework and refine the typology of workers’ power. Thus, Zhang (2015) finds “legitimacy leverage” in the workplace as a kind of ideological power Chinese auto workers use to extract concessions from employers and the government. Without independent unions or conventional collective bargaining rights, workers use the threat of disruption to pressure the Chinese Communist Party concerned with stability and political legitimacy, using the Party’s own rhetoric to make it live up to its official ideology on behalf of workers. Lambert, Webster, and Bezuidenhout (2012) identify logistical power as an extension of structural leverage, based on the disruption of supply chains across wider transportation and distribution networks, while Stillerman (2017) adds urban spatial patterns and ability to shift scale from local to national arenas. Brookes (2013) distinguishes two more forms in institutional and coalitional power. Institutional power describes the “capacity of workers to influence the behavior of an employer by invoking the formal or informal rules that structure their relationship and interactions” (p. 188). These rules include laws and established practices that govern workers’ rights, employment conditions, collective bargaining, welfare policies, and institutions for enforcement of the same. In turn, coalitional power is the “capacity of workers to expand the scope of conflict by involving other, nonlabor actors willing and able to influence an employer’s behavior” (p. 192). Workers draw on social ties, mutual values and interests, and shared identities to reach out for allies among neighbors, community leaders, religious groups, politicians, consumers, and other actors from local partners to transnational NGOs. Others have deepened the analysis of associational power. GumbrellMcCormick and Hyman (2013, pp. 30–31) disaggregate trade unions’ associational power into categories of organizational participation, moral discursive power, and strategic innovation. In her study of Walmart workers in Chile, Bank Munoz (2017) finds determinants of effective associational power in strategic capacity, internal democracy, militancy, and autonomy from political parties. These concepts give us further tools for analysis. Yet, as Schulze-Cleven (2017, p. 407) observes, the problem now is perhaps “too many theorized types of power

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resources to guide cross-case comparisons [or] speak to the complex causal processes that give rise to each theorized form of influence.” One recent attempt at synthesis comes from Schmalz et al. (2018), who propose a comprehensive framework with four types of power resources (Fig. 1). Schmalz et al. keep the existing definition of structural power, but limit associational power to the internal features of workers’ associations, including membership size/participation/cohesion and organizational infrastructure and efficiency. They identify institutional power as an independent form, but lump symbolic and coalitional power together as “societal power.” They present their schema as follows:

Fig. 1.

Trade Union Power Resources. Source: Schmalz et al. (2018).

THE POWER RESOURCES APPROACH: A RECONSTRUCTION We are deeply indebted to Schmalz et al.‘s efforts to achieve consensus within the PRA and move the debate forward. They highlight the relational dynamic between employers and workers, and they rightly emphasize the importance of context in understanding the alignment of power in any particular case. We seek to build on their approach, but with several critical revisions. In particular, we believe the PRA (1) continues to conflate power and power resources; (2) misunderstands the basic types of power resources; (3) lacks a clear conception of the arenas where these resources are deployed; and (4) does not theorize the conjunctural relationship among power and power resources. Brookes (2018, p. 256) suggests that associational power is “most usefully conceptualized as the capacity of workers to mobilize themselves and to act

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collectively” in the face of opposition. This capacity, we suggest, includes, but is not limited to, the organizational resources that Schmalz et al. identify. Associational power, shaped by societal conditions, both draws on and creates organizational resources: even a spontaneous wildcat walkout relies on and creates social networks of solidarity constituting the fleeting organizational form of that instance of associational power (Fantasia, 1988). Associational power, then, is power in action, comprising both mobilization and its organizational forms. As power in action, however, associational power is distinguished from power resources, which are better understood as sources of leverage that remain only potential until workers are able to mobilize them, e.g., to carry out a strike or stage a public drama (see Bank Munoz, 2017, p. 11–12). We think these power resources can be condensed into three basic types: structural power resources (e.g., strategic locations in production processes or labor markets); legal resources (such as laws protecting or restricting worker rights); and discursive resources (such as powerful symbols, narratives, and identities). Each of these three power resources is analytically distinct and irreducible to the others, each represents an important source of potential leverage for collective action, and together we think they are robust enough to contain further distinctions. For example, if institutional power resources are ultimately backed by their fixation in law, in effect they are associational power applied within the context of the state. Likewise, coalitional power resources can be seen as associational power applied to the activation of networks and solidarity from actors in civil society (Schmalz et al. 2018, pp. 121–122). Third, Schmalz et al. stress the importance of context but do not provide a sufficient framework to identify its parameters, show where power is deployed, or compare contexts across cases. So, for example, institutional power resources can vary greatly across nation states, including the industrialized democracies of North America, Western Europe, and Asia Pacific, and developing countries throughout the world (Brookes, 2013, p. 192). Following Wright (2000), Schmalz et al. distinguish levels of analysis including the workplace, industrial sector, and “society” but do not explain the causal terrain that shapes conditions at these levels or others. As a result, their schema offers a menu of different power resources for action, but not a map for discerning actual power relations in a concrete case. To provide that map, we propose a simple model that distinguishes the analytic dimensions of the economy, the state, and civil society as arenas where movements and their opponents exercise power (Hyman, 2001; Carley, Jenkins, & Smith, 2001; see Fig. 2). Theorizing the terrain of conflict in this way allows us to examine not only the associational power and power resources available to workers but also the limits on that power arising from the legacies of prior conflicts in each arena (Lopez, 2004). This brings us to our fourth and final point of critique and reconstruction. Every real event of mobilization is shaped by the conjuncture of power resources available and deployed across the three arenas. Each arena features a critical power resource: structural leverage in the economy, law in the state, and discourse in civil society, but associational power spans all three arenas and encompasses both internal organizational and external coalitional power resources. The three arenas are analytical dimensions and are not empirically

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Fig. 2.

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Associational Power and Power Resources in Context.

isolated from each other: governments regulate the economy including the labor market and the workplace, organizations draw upon legal rights and popular frames in the community, and workers bring their values and group identities with them on the job and in the political sphere. Tracing the developmental paths in the economy, the state, and civil society reveals how those junctures come together and change over time and across different cases. We turn now to an elaboration of our model. First, the economy includes the paths of capitalist development that constitute the interdependence between employers and workers in the employment relationship (Murray & Schwartz, 2019). The availability of structural power resources is affected by factors like integration into the global economy, location in commodity chains or exposure to competition or cyclical fluctuation, dependence on skill versus technological displacement, the concentration or dispersal of workers in production, levels of unemployment and informalization, and access or exclusion in the labor market. In the United States, the financialization of the economy has led to the “hollowing out” of the corporation, as firms outsource employment, hire parttime or temporary employees or independent contractors, and adopt other practices of the “fissured” workplace (Weil, 2014). In the fast food industry, the system of franchise ownership links large “brand” corporations with retail outlets operated by franchisees. The brand corporations effectively control the labor process but deny responsibility for wages or compliance with labor laws, while the franchisees face intense pressure to cut costs. Local outlets serve mass

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consumer markets and employ women, minority, and immigrant workers for low-wage jobs, often with precarious conditions including involuntary part-time hours, irregular scheduling, and wage theft (Allegretto et al., 2013). Second, in the arena of the state, governments vary in their economic policies and regulation of employment and can range from violent repression to institutional incorporation of the labor movement. The state also governs access to social protections and benefits that help workers sustain their livelihoods against the market, and its internal organization (e.g., centralization vs. dispersal to regional authority, relative openness vs. closure to popular pressure) affects its capacities for regulation and reform. Schmalz et al. (2018, p. 121) stress that institutional incorporation is a two-edged sword for labor movements, not only protecting workers’ rights but also restricting or channeling their action. The institutional settlements in each country reflect the legacies of past struggles and negotiations, but Schmalz et al. also note the relative durability of such settlements across economic cycles and political changes. While institutional power resources can include formal and informal arrangements, ultimately the critical power resource is law and its ability to fix or solidify relations through government authority, the protection and legitimation of rights, and adjudication of contracts (Cohen, 1999). Private sector unions in the United States are governed under the NLRA, which defines workers’ rights to organize, bargain collectively, and strike. Decades of case decisions by the federal courts and the NLRB have now significantly undermined the statute, leading to a return of a form of judicial repression of unions (Rhomberg, 2012). Since the 1980s, an entire industry of anti-union lawyers, consultants, and security firms has arisen, and employers unlawfully fire workers for union activity in as many as one out of every three union election campaigns (Bronfenbrenner, 2009; Logan, 2008). Other forms of worker protection likewise have eroded. The federally mandated minimum wage is set by Congress but has no automatic adjustment for inflation; its current rate of $7.25 per hour is below the federal poverty line for a full-time worker with a family of two (Cooper, 2017). The growing number of independent contractors, including those in the “gig” economy, is not covered by federal wage and overtime standards, unemployment insurance, social security, or rights to unionize under the law (Weil, 2014). Third, the idea of civil society has been defined in various ways, but here we mean simply those social relations not reducible to either the economy or the state. Those include formal voluntary associations as well as more informal social ties, networks of family and friends, and everyday forms of community. Relations in civil society support the emergence of social spaces where people learn about and discuss common concerns and develop norms, identities, and repertoires of action independently of the market and the state (Fraser, 1992; Tarrow, 2011 [1994]). The concept of civil society is by no means limited to the institutions of Western liberal democracies, nor is it inherently emancipatory (Cohen, 1999). It remains, however, a “multiorganizational field” whose diverse streams of discourse create the possibility for innovative or oppositional cultures and action. Even in societies where the public sphere is repressed or dominated by the

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government, those conditions affect how people form collective identities and solidarity (Fernandez & McAdam, 1988; Pang, 2019). Civil society in the United States is a deeply fragmented yet dynamic terrain, with contradictory and cross-cutting paths of race, gender, class, citizenship, and other enduring categories of inequality and group formation (Hunter, 2013; Naples, 1998; Rhomberg, 2004). Current workers’ movements react to and draw from labor history and from the cultural and organizational legacies of the civil rights, feminist, community organizing, and immigrant movements, among others (Ganz, 2009; Kurtz, 2002; Milkman, 2000). Together, these form a distinct civic ecology or field of strategic action among groups (Fligstein & McAdam, 2011; Orr, 2007). Collective actors rarely depend on only one form of power resources in isolation; the conjuncture of associational power and power resources across the three arenas is a basic feature of all cases of mobilization (Juravich, 2018). Indeed, strong structural power resources are typically the exception; most workers in most sectors lack significant structural power most of the time. This is especially true for low-wage service employees, precisely the groups that have figured most prominently in recent organizing in the American labor movement. To further illustrate our model, we apply it here to the seemingly anomalous recent wave of strikes by fast food workers in the United States. We look to the power resources available in each arena, their conjuncture, and how they have been used in the “Fight for $15” campaign.

CURRENT STRIKES IN THE UNITED STATES: THE CASE OF FAST FOOD The US fast food industry employed at least 2.5 million frontline, nonmanagerial workers in 2012, the year the Fight for $15 movement began in earnest. Average hourly wages were under $9 or less than $19,000 per year at full time, and most workers did not get full-time hours. Contrary to stereotypes, most workers were not teenagers: 68% were single or married adults who were not in school, and 26% were raising children. Nearly three-quarters (73%) were women, 23% were African American, 20% Latino, and 15% born outside the United States (Allegretto et al., 2013; Ruetschlin, 2014; Schmitt & Jones, 2013). These workers have few structural power resources: jobs are low-skill, workers are easily replaced, and the production process is discrete and scattered among thousands of franchisee employers. The average number of employees per establishment is 17, and even a complete shutdown of any one site would not necessarily affect other sites (Weil, 2014, p. 129). When the SEIU began reaching out to fast food workers in 2011, it could not depend on the economic resources of a traditional strike, much less the porous legal protections of the federal government. Rather, the union turned first to the arena of civil society. Drawing from its JfJ repertoire, the union worked through long-standing partnerships with community groups like New York Communities for Change in New York City and Action Now in Chicago (Gupta, 2013.) On November 29,

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2012, around 200 workers from some 40 fast food outlets in New York City engaged in a one-day walkout. In the largest work stoppage in the industry to that time, strikers and supporters gathered in front of a McDonald’s in midtown Manhattan and raised core demands of a $15 hourly wage and the right to form a union without intimidation (Eidelson, 2012). The New York City strike attracted wide attention and quickly sparked a larger movement, with coordinated strike actions across multiple cities. By the end of 2016, the campaign had mobilized at least a dozen such national one-day strikes, with participation from tens of thousands of workers and supporters and solidarity actions in some 30 other countries (Greenhouse, 2016). The fast food walkouts show how the employment relationship shapes both the conflict and the power resources available to the movement. Even with tens of thousands of participants, the strikers have comprised only a tiny fraction of the total number of fast food employees nationally. The one-day demonstrations have rarely shut down the restaurants, causing little disruption for most consumers and imposing almost no direct economic costs on the brand corporations. Rather, the walkouts have been important for their use of discursive power resources, internally and externally. Internally, the strikes reinforced solidarity among the workers, allowing them to overcome their fears and experience the power of collective action. With a heavily minority and female workforce, organizers explicitly invoked the cultural legacy of the African American civil rights and women’s rights movements (Harris, 2013). Externally, the walkouts captured public attention in a way that traditional media campaigns and even boycotts and demonstrations alone could not achieve. The image of workers risking their jobs for dignity in a sector that was ubiquitous to consumers and the popular epitome of low-wage work possessed a powerful frame resonance in the public sphere. Along with the 2011 Occupy protests and the similar walkouts at Walmart, the fast food strikes dramatized the problems of low wages and income inequality and transformed mainstream civic and political discourse. The problem remained, however, how to convert the discursive resources into workplace leverage and institutional change. Here, SEIU has relied on two strategies that illustrate the conjuncture of power resources and their deployment across arenas: First, it has escalated pressure on the brand corporations to push for improved standards and a path toward union negotiations, and second, it has used legislative action around local minimum wage laws to raise incomes for workers (Eidelson, 2013). In short, the campaign has followed a path from civil society through the state in order to achieve change in the economy. Following the JfJ model, organizers avoided seeking NLRB elections at the franchisee outlets, instead targeting public protests at the brands and especially industry leader McDonald’s (Resnikoff, 2014). At the same time, the campaign began efforts to alter the power resources within the state, directly contesting the legal construction of the fissured workplace and the anti-union labor law regime. In a challenge to precedent, it filed charges with the NLRB naming McDonald’s as a “joint employer” with its franchisees liable for unlawful retaliation against strikers. The strategy aimed to open the way to legal recognition in the

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workplace, and in July 2014, the NLRB General Counsel under President Barack Obama agreed and authorized complaints against the corporation and its outlets (Rhomberg, 2018). The campaign received a setback, however, with the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president. Trump’s appointees on the NLRB have systematically reversed prolabor decisions from the Obama years, including the case against McDonald’s (McNicholas, Poydock, & Rhinehart, 2019; Selyukh, 2019). By contrast, the movement’s greatest economic gains have come through a second prong of political action, around local and state minimum wage laws. In April 2012, the regional SEIU coalition Working Washington began organizing subcontracted immigrant, minority, and white workers in and around the SeattleTacoma International Airport in SeaTac, Washington, a small, working-class suburb of Seattle. When the employers refused to recognize them, the campaign turned to a municipal ballot initiative to mandate a $15 wage at the airport and related area businesses. After a vigorous grassroots effort, SeaTac voters passed the referendum in November 2013 by just over 1% (Rolf, 2016; Rosenblum, 2017). The SeaTac initiative covered only a small number of employees, but together with the fast food strikes it had a powerful impact on the concurrent city elections in Seattle, contributing to the election of Mayor Ed Murray and socialist Councilor Kshame Sawant. Once in office, Murray convened a committee of business, labor, and community leaders co-chaired by David Rolf, head of the 40,000-member SEIU Healthcare 775NW, while Sawant began organizing to put an alternative initiative on the November 2014 ballot. The mayor’s committee negotiated an agreement to phase in $15 over a 3–7-year period, and on May 29, 2014, the city council voted unanimously for the proposal. Nearly one year after it witnessed its first local fast food strikes, Seattle became the first major American city to approve a $15 minimum wage (Rosenblum, 2017). Other cities soon followed, but along paths shaped by their own political environments and civic ecology. In Los Angeles, the movement drew from other, non–SEIU-led labor and community actors, including the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) and the politically powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor (LACFL). On May 19, 2015, Los Angeles city councilors voted 14-1 to raise the minimum wage in the city from $9 to $15 by 2020. In San Francisco, a coalition led by public employees union SEIU Local 1021 pressured the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to authorize a ballot initiative to raise the minimum to $15, and Proposition J won in November 2014 with 77% of the vote. Internal rivalries within SEIU, however, threatened to disrupt the effort to take the campaign statewide. By March 2016, however, the various groups reached a deal with state lawmakers, and in April, Democratic Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation raising the state minimum to $15 by 2022 (Rhomberg, 2018). New York State displayed yet another path to reform. Cities there do not have authority to set their own minimum wage, but the governor can order a special board to review wages in an industry and implement changes without approval by the legislature. Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo initially opposed the $15 wage backed by the powerful SEIU building service Local 32BJ and

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the New York Working Families Party, but in May 2015, he convened a wage board that recommended an increase for 180,000 employees of fast food chain restaurants. The following April, Cuomo negotiated a budget deal with state legislators to phase in gradually a $15 wage in all industries by 2022 (Rhomberg, 2018). As of the end of 2019, five more states had passed $15 minimums including Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, as well as the District of Columbia (Marr, 2019). The fast food strikes galvanized popular momentum for a $15 wage and helped spark an ongoing wave of reform. Once mobilization extended from an economic focus on the corporations to political campaigns for a higher wage, however, the movement entered a different arena with a different set of actors, rules, resources, and strategies. The minimum wage campaigns have so far succeeded in liberal big cities or states with democratic governors and legislative support and have relied on powerful allies within SEIU and other established unions. In other regions, the movement faces strong countermobilization from business interests particularly under Republican-dominated state governments. At least 25 states have passed laws preempting cities from adopting higher minimum wages, including measures in Alabama, Missouri, and Iowa to take away increases already passed by cities and counties in their states (Chang, 2017; National Employment Law Project, 2017). The experience of the Fight for $15 shows the dynamic character of associational power and its ability to discover, adapt to, or realign the power resources available in the economy, state, and civil society. In less than a decade, the campaign has won extraordinary gains that few observers anticipated at the outset. The strategy also has its limits, however, and perhaps its greatest challenge is building sustainable organization in the workplace. By the end of 2016, SEIU had spent at least $40 million dollars on the Fight for $15, including $10 million in 2016 alone (Greenhouse, 2015; Lewis, 2017). Without union recognition and contracts with employers, however, the effort has not yet produced new duespaying union members in fast food. SEIU has been criticized for using the protest strikes for media exposure rather than job-based worker organization, putting the movement on a terrain in which employers have substantial discursive resources of their own: In 2013 alone, McDonald’s spent nearly $1 billion on advertising (Hume, 2014; Rosenblum, 2017). The struggle to alter labor law has been at least temporarily stymied under the Trump administration, and the 1.9-million member SEIU itself faces the loss of financial resources from the Supreme Court’s 2018 Janus decision allowing public sector workers to avoid paying for union representation (Elejalde-Ruiz, 2018). For its part, SEIU has broadened the base of the Fight for $15, bringing in its campaigns with health aides, airport workers, and others, and it has strengthened ties with social movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo (Haines Whack, 2017). Workers at McDonald’s in 10 cities struck on September 18, 2018 to protest the company’s failure to address sexual harassment of its employees, and the campaign has partnered with the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund to support charges filed by dozens of workers with the federal Equal Employment

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Opportunity Commission, naming both McDonald’s and its franchisees in cities across the country (CBS News, 2018; Corbett, 2018). Finally, in September 2019, the powerful, 175,000-member SEIU Local 32BJ announced a unionization drive among workers at McDonald’s and corporate-owned Chipotle outlets in the New York City area (Greenhouse, 2019). It remains to be seen if these tactics can achieve the twin goals of “$15 and a union” in fast food.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION “Where capital goes, conflict goes,” Silver (2003, p. 41) writes, looking over the history of auto workers’ struggles in the twentieth century. We agree, yet the diversity of strike activity in the twenty-first century is not easily grasped by traditional theoretical frameworks. As we have shown, current strikes cannot be seen simply in terms of an economic logic that assumes stable institutions protecting normalized relations of collective bargaining. Similarly, the political critique of those institutions for channeling or containing workers’ grievances is less useful when those institutions no longer function as they once did. In the United States, research on strikes has largely been subsumed under a broader social movement paradigm. While social movement theory offers valuable insights on the forms and processes of mobilization, however, it abstracts from the specific contexts for strikes by treating them as generic forms of protest. For us, the key to understanding strikes is their status as episodes of conflict grounded in the changing structure and regulation of the employment relationship. In this paper, we engage with the PRA as the best way to capture the particularities of strike activity. We build on the PRA in order to synthesize a framework that can identify variation across contexts, make possible meaningful case comparisons, and allow us to understand new and emerging strikes in relation to the history of capitalist development. We believe our case study of the fast food strikes and the Fight for $15 campaign in the United States shows the advantages of our model over existing PRA frameworks. First, we provide a clear, simplified map that distills key power resources unique to each arena – structural leverage from the economy, law from the state, and discourse from civil society. These may be combined in different iterations including institutional and coalitional power resources, but associational power as we have described it remains at the center, because it is still required to mobilize the other power resources. Thus, elements of the Fight for $15 strategy were already present in the current repertoire of the American labor movement – JfJ and the use of discursive power resources, the worker center model of community-based organization, the passage of local living wage laws through grassroots campaigns and institutional influence – but the movement’s success at combining and mobilizing these resources explains the speed with which it has produced such remarkable outcomes. Second, our approach focuses on the conjuncture or interplay of associational power, power resources, and the terrain of contest rather than treating each of these as independent variables existing side-by-side (Bieler, 2018). In the fast food

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case, the path to reform in the workplace lies through the mobilization of resources in the civil society and alternative venues within the state, rather than relying on the strikers’ weak structural power on the job. This allows us to identify their short demonstration walkouts as a new or different type of strike – the symbolic strike – distinct from the open-ended contract or recognition strikes of earlier conjunctures and deploying a different set of power resources. The symbolic strike is not a magic solution, nor do we present it as a general model of contemporary labor action. It emerged and operates within the current labor regime in the United States, with its erosion or denial of protections for diverse groups of workers, yet comparable conditions may hold in other countries or contexts. Regimes themselves are also the target of contention and subject to change, as in the movement’s successful shifting of legal power resources at the level of state and local governments. Unlike the traditional institutionalist critique, this approach is neither static nor unidirectional but highlights opportunities for labor movements to achieve and exercise institutional power. Our framework also allows us to plot the interactions between workers’ mobilization and the countermobilization by employers and their allies. These occur on a terrain that can change across time, space, and scale. Thus, changes in national political administrations affect the composition of the NLRB and the prospects for challenging the legal construction of the fissured workplace through the federal government. Similarly, the decentralized system of city and state governments under American federalism provides opportunities for reform in some jurisdictions while presenting barriers in others. Finally, our analysis illustrates the dynamic between associational power as collective action and the organizational forms that action takes. Episodes of mobilization not only draw on existing organizational resources but can also create the space for new ones – recruiting new members and developing internal capacities – to be sustainable. Such innovations make possible new forms of agency and bring an irreducible contingency to events of collective action (Lee, 2019; Sewell, 1996). This underlines the importance of achieving associational power in the workplace as well as in other arenas and brings us back to the employment relationship. Long-term shifts in the power relations surrounding employment reflect changes across the three arenas, as in the rise of industrial unionism alongside and shaping the New Deal, or of service sector and public sector unionism alongside and shaped by the civil rights and women’s movements (Lichtenstein & Harris, 1996; Johnston, 1994; Windham, 2017). While we propose our model as a way to explain strike activity, we also believe the PRA can contribute to advancing debates in social movement theory. As discussed above, Walder (2009) notes the separation of contemporary social movement theory from the older tradition of political sociology from which it emerged. That older tradition was concerned with the relationship of social structure with the “political orientation of mobilized groups and the aims and contents of movements.” By contrast, social movement theory largely takes those as given and focuses instead on mobilization. The result is that movement theory tries to

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…explain the conditions under which a movement – of any type – can grow and succeed, but we no longer have explanations to offer about variation in the substantive content of a movement – the type of politics that it represents.

We believe our version of the PRA can help bridge the divide between mobilization and the content of movements, because it draws attention to the systemic relationships – here, the structure and governance of employment – that generate the categorical inequality and conflict between employers and workers (Tilly, 1998). The focus on power resources and their arenas shows the stakes for actors involved in labor struggles, because it sees mobilization in terms of the reordering of relations of power. Our concept of associational power embodies the range of political orientations in the movement, not as by-products of political opportunities or rhetorical framing (Walder, 2009, pp. 403–406) but as prospective or practical solutions to the structural problems of the employment relationship. But every movement has its historic context. As Tilly (1998, p. 136) notes, categorical group inequalities often overlap, and are organized in the economy, regulated and enforced through the state, and affect cultural identity and everyday life in civil society. Attention to systemic relations of racial, gender, and urban inequality could highlight the structural, legal, and discursive power resources available to minority, women’s and community organizing movements, their prospects for intersectional alliances, and the strategic choices they face. Thus, we believe that the approach we outline here can help social movement scholars take a fresh approach, one that looks beyond the forms and mechanisms of contention to the particular actors and contexts involved in the specific movements or waves of mobilization under study. This suggests the broader relevance of the PRA and its contribution to social movement research.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors gratefully acknowledge helpful comments by Jasmine Kerrissey, Pablo Perez Ahumada, Joel Stillerman, Joshua Murray, Michael Schwartz, Eddie Webster, and the reviewers for Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change. Any errors remain our sole responsibility.

REFERENCES Allegretto, S., Doussard, M., Graham-Squire, D., Jacobs, K., Thompson, D., & Thompson, J. (2013). Fast food, poverty wages: The public cost of low-wage jobs in the fast-food industry. Berkeley: University of California. Center for Labor Research and Education and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Urban & Regional Planning. Retrieved from http:// laborcenter.berkeley.edu/fast-food-poverty-wages-the-public-cost-of-low-wage-jobs-in-the-fastfood-industry/. Accessed on May 24, 2017. Aronowitz, S. (1973). False promises: The shaping of American working class consciousness. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Ashenfelter, O., & Johnson, G. E. (1969). Bargaining theory, trade unions & industrial strike activity. The American Economic Review, 59, 35–49.

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GROUP SIZE AND THE USE OF VIOLENCE BY RESISTANCE CAMPAIGNS: A MULTILEVEL STUDY OF RESISTANCE METHOD Christopher J. Cyr and Michael Widmeier

ABSTRACT We examine why some groups use violence while others use nonviolence when they push for major political change. Nonviolence can be less costly, but nonstate actors must mobilize a large number of people for it to be successful. This is less critical for violent rebellion, as successful attacks can be committed by a small number of people. This means that groups that believe that they have the potential to mobilize larger numbers of people are less likely to use violence. This potential is related to the lines along which the group mobilizes. Campaigns mobilized along ethnic or Marxist lines have fewer potential members and are most likely to use violence. Prodemocracy campaigns have a higher number of potential members and are more likely to use nonviolence. For movements against a foreign occupation, campaigns in larger countries are more likely to use nonviolence. These predictions are supported in a multilevel logit model of campaigns from 1945 to 2006. The mechanism is tested by looking at the interactive effect of democratic changes on the likelihood of nonviolence and looking at a subsample of 72 campaigns that explicitly draw from certain ethnic or religious groups. Keywords: Civil war; nonviolent resistance; protest; rebel groups; mobilization; conflict

Power and Protest Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Volume 44, 63–90 Copyright © 2021 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X20210000044006

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In the early twentieth century, citizens of India conducted a campaign of resistance against British colonial rule. The leader of these protests, Mahatma Gandhi, embraced nonviolence, saying, “nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind, it is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man” (Gandhi & Attenborough, 2001). Around the same time, citizens in Kenya began to oppose British rule, employing nonviolent methods of resistance as in India. Despite both movements taking place at similar times and targeting the same regime, the Indian and Kenyan opposition movements experienced different outcomes. In India, with a substantially larger population than Kenya, nonviolent protest eventually played a key role in the British withdrawal in 1950. In Kenya, however, the British government quickly squashed the protests. As nonviolent tactics had proven to be ineffective, Kenyan resistance organizations eventually turned to violent rebellion in an attempt to expel British rule. The cases of India and Kenya raise several important questions concerning resistance movements and the choice between violence and nonviolence. Why was nonviolence effective when the Indian people targeted the British government, while it was not effective in Kenya? What factors accounted for Kenyans’ decision to turn to violence? These questions are salient as the empirical record reveals a good deal of variation in the choice of strategies that groups employ when they campaign against their government. The case of the Philippines in the 1980s is a clear illustration of this historical variance. The New People’s Army, a Maoist rebellion, initiated a campaign of guerilla warfare against the government of the Philippines. A contingent of the minority ethnic Moro Islamic community also organized a rebellion against the state, launching a violent separatist movement. Within the same relative time period, the People Power movement emerged as yet another faction organized in opposition to the Philippine government. However, the People Power campaign stood in contrast to the New People’s Army and the Moro insurgency, as it was a prodemocracy organization that used nonviolent tactics. All three movements stood in opposition to the government of the Philippines, but the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Marxist New People’s Army used violence, whereas People Power employed a nonviolent approach. While these groups targeted the same regime, their resistance strategies diverged when it came to the choice of violent versus nonviolent tactics. What accounts for this variation in tactics? Here, we explain differences in the use of violence and nonviolence by looking at how ex ante expectations of success, based on each group’s potential number of supporters, impact the tactics of nonstate actors when they organize large-scale resistance efforts against a government. Previous researchers have largely studied civil war at the state level, using state characteristics such as GDP per capita and the presence of mountainous terrain as explanatory variables that influence the likelihood of the outbreak of civil conflict (Collier & Hoeffler, 2002; Fearon & Laitin, 2003). However, research efforts that rely on country-level data do not account for variation in the features of the groups that decide to rebel. In recent years, scholarship has emerged that examines

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this variation (Cunningham, Gleditsch, & Salehyan, 2009). Because these studies generally only examine groups actively engaged in rebellion, they cannot consider the onset of violent conflict as a dependent variable. Here, we examine this variation by considering groups that are actively mobilized against the state, but vary on their use of violence or nonviolence. We argue that the choice between nonviolence and violence is an instrumental decision on the part of the nonstate actor, based on which tactic is viewed as being more likely to increase the likelihood of securing concessions from the state. To this point, previous research has established that nonviolence can be more effective than violence for resistance movements attempting to gain concessions or alter their status quo (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011). Carrying out nonviolent tactics is generally less costly to groups than the use of violence, but the number of supporters that a group mobilizes is critical to the success of nonviolent organizations. Groups that are unable to mobilize a large network of supporters are not able to hold the large rallies and general strikes that are hallmarks of successful nonviolent resistance (Cunningham, 2013). Conversely, group size and the success of mobilization efforts are less important for groups that employ violence. Terrorist attacks only require one person to inflict damage, and guerrilla groups can hide from the state to maintain a violent resistance campaign with relatively few people. Because of this, groups that anticipate having a large support base are more likely to use nonviolence due to its lower costs and greater effectiveness. Those that anticipate facing limitations on the development of their group and the size of their support base are more likely to use violence. This decision is made due to the notion that groups are aware of the need for a substantial number of followers in order to execute nonviolent approaches successfully. We form testable hypotheses regarding the probability that a group will employ violent versus nonviolent means of resistance. We focus on the lines along which groups are mobilized, and how this can act as an ex ante indicator of the group’s support base. Groups mobilized along ethnic or religious lines are generally unlikely to attract support outside of their specific ethnic or religious group. This creates a theoretical cap on the number of potential supporters that is lower than the size of the population as a whole. Furthermore, there exists many types of resistance campaigns that have difficulty gauging their level of support ex ante, such as those mobilized along Marxist lines. Groups with no inherent limitations on future organizational growth are unable to determine whether they will cease to exist on one hand or grow to include tens of thousands of cadres. These two types of campaigns, therefore, are more likely to use violence as they have no expectation that they will become large enough to effectively use nonviolence. On the other hand, groups such as prodemocracy campaigns are typically more inclusive than many other types of movements. As a result of this, a prodemocracy campaign could potentially mobilize large sections of a country and recruit a diverse set of followers. This mobilization mechanism makes these campaigns significantly more likely to use nonviolence than those with limited mobilization potential. Among campaigns designed to expel a foreign occupation, the likelihood that a campaign will use nonviolence increases as the population of the

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occupied country increases. Simply put, campaigns in opposition to foreign occupation in populous states will have a broader pool of potential followers to draw from than those in a smaller state, thus making the former campaigns more likely to use nonviolence. We test our predictions using data on resistance campaigns from 1945 to 2006. We also test the mechanism behind our hypothesis in two ways. First, we examine the interactive effect of democratic change and prodemocracy mobilization on the likelihood of violence. In states that are becoming more democratic, where prodemocracy movements have a larger potential support base, the relationship between prodemocracy mobilization and nonviolence is stronger. We then examine a subsample of 72 campaigns mobilized along ethnic or religious lines. Our model implies that campaigns that represent large ethnic or religious groups, relative to the country as a whole, have potential to mobilize more supporters than ones that represent smaller groups. The former groups are therefore less likely to use violence. The results provide some initial support for this expectation, with one caveat. Five of these campaigns drew from groups that make up a majority of their state’s population, which gives them significant influence over the findings. In two of these cases, the choice of tactics was driven largely by external events, thus these two cases are excluded from the analysis. When these are included, the results are significant at the 90 percent level of confidence but not the 95 percent level of confidence. In the first section of this chapter, we review the previous literature on civil conflict and nonviolent resistance. We then present our theory, which offers an account of why some groups use violence while others use nonviolence when they seek political change. Next, we outline the research design and methodology used to test our hypotheses. We then present the statistical models that facilitate the testing of our hypotheses, and the findings of our quantitative analyses. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the implications of our analysis and suggestions for future research.

PREVIOUS RESEARCH Violent Conflict Violence imposes costs on all parties, which can be avoided if parties negotiate rather than fight. Because of this, all parties to a conflict are better off if they can reach a settlement without fighting, making violent conflict ex post irrational. Despite the irrationality of war as an outcome, all parties can be rational, ex ante, in their decision to go to war (Fearon, 1995). One reason for this is that parties have incomplete information about each other’s capabilities. This can make it difficult to find a negotiated settlement that all parties prefer, ex ante, to fighting. These information problems can help explain why civil wars happen, as governments and potential rebel groups do not have complete information about each other’s capabilities prior to conflict. Previous scholarship on civil conflict has largely focused on the features that make some states more likely to experience civil conflict than others. The

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states most likely to experience violent rebellion are the ones where rebellion is most likely to be successful. This is predicted by variables such as the existence of prior protest or rebellion, weak central government, mountainous terrain and the presence of lootable natural resources that can be used to fund rebellion (Collier & Hoeffler, 2002; Fearon & Laitin, 2003; Lichbach & Gurr, 1981). Prior research has also considered the relationship between ideology and the use of violence by armed groups. Scholars have studied the influence of ideology on terrorists’ selection of targets (Drake, 1998), how ideology and group organization drive violence (Humphreys & Weinstein, 2006; Weinstein, 2007), the role of armed groups’ ideology during the Cold War (Kalyvas & Balcells, 2010), and how indiscriminate violence is influenced by ideology (Thaler, 2012). Sanin and Wood argue that “all armed groups engaged in political violence – including ethnic separatist groups – do so on the basis of an ideology, that is a set of ideas that include preferences…and beliefs” (Sanin & Wood, 2014, p. 214). Here we see ideology cast as a framework from which nonstate actors base their decisionmaking, including if and to what extent they will employ violence. Thus ideology shapes not only those groups built upon an explicitly ideological line of mobilization such as Marxism or democracy but also those whose formation and growth was based upon organizational structures such as antioccupation movements, ethnicity, or religion. This scholarship generally does not account for the fact that civil war results from the strategic interaction between the state and a nonstate actor. Early work posited a “mobilization of discontent” model, which theorized that the strength of resistance organizations relative to the state was key in forecasting conflict (Gurr & Lichbach, 1986). By only looking at state characteristics, it is impossible to understand nonstate actor characteristics that lead some groups to engage in violent rebellion. Empirically, we observe states that make concessions with some groups to avoid conflict while simultaneously refusing to make concessions with other groups that end up rebelling. This would suggest that we must look at nonstate actor characteristics to fully understand why civil wars begin in some cases while negotiated settlements happen in other cases. Civil conflict scholars have long recognized this issue. The problem has persisted, however, due to the difficulty of identifying the relevant groups ex ante. The limited body of literature that examines civil conflict dyadically uses dyads of states and groups actively engaged in rebellion. This “sidesteps the problem of classifying potential rebels ex ante” (Cunningham et al., 2009). These research designs, however, do not vary in terms of whether or not a civil war happens. As such, it does not allow for the study of civil war onset as a dependent variable. Here, we address this lack of negative cases by incorporating nonviolent resistance as the alternative to political violence and civil war. This facilitates the study of potential rebel group characteristics that results in rebellion in some cases and nonviolent resistance in others, which illustrates the nonstate actor aspect of the interaction. To understand why nonviolent resistance movements represent the negative cases of civil war and political violence, it is necessary to examine scholarship on nonviolent resistance.

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The analytical starting point for this study is the resistance campaign,1 which we take as a given entity. Thus, the focus of this research is not on if or how campaigns come into existence, but on if or how existing campaigns choose a violent or nonviolent path to achieve their aims. This is an important distinction, as it raises the caveat of selection bias in the construction of the dataset and analyses. While a significant number of country-year observations are lost by excluding negative cases of campaigns that do not occur, the aforementioned unit of analysis is the appropriate choice given our research question. Scholars examining the occurrence of conflict-related phenomenon (Sambanis, 2001; Yair & Miodownik, 2016) have operationalized dependent variables to include the negative outcome as it was within the theoretical and methodological framework of their studies. Here, we focus upon the more limited scope of divergent violence–nonviolence pathways within a domain of extant movements. We thus explore the following puzzle – among movements that emerge to resist the state, why do some use violence? Thus, we posit that concerns over selection bias on the dependent variable are mitigated by the analytical scope of this project. Our subsequent analysis is structured with campaigns rather than country-years as the unit of analysis. Nonviolent Resistance Scholars of civil war have begun to draw from a rich body of academic research on nonviolent resistance (Ackerman & Kruegler, 1994; Sharp, 1959, 1973). Nonviolent action refers to political acts outside normal political channels that do not involve violence or the explicit threat of violence. Rooted in many religions, nonviolent resistance emerged as a serious method of political contention in the nineteenth century to promote nationalist and labor interests. Mahatma Gandhi contributed greatly to the philosophy of nonviolence by using it to advocate for political change in India (Schock, 2013). Conflict scholars have painted nonviolent resistance as the other end of the spectrum from violent rebellion. Both types of movements seek political change within their country, involve rallying large groups of people, and operate through irregular political channels. Lichbach examined violent and nonviolent responses to government repression of nonviolent dissent (Lichbach, 1987). His research was at the forefront of a large body of literature on the link between repression and dissent (Davenport, 2007; Moore, 1998) and repression and nonviolence (Chenoweth, Perkoski, & Kang, 2017). Lichbach also studied how variance in the level of organization of peasant movements influenced the selective incentives offered to recruits to overcome the collective action problem (Lichbach, 1994), illustrating the salience of the structure of nonstate actor groups. Chenoweth and Stephan show that nonviolent resistance campaigns are more likely than violent rebellions to be successful in achieving their goals (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011). These movements generally draw a greater number of participants, are more tactically innovative, and are better able to encourage defections among the military. Scholars have since built upon this contrast between violence and nonviolence. They have shown, for example, that

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movements that express a gender-inclusive ideology are more likely to use nonviolence than violence (Asal, Legault, Szekely, & Wilkenfeld, 2013). Researchers have also looked at phase shifts, where groups switch from nonviolence to violence or vice versa (Dudouet, 2012; Shellman, Levey, & Young, 2013), group fragmentation and commitment to nonviolence (Cunningham, 2013; Pearlman, 2012), and the correlates of the onset of nonviolent campaigns (Chenoweth & Ulfelder, 2017). One debate within the research on nonviolent resistance is whether nonviolence represents a point on a continuum of violence, or whether it is its own distinct phenomenon. As Schock explains, Generally, scholars of social movements and revolution have assumed that political action falls along a continuum from conventional political action to nonviolent resistance to violent resistance. When the goals cannot be attained through institutional channels, then challengers adopt nonviolent protest; if that is not effective, then violence is adopted (Schock, 2013).

Others, however, disagree with this view. Svensson and Lindgren argue that the two types of campaign typically have different aims, natures, and outcomes. This would suggest that they are separate phenomena, rather than a continuum (Svensson & Lindgren, 2011). Here, we take the former view that the two strategies of contention represent different ends of a continuum. We view nonviolent resistance as happening in the shadow of the possibility for violent rebellion. We take this view for three reasons. First, nonviolent resistance campaigns commonly switch tactics in response to state actions. Second, even when nonviolent campaigns remain committed to nonviolence in the face of state repression, it is common for violent campaigns to simultaneously emerge that draw from a similar population and have similar goals. Third, even if the leadership of a campaign is committed to nonviolence and able to police its membership to prevent the outbreak of violence, they are not able to credibly signal this to the state. As such, the state must consider the extent to which nonviolent campaigns, particularly stronger ones, have the potential to use violence in the future. We do not argue that all resistance campaigns are viewed as potential rebel groups, but that all campaigns are viewed as threats to the status quo that may employ violence as relations vis-`a-vis the state evolve over time. We posit that the composition of the campaign in terms of its mobilization structure can serve as a signal to the state concerning its potential strength should violence occur. We argue below that the likelihood of the use of violence varies among prodemocracy, Marxist, ethnic/religious, and movements to expel a foreign occupation. Because of this continuum, major nonviolent campaigns can be seen as the negative cases of civil war. They represent cases when a group has a grievance against the state, is mobilized to address this grievance outside of normal political channels, but choose not to engage in violence. By understanding why some groups engage in nonviolent resistance while others engage in rebellion, we can better understand the rebel component of the strategic interaction between the state and nonstate actors that result in conflict.

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THEORY We assume that violence is instrumental, or a means to an end rather than an end. This means that nonstate actors choose violence and nonviolence based on which strategy they think is more likely to be effective. History provides some anecdotes that support the idea that members of resistance movements employ this strategic logic. Supporters of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a violent resistance movement, put this logic succinctly. Shaiquer Maloku described the use of violence, “None of us want war. We have been given no choice. It is the only way we will be free” (Hedges, 1998). Another KLA supporter, Adem Demeci, said I will not condemn the tactics of the Kosovo Liberation Army because the path of nonviolence has gotten us nowhere. People who live under this kind of repression have the right to resist. The Kosovo Liberation Army is fighting for our freedom (Hedges, 1998).

This suggests an instrumental view of violence. The view of violence as a necessary means to an end is hardly surprising, as the Serbian government did not take the KLA’s ability to inflict harm on them seriously. Early on in the war, Veljko Odolvic, Serbia’s administrator in Kosovo, stated in early 1998, We have wiped out one terrorist group, maybe the biggest and most important one, but there are dozens of others. The armed resistance is strong. It is probable that we will see renewed terrorist attacks in the days ahead. There are other terrorist gangs now preparing their members... We cannot speak of an end to the operation until these terrorist cells are liquidated. This may take a little more time. (Hedges, 1998)

This lack of a desire for violence on the part of the Kosovars, and the lack of seriousness with which the Serbian government treated the KLA in the initial phases of the conflict, suggest that organizations employ violence because they view it as necessary to inflict costs on the state. Nonviolence imposes lower costs on its members. That is not to say that participants in nonviolent resistance campaigns do not take any risks. Many have been jailed or killed for openly opposing their regimes. These risks, however, are assumed to be less than those associated with violence, where thousands of participants in armed rebellion commonly lose their lives during the course of the conflict. Regimes have an easier time cracking down harshly on violent rebellions than on nonviolent resistance campaigns, and face fewer international costs for doing so. In addition to having lower costs, previous research has established that nonviolence can be more likely to extract state concessions than violence. Nonviolent campaigns tend to have more legitimacy, encourage broader participation, and are more difficult for states to justify putting down with violence, creating higher costs for states that do not give concessions (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011). While nonviolence can be less costly and more effective for some groups, not all groups have reason to believe that nonviolence will be effective. For nonviolent resistance campaigns, the number of people mobilized is a key factor in determining its effectiveness. Rallies, boycotts, and general strikes are unlikely to get noticed, or be effective, when they only have a small number of participants. Large protests that fill the streets, on the other hand, can gain international

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attention, and broad general strikes can cause significant economic damage to the state. As such, group size is a critical factor for the success of a nonviolent resistance campaign (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011). While having many members is useful for violent groups, it is not as critical to their ability to impose costs on the state as it is for nonviolent campaigns (Cunningham, 2013). A lone bomber can inflict significant damage on the state, and violent campaigns can be effective with a small number of covert individuals. As such, violent campaigns have reason to believe that they might be effective without a large number of participants, while nonviolent campaigns are unlikely to make the same calculation. The critical importance of having many supporters for nonviolent resistance campaigns, but not for violent rebellions, has implications for the choice of strategy on the part of the nonstate actor. Groups that do not anticipate having a large support base might anticipate that they can only gain state concessions through violence, while groups that anticipate having a larger support base have more reason to believe that they can gain state concessions through nonviolent resistance. While decisions about violence and nonviolence are generally made before full mobilization, group size cannot be observed ex ante. Instead, nonstate actors must look to proxies that are known ex ante that impact the number of people that they are likely to mobilize. When these proxies indicate that a group is likely to have a large support base, it is more likely to use nonviolence. When these proxies indicate that their support base will be relatively small, a group is more likely to use violence when they mobilize against the state. Lines of Mobilization The lines of mobilization for a nonstate actor can proxy for their potential size. By line of mobilization, we refer to the goals that they express and support base they draw from. We focus on four different types of groups: prodemocracy movements, Marxist movements, ethnic or religious movements, and movements to expel a foreign occupation. We focus on these lines because they were the most commonly expressed goals of the campaigns identified in the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO) dataset, which documents cases of nonstate actors engaged in major antistate political activity (Chenoweth, 2011). They are not exhaustive, but encompass 89% of campaigns. They are also not mutually exclusive, as some campaigns have multiple primary goals. We argue that these lines of mobilization differ in the degree to which they present an information problem, and in the potential size that they could reach during resistance campaigns. Because of this, they differ in their likelihood of using violent tactics rather than nonviolent tactics. Prodemocracy Movements Prodemocracy movements occur when nonstate actors within the population push for more democratic policies from the government. Prodemocracy movements have an advantage in that they are inclusive. Democracy gives most individuals

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within society the ability to participate and push for policies that will benefit them (Boix, 2008). There are some groups that stand to be hurt by democratization. In addition, there may be cases where member of a minority ethnic group run a country, and may prefer autocracy to dominance by a majority group. These caveats notwithstanding, prodemocracy movements stand to benefit a large portion of society. This gives them a large potential base of support. Because of this, prodemocracy movements have reason to believe that nonviolence will be effective. This means that prodemocracy movements are most likely to use nonviolent tactics. H1. Mobilization along prodemocracy lines leads nonstate actors to be less likely to use violent tactics as opposed to nonviolent tactics. Marxist Movements Marxist movements anchor themselves to a Marxist, communist, Maoist, or leftist ideology, typically one that is different from the ideology of the state. In theory, then, a Marxist group’s potential support base would be anyone who would prefer a Marxist government to the one currently running the state. Identifying who has Marxist preferences ex ante, however, is problematic for both the state and the nonstate actor. In autocratic states, citizens who privately oppose the regime can face significant sanctions for publicly expressing those preferences. This gives potential supporters incentives to avoid expressing Marxist preferences during times of peace, but bandwagon should a Marxist movement appear capable of toppling the government (Kuran, 1989). In democratic states, citizens with Marxist preferences have historically had incentives to keep those preferences private, as many democracies have prosecuted citizens suspected of being communist. This makes it difficult to gauge the size of the potential support base for a Marxist movement ex ante. This means that Marxist movements are more likely to feel that violence is their best option for contesting the state. H2. Mobilization along Marxist lines leads nonstate actors to be more likely to use violent tactics as opposed to nonviolent tactics. Ethnic or Religious Movements When groups mobilize along ethnic or religious lines, they claim to represent the interests of one or several groups within the state. Unlike ideological preferences, ethnic and religious characteristics are ascribed and more easily observed (Eck, 2009). Many of these features are socially constructed, and deal more with political circumstances than birth (Eifert, Miguel, & Posner, 2007). Even though they are socially constructed, contentious politics tends to harden ethnic identities due to hypernationalist rhetoric, which can render them intractable (Kaufmann, 1996; Wucherpfennig, Metternich, Cederman, & Gleditsch, 2012). If we assume that all members of an ethnic or religious group form the potential support base of a nonstate actor that mobilizes along ethnic or religious lines, and members of other ethnic or religious groups that are not part of the campaign are unlikely to be supporters, then this creates a cap on the support

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base. While other types of movement have the potential to mobilize citizens from almost every sector, ethnic or religious movements can generally only expect to appeal to a portion of the population. This means that, if their demands are held constant, ethnic or religious movements are less likely to anticipate that they will draw the large numbers of people necessary for nonviolence to be successful. In order to achieve their goals, they must be able to demonstrate an ability to inflict costs on the state. This leads to the prediction that nonstate actors who mobilize along ethnic lines are more likely to use violent tactics. While ethnic and religious cleavages are distinct phenomena that do not always overlap, we combine groups mobilized along ethnic and religious lines in this analysis. We do this because both types of mobilization work similarly for the theoretical mechanism proposed here. Both types of groups explicitly attempt to appeal to only a portion of society. ISIS, for example, only attempted to appeal to members of Iraq’s Sunni community rather than Iraq’s population as a whole. Since the relative size of ethnic and religious groups within a country is known ex ante, the state has an observable proxy for the potential size of a group that mobilizes along one of these two lines, and that expectation varies with the size of the ethnic or religious group. Because of this similarity in how the theoretical mechanism works, and the difficulty in teasing apart ethnic and religious cleavages in many cases (the Irish Republican Army, for example), we consider them jointly in this analysis. H3. Mobilization along ethnic lines leads nonstate actors to be more likely to use violent tactics as opposed to nonviolent tactics. Movements to Expel Foreign Occupation Some nonstate actors seek to expel a foreign occupation, most commonly a colonial power. Like prodemocracy movements, these have the potential to have a broad appeal and mobilize a large portion of society. While some elites within a society may benefit from foreign occupation, it is assumed that the majority of the population does not see this as beneficial. These movements, however, suffer from one disadvantage that prodemocracy movements do not suffer from. While participants in prodemocracy movements target their own state, participants in antioccupation movements target another state. Typically, these states are major world powers. They have the ability to not only control their own state but also establish a presence on foreign soil. Because of this, antioccupation movements must impose greater costs on the state in order to get the state to calculate that making concessions is a better option than preserving the status quo. As the population of occupied countries increases, so does the number of people that they could potentially mobilize. Antioccupation movements in these large countries can pose a credible threat to mobilize a large group of people against the occupier. This means that antioccupation movements in larger countries are more likely to anticipate that nonviolence will be effective. H4. When nonstate actors are mobilized to expel a foreign occupation, the likelihood that they will use violent tactics decreases as the size of the population increases.

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Alternative Explanations It is possible that the above hypotheses may be correct for other reasons than the mechanism proposed above. In this section, we test for this possibility in two ways: we look at the interactive impact of democratic changes and prodemocracy mobilization on the likelihood of nonviolence, and the impact of ethnic group size on the use of nonviolence. Our first test looks at prodemocracy movements. It is possible that prodemocracy movements are more likely to be nonviolent for ideological reasons, rather than strategic regions. Democracy is commonly seen as a nonviolent means for coordinating conflict over leadership in a country (Przeworski, 1991). These nonviolent ideals may translate over to the way that people push for political change. If this is the case, then the empirical finding that prodemocracy movements are less likely to use violence would not necessarily provide support for the theoretical model developed here, which is driven by potential group size rather than ideology. We test for this possibility by looking at the interactive impact that a change in a state’s level of democracy prior to mobilization has on the likelihood that prodemocracy movements will use nonviolence. These democratic changes can influence the potential size of a prodemocracy movement by impacting how many people might be willing to pay the costs of participation. Changes in political system mobilize or demobilize sections of the population, which can alter the strategic calculation for an antigovernment movement. Democratization can cause newly empowered people to engage in political participation, while movements toward authoritarianism can demobilize people who previously participated in politics. The direction of this change impacts the number of potential activists that are expected to openly participate in a prodemocracy movement. We look at whether a country is becoming more democratic or more autocratic. If ideology explains the relationship between prodemocracy movements and nonviolence, then there is no reason to believe that there would be a significant relationship between political change and the use of nonviolence. Democratic ideology is a constant among prodemocracy movements, and any nonviolent ideals that come from support for democracy would exist among members of the group regardless of their state’s change in its level of democracy. As such, there would not be a significant interactive relationship between a state’s level of democratic change and the likelihood that prodemocracy movements would use nonviolence. Conversely, if the number of supporters that a prodemocracy movement could potentially mobilize explains their likelihood of using nonviolence, then we would expect to see the strongest relationship in states that are becoming more democratic. Democratization opens up the political system to a new part of the population, creating a group of people who are newly empowered to participate politically. In addition, people in democratizing states might feel fewer of the traditional disincentives to participation, as there is less risk of jailing for prodemocracy activism. There is also a greater possibility that people in the population may be more willing to test out their new political freedoms. As a result,

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prodemocracy movements have a greater potential size in states that are becoming more democratic, and are more likely to use nonviolence. In states that are becoming more autocratic, the opposite is true. There are generally disincentives from participating in politics because of the state imposing new restrictions on mobilization of the population, and punishments for citizens that participate outside of the regular political channels. When these changes are happening, citizens are less likely to join a prodemocracy movement, even if they might sympathize with its values. This gives prodemocracy movements in states that are becoming more autocratic a lower number of potential supporters. While overall these movements are still expected to be less likely to use violence, the relationship is expected to be less strong than in democratizing states. Because of this, the relationship between mobilization along prodemocracy lines and the use of nonviolence is expected to be especially strong in states that are becoming more democratic. H5. The negative relationship between prodemocracy mobilization and the use of violence over nonviolence is strongest in states that are in the process of becoming more democratic. An alternative explanation for the relationship in H5 is that it may be driven by the relationship between state democracy and nonviolent resistance. Since nonviolent resistance is generally accepted as part of politics as usual in democracies, groups may be more apt to mobilize nonviolently in states that are democratizing. However, as shown in the tests below, there is actually a positive relationship between a state’s level of democracy and the likelihood that a campaign will use violence. This means that democracies are more prone to violence overall when an antistate campaign arises. Because of this, a negative finding between democratic change and the likelihood of a prodemocracy movement using violence is likely not due to the norms of democracy. The subsample of nonstate actors mobilized on ethnic religious lines allows for another test of the causal mechanism. If groups with a larger potential support base are more likely to use nonviolence, then it would follow that groups that draw from a larger ethnic or religious group would be less likely to use violence than those that draw from a smaller group. If ethnically mobilized groups are more predisposed to violence for reasons other than those outlined above, for example due to ancient hatreds or the nature of ethnic conflict, there is not a strong reason to believe that large groups would be less predisposed to violence. H6. When nonstate actors mobilize along ethnic lines, the probability that they will use violent tactics decreases as the size of the group that they represent, relative to the whole population, increases (Table 1).

RESEARCH DESIGN To test hypotheses one through four, we use the campaigns identified in the NAVCO dataset from 1945 to 2006 (Chenoweth, 2011). Resistance campaigns are operationalized here as the campaign captured in the NAVCO dataset. NAVCO describes campaigns as “continuous and lasts anywhere from days to years” and

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Table 1. Summary of Hypotheses. Line of Mobilization Information Problem

Potential Level of Support

Probability of Violence (Hypothesis)

Prodemocracy

Low

Marxist Ethnic/religious

High Low

Expel Foreign Occupation

Low

Most of the population Unknown Part of the population Most of the population

Low (H1), especially in states that are democratizing (H5) High (H2) High (H3), but decreases as group size increases (H6) Decreases as population increases (H4)

“have discernable leadership and often have organizational and operational names, distinguishing them from random riots or spontaneous mass acts” (Chenoweth & Lewis, 2013, p. 416). This dataset includes groups mobilized with the goals of ether separatism, regime change, expelling foreign occupation, or self-determination. In order to be included in the dataset, campaigns must have a minimum of 1000 participants since these groups are selected based on maximalist goals. Potentially small rebel groups may make lesser demands, and this research design controls for this possibility. The dependent variable is the use of violent tactics relative to nonviolent tactics. In practice, most campaigns involve a mixture of violence and nonviolence. This variable was operationalized by using an existing variable and event descriptions from the NAVCO dataset, which codes for a group’s primary method of resistance. For this project, the NAVCO primary method variable viol, which individually captures groups’ use of nonviolent or violent tactics. Within the 256 observations in the data, there are 154 observations of nonviolent campaigns (just over 60%) and 102 instances of violent campaigns (just under 40%). Nonviolent campaigns rely primarily on tactics such as protests, sit-ins, civil disobedience, and general strikes. Violent campaigns can include these types of tactics, but also include a major violent component, based on a threshold of 1000 battle deaths (Chenoweth, 2011). This means that cases must have major violence to be considered violent. Protests that are primarily nonviolent, but include a low level of violence with a small number of deaths, are considered nonviolent. Some campaigns involve groups that use primarily nonviolence, and splinter groups that use primarily violence. In Kosovo, for example, an unsuccessful nonviolent movement in the early 1990s led to the launch of the violent KLA. In these cases, where the leadership groups are separate entities, they are coded as two different campaigns. The key independent variable for this study is the campaign’s line of mobilization. This variable was coded by the authors. The coding decisions were made by using the NAVCO codebook case descriptions first and foremost as they generally provide relevant and succinct detail on the campaigns. When further information was necessary for coding decisions, we conducted web and print

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searches for secondary scholarly sources. These sources included journal articles, books, policy and journalistic accounts of campaigns, and other web-based academic resources. Each case was coded as “ethnic or religions,” “prodemocracy,” “Marxist (or other leftist),” “designed to expel a foreign occupation,” or “other.” For ethnic or religious campaigns, we looked for evidence that groups either explicitly recruited from one or a few specific ethnic or religious groups, or explicitly represented specific groups. An example of this category is the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of Sri Lanka, commonly known as the “Tamil Tigers.” For prodemocracy lines, we looked at whether there is evidence that one of the key demands of the movement was a liberalization of the political system, such as with the Zimbabwe African People’s Union. For Marxist campaigns, we looked for evidence that the group explicitly espoused a Marxist, communist, Maoist, or other leftist ideology as part of its primary message. A case of the Marxist line of mobilization in the data is Pathet Lao in Cambodia. For campaigns designed to expel a foreign occupation, we looked for evidence that one of the key demands was independence from foreign rule or decolonization, seen in Vietnam with the North Vietnamese National Liberation Front group. “Other” campaigns generally involved right wing ideology, military coups, or countercoups. The Contras in Nicaragua are an example of a group coded as “Other.” The goals are not mutually exclusive. The antiapartheid protests in South Africa, for example, were mobilized along ethnic lines, but also included a strong prodemocracy message. Since neither goal appeared to overshadow the other, as the two were intertwined, this campaign was coded as both ethnic and prodemocracy. Summary statistics are provided in Table 2. Since violence results from the interaction of rebel groups and states, it is necessary to control for state characteristics. First, it is possible that groups may base their tactics on the state’s regime type. To control for this, we include the Polity IV score of each location, which captures the level of democracy in the country one year before the beginning of the campaign (Marshall & Jaggers, 2011). We also control for GDP per capita and total population, which both predict political violence (Fearon & Laitin, 2003). In order to reduce missing

Table 2. Summary of Campaign Types. Campaign Type

Number of Campaigns

Examples of Campaign Type

Prodemocracy

79

Marxist Ethnic or religious

35 76

Expel foreign occupation Other

38 28

Orange Revolution (Ukraine); Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zimbabwe) Mujahideen (Iran); The Shining Path (Peru) Tigray People’s Liberation Front (Ethiopia); Irish Republican Army (Northern Ireland) Intifada (Palestine); Taliban (Afghanistan) Revolutionary United Front (Sierra Leone); Hundred Flowers Movement (China)

Total

256

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observations, we construct yearly averages from different data sources for each of these variables. The decision to use annual averages to account for missingness in the data was based upon the fact that GDP per capita and population typically do not fluctuate significantly on a year-to-year basis or within small periods of time. For GDP per capita and population, data come from the Quality of Government Dataset (Teorell, Samanni, Charron, Holmberg, & Rothstein, 2010). The Quality of Government data was used to operationalize these variables as it captures latter years of the temporal domain not covered by commonly used datasets such as Fearon and Laitin (2003) or Sambanis (2004). We also control for whether the target state was experiencing another conflict. These data come from Fearon and Laitin (Fearon & Laitin, 2003). We control for the start year because there is evidence that nonviolence has become more popular, relative to violence, over the second half of the twentieth century. The start year refers to the initial year in which the campaign existed and conducted organized activities, per the NAVCO dataset. We also control for previous concessions by the regime, which is defined as the number of successful campaigns that existed during the time period under observation, 1945 to 2006. Governments might build a reputation for giving concessions, which could in turn cause other nonstate actors to believe that they are facing a more conciliatory government (Walter, 2006). As a result, actors in states that give more concessions might be less likely to use violence. Finally, we control for the use of violent repression by the regime. Regime violence might radicalize the population, triggering violence, or groups that anticipate being met with regime violence may be more likely to use violence themselves (Lake & Baum, 2001). In addition, violent repression can decrease the costs of participation in a violent insurgency relative to nonparticipation (Kalyvas & Kocher, 2007). Since the theory presented here is based on the notion that nonviolence is less costly, and this may not be the case in more repressive states, it is necessary to consider the impact that state repression has on the choice of tactics. These last three variables come from the NAVCO dataset (Chenoweth, 2011). We use a multilevel logistic regression to test hypotheses 1–5. The regression includes campaigns nested within countries. This model accounts for the fact that the test uses variables associated with the campaigns themselves, and variables associated with the countries in which they take place. In addition, this type of model uses fixed effects to factor in the possibility that some countries may differ from others in the overall probability that they will experience violence or nonviolence. We do not employ robust or clustered standard errors when conducting the multilevel analyses. This is due to the multilevel modeling process serving as a superior mechanism for clustering standard errors relative to the commonly used alternatives for correcting standard errors such as commands that run robust or clustered specifications (Cheah, 2009). To test H6, we include the variable of group size relative to the population as a whole taken from the Ethnic Power Relations dataset (Min, Cederman, & Wimmer, 2008). Testing H6 presents several challenges because the sample includes only 76 campaigns mobilized along ethnic or religious lines. Due to this

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small number of observations, missing data become problematic, limiting the ability to use controls such as level of democracy and GDP per capita. We include controls only for variables available for virtually all cases in the dataset, which include the campaign goals, the existence of a simultaneous violent campaign with similar goals, external support, and regime use of violence (all available in the original NAVCO dataset). We also control for the total excluded population. Walter argues that governments that face more potential ethnic challengers are less likely to make accommodations (Walter, 2006). As such, ethnic groups that campaign in a state with a large excluded population may be more likely to use violence to accomplish their goals. Due to the small number of observations, extreme values of the key independent variable (group size) have a large impact on the size and significance of the coefficient. In particular, findings are largely driven by five cases of groups that make up more than 50 percent of the population: The Shiite rebellion in Iraq (63% of population), the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria (62%), the Hutu rebellion in Burundi (85%), and the Anti-Apartheid (51%) and Defiance Campaigns (51%) in South Africa. Due to the concern that the Iraq and Burundi cases could have undue influence on the coefficients, they are excluded from the analysis. It should be noted that the exclusion of two violent cases makes for an easier test of H6. As such, the results should be treated as suggestive rather than conclusive.2

FINDINGS The first five models include each of the dummy variables identified in Hypotheses 1–4. Model 1 shows all of the dummy variables in the same model, while Models 2–5 each show just one of the dummy variables. Model 5 shows the interaction between antioccupation mobilization and state population. Coefficients are presented below, with standard errors in parentheses (Table 3). The marginal effects for each type of campaign are shown in Table 4. Prodemocracy campaigns are significantly less likely to be violent than other types of campaign. This falls in line with H1. In Model 2, where only the dummy variable of prodemocracy campaign is included, the baseline probability of violence being used is 0.80 when all other variables are held at their means. When campaigns are mobilized along prodemocracy lines, however, the probability drops to 0.23, indicating that the likelihood of a prodemocracy campaign using violence is low. Marxist campaigns are the most likely of all campaign types to be violent. This provides support for H2. In Model 3, which only includes the Marxist dummy, mobilization along Marxist lines brings the probability that a campaign will use violence from 0.55 to 0.96 when all other variables are held at their means. As predicted by H3, campaigns mobilized along ethnic or religious lines are more likely to be violent. While significant, the substantive effect is not as large as that of Marxist or prodemocracy campaigns. In Model 4, mobilization along

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Table 3. Use of Violence as Function of Lines of Mobilization. Model 1 Campaign Variables Democracy Marxist Ethnic or religious Expel occupation Previous concessions Regime violence State-level Variables GDP per capita Population External conflict Polity (lagged 1 year) Beginning year Interaction Expel occupation* Population Constant N

Model 2

Model 3

23.85 (1.79)* 24.44 (1.20)* 6.27 (3.18)* 6.08 (2.42)* 4.79 (2.30)* 20.57 (1.66) 1.14 (1.07) 0.44 (0.65) 0.96 (0.69) 0.62 (1.20) 0.66 (0.81) 2.05 (1.05) 0.00 (0.00)* 0.00 (0.00)* 0.00 (0.00)* 0.00 (0.00)* 0.49 (1.94) 1.06 (1.16) 0.27 (0.13)* 0.18 (0.06)* 20.10 (0.05)* 20.06 (0.03)*

Model 4

Model 5

3.69 (1.02)* 0.61 (0.50) 0.39 (0.74)

0.00 (0.00)* 0.00 (0.00)* 0.00 (0.00)* 0.00 (0.00)* 1.96 (1.28) 0.91 (0.99) 0.29 (0.10)* 0.20 (0.06)* -0.10 (0.04)* 20.10 (0.03)*

0.90 (2.12) 0.49 (0.41) 1.15 (0.65) 0.00 (0.00)* 0.00 (0.00)* 1.21 (0.80) 0.19 (0.05)* -0.09 (0.02)* 0.00 (0.00)

207.92 188

118.85 188

205.66 188

209.75 188

178.82 188

Note: *Significant at 95% confidence level.

ethnic or religious lines, compared to other forms of mobilization, brings the probability of violence from 0.48 to 0.86 when all other variables are held at their mean. Groups aiming to expel a foreign occupation did not have a significant impact on the use of violence. This was expected because these types of campaigns, while they can mobilize most of the population, tend to target strong military powers. The impact of this type of campaign is expected to depend on the size of the population of the country where the campaign occurs. The marginal effect of the cross-level interaction in Model 5, between mobilization to expel a foreign occupation and population size, is displayed in Fig. 1. This graph indicates that, at low population levels, antioccupation campaigns do not significantly differ from other campaigns in their likelihood to use violence. As population increases, however, the impact becomes negative. This indicates that antioccupation campaigns are less likely to be violent in states with larger populations, providing support for H4. To test whether the strength of the negative relationship between mobilization along prodemocracy lines and the use of nonviolence depends upon the level of democratic change, we interact our prodemocracy variable with the “change” variable from the Polity IV dataset (Marshall & Jaggers, 2011). This variable measures the net continuous change in Polity IV score, with substantive positive or negative changes coming over a period of less than three years. Following the standard practice for revised polity scores, cases of authority

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Table 4. Marginal Effects of Lines of Mobilization on Use of Violence. Variable

Model 2 Democracy GDP per capita Population Polity (lagged 1 year) Beginning year Model 3 Marxist GDP per capita Population Polity (lagged 1 year) Beginning year Model 4 Ethnic GDP per capita Population Polity (lagged 1 year) Beginning year

Probability of Violence at Minimum Value

Probability of Violence at Maximum Value

0.80 0.74 0.62 0.49 0.77

0.23 0.01 0.19 0.77 0.47

0.55 0.81 0.62 0.39 0.90

0.96 0.04 0.23 0.89 0.33

0.48 0.80 0.62 0.44 0.91

0.86 0.01 0.16 0.83 0.32

collapse are coded as having a change of “0,” and cases of foreign interruption are coded as missing. Cases of no polity change are also coded as having a net change of “0.” This creates a continuum of values that ranges from 216 to 16 in country-years included in this dataset. The results from this are displayed in Table 5. The results provide support for H5. Fig. 2 displays the interaction graphically. At high levels of negative change in level of democracy, the relationship between mobilization along prodemocracy lines and the use of violence is insignificant or slightly positive. In countries that are becoming more democratic, the relationship is sharply negative. This provides support for the idea that the choice of tactics for prodemocracy movements is driven by the strategic situation that campaigns find themselves in, rather than by ideology. While a state’s level of democracy increases the likelihood that a nonstate actor will use violence, as shown in Model 2, states that are becoming more democratic see less violent prodemocracy movements. Finally, we regress the size of the ethnic group with the likelihood of violence in a subsample of cases where rebellion occurs along ethnic or religious lines. The results are shown in Model 7, on Table 6. As predicted by H6, there is a significant negative relationship between group size and the likelihood of violence, with larger ethnic groups more likely to mobilize nonviolently rather than violently.

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Fig. 1.

Population and Likelihood of Violence for Antioccupation Campaigns.

Table 5. Change in Polity Score and Likelihood of Violence for Prodemocracy Campaigns. Model 6 Campaign-level Variables Democracy Previous concessions Regime violence State-level Variables GDP per capita Population External conflict Polity (lagged 1 year) Change in Polity IV score Beginning year Interaction Democracy* change in Polity IV score Constant N

Note: *Significant at 95% confidence level.

25.18 (1.56)* 0.66 (0.79) 0.28 (0.94) 0.00 (0.00)* 0.00 (0.00)* 1.18 (1.29) 0.22 (0.07)* 0.15 (0.11) 20.07 (0.03)* 21.32 (0.86) 145.77 188

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Fig. 2.

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Change in Polity Score and Likelihood of Violence for Prodemocracy Campaigns.

Table 6. Use of Violence as Function of Group Size. Model 7 Campaign Variables Group size Goal of regime change Goal of secession External support for campaign Simultaneous violent movement State-level Variables Regime in interstate conflict Regime used violence Total excluded population Beginning year Constant N

27.92 (3.99)* 6.68 (2.62)* 2.93 (1.42)* 1.33 (1.30) 3.64 (1.37) 0.91 (1.46) 1.57 (1.85) 3.50 (2.41) 20.12 (0.05)* 241.91 67

Note: *Significant at 95% confidence level.

ROBUSTNESS CHECKS Models 1–5 control for the year that the campaign began, based on the idea that there might be a trend toward nonviolence. An alternative possibility would be to

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control for whether the campaign began during or after the Cold War. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union covertly supported violent rebel groups as part of their foreign policy, which might have increased the viability of violence during this time period, and the attractiveness of this strategy. In the time since, this support may have decreased, making violence a less viable option. Model 8 in Table A1 of the Appendix presents the results with this Cold War variable as a control instead of the beginning year. The main findings for prodemocracy, Marxist, ethnic, and anti-occupation campaigns do not change in terms of their sign and significance. This suggests that the results presented here are robust to an alternative specification of one of the key control variables. The results could also be biased due to missing cases. While the data includes a total of 256 campaigns, some of cases drop out of the model because they are missing values for the control variables. GDP per capita and population are the controls most affected by missing data. Model 9 in A1 presents the results with these two variables excluded. The results are similar in terms of the sign and significance for the key independent variables, suggesting that the results presented above are not driven by the exclusion of cases where data on those variables is absent. Model 7, which deals with groups mobilized along ethnic or religious lines, drops out two cases from the model due to the large size of the ethnic group having a major impact on the model, and the circumstances of each dropped case suggesting that they were driven by external factors. It is possible, however, that this could bias the results. In the interest of transparency, Model 10 in Table A2 of the Appendix presents the results with these cases included. The p-value on the main finding, that larger ethnic groups are more likely to use nonviolence, drops to 0.055 in Model 10. This means that the coefficient falls just short of the 95% level of confidence. It is, however, significant at the 90% level of confidence. This represents an important caveat in the findings of Model 10, as it suggests that the results might not be robust to the inclusion of additional cases, or that some cases have circumstances that may override the incentives presented in the above theory. As such, the results dealing with ethnicity should be treated as suggestive rather than conclusive, and represent a direction for future research as more cases of groups mobilized along ethnic or religious lines pushing for major political change to happen in the world, and these can be included in new models to give a more complete understanding of the phenomenon. Finally, an alternative specification of the variable used to control for population was incorporated into the analysis. In accordance with existing work on civil conflict, the natural log of population was calculated to account for the skewed distribution of population across the countries in the dataset. The log-transformed variable was included in all model specifications (Models 1–6; 8) in which population was used as a control. In all models incorporating logged population, the performance of the line of mobilization variables was consistent with those in the original models. In a few instances, control variables that were initially statistically significant were found to be just shy of significance at the 95% level of confidence. Given the consistent performance of the primary independent variables, the analyses’ findings remain robust following the alternative specification for population.

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Additional analyses were conducted to determine the relationship between the primary variables of interest after controlling for ethnic and religious fractionalization. Given the prominent role accorded to ethnicity and religion in the theoretical framework of this chapter, we run each of the models above including controls for both ethnic and religious fractionalization. These can be found in Table A3 of the Appendix. The analyses indicate robust findings for all of the primary independent variables across all of the multilevel models, as the direction of the coefficients and significance were consistent with the original multilevel models. For each multilevel model, ethnic fractionalization had a positive relationship with violence, while religious fractionalization indicated a negative relationship. However, both variables were statistically insignificant in all models. For the logistic analyses, the models were overdetermined as missing observations led to a significant reduction in degrees of freedom. In sum, our findings proved to be robust after the fractionalization controls were incorporated.

CONCLUSION We analyze the choice of violent rebellion versus nonviolent resistance. We argue that, in order to understand why some groups use violent tactics while others use nonviolent tactics, it is necessary to look at the potential size of their support base. Nonviolence resistance can be effective, and a way for groups to avoid the costs of violent rebellion, but its success depends on the ability of the group to mobilize a large number of people. Groups with a smaller cap on the size of their support base are less likely to calculate that nonviolence will be effective, and more likely to engage in violent rebellion. Groups with a larger cap are more likely to calculate that they will be able to mobilize a sufficient number of people for nonviolent resistance to be effective, and are more likely to choose this tactic. Groups that mobilize along prodemocracy lines have the potential to mobilize a large portion of society, and are more likely to employ nonviolent resistance as a result. For Marxist campaigns, it is difficult to gauge the size of their potential support base ex ante, making them more likely to use violence. Groups that mobilize along ethnic or religious lines have a smaller potential support base, making it more difficult to extract concessions nonviolently. Because of this, they are more likely to use violence. Finally, groups mobilized with the goal of expelling foreign occupation have a large potential support base, but typically target a great power. Because of this, these groups face a higher threshold for how many people they must mobilize for nonviolent resistance to be successful. This means that antioccupation campaigns are more likely to be violent in countries with small populations than countries with large populations. All of these predictions are supported using data on violent and nonviolent resistance campaigns from 1945 to 2006. We then test the mechanism by looking at the impact of shifts in Polity IV score on the likelihood of prodemocracy campaigns using violence, and the impact of ethnic group size on the likelihood of violence for ethnically mobilized groups. Both of these tests support our theory.

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These findings suggest that we should not group all of these types of movement together when analyzing how states deal with potential rebel groups. While nonviolence may be more effective than violence for some groups, these results show that nonviolence may only be viewed as the optimal method of resistance for relatively large groups. Other, smaller groups cannot anticipate that nonviolence is likely to accomplish their goals, and therefore must use violence to signal their strength. For these groups, it is possible that violence is more effective than nonviolence. Our chapter builds upon prior work on the use of nonviolence in resistance campaigns by illustrating the scope conditions of lines of mobilization under which nonviolence is effective. We feel this contribution can be of utility to policymakers facing decisions on how to respond to resistance as they will be equipped with expectations on the use of violence on the part of the campaign based nature of its mobilization. Additionally, this project adds to existing knowledge of the behavior of different types of nonstate groups at distinct temporal periods of resistance to the state. While we have an understanding of the implications of nonstate actors organizing along ideological, separatist, or antioccupation cleavages during civil conflict, our analysis sheds light upon the influence of this organizational dimension on the dynamics of resistance prior to the outbreak of war. There are several avenues for future research that build upon the findings of this project. First, examining the relationships between lines of campaign mobilization and the use of violence from a country-year, rather than campaign-year, format would enable researchers to test the hypotheses contained herein from a different methodological perspective. This design would help to identify the causal factors behind why some countries experience violent versus nonviolent resistance in a given year as well as why they experience any resistance campaigns on an annual basis. Another potential outgrowth of this project would be to further unpack resistance movement characteristics to uncover additional attributes that influence the use of violence or nonviolence. Examining the links between nonviolence and movement leadership characteristics or the issues motivating resistance would be particularly fruitful areas of future research.

NOTES 1. The terms “resistance campaign” and “group” are used interchangeably here. We conceptualize “group” broadly, including resistance campaigns that may be more loosely structured than other resistance groups such as rebel organizations. 2. In Iraq, the conflict happened in the wake of Operation Desert Storm and violence was already occurring in the country. In Burundi, the conflict was part of a larger trend of Hutu and Tutsi violence in the region. Syria and South Africa are still included in the analysis because there is not as strong a reason to believe that outcomes for those cases were driven by extenuating circumstances. In South Africa, nonviolence was used by a coalition that made up over half of the population, in line with H6. In Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood represented the majority Sunni Muslims and used violence. While this runs counter to H6, it appears to be a case that H6 predicts poorly rather than a special case necessary to drop. While it is possible that cases of groups that drew from less than 50% of the population were also, in some cases, driven by extenuating circumstances, these are still included, as their presence does not have as drastic an effect on the findings due to their values not being extreme outliers.

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APPENDIX

Table A1. Use of Violence as Function of Lines of Mobilization.

Campaign Variables Democracy Marxist Ethnic or Religious Expel occupation Previous concessions Regime violence State-level Variables GDP per capita Population External conflict Polity (lagged 1 year) Post Cold War Beginning Year Constant N

Model 8

Model 9

25.24 (2.40)* 7.61 (3.79)* 5.14 (2.55)* 0.10 (1.86) 1.42 (1.34) 0.31 (1.38)

24.96 (1.54)* 5.43 (2.35)* 3.24 (1.44)* 21.87 (1.11) 0.65 (0.84) 0.10 (1.12)

0.00 (0.00)* 0.00 (0.00)* 1.13 (2.22) 0.33 (0.16) 22.67 (1.74) 5.90 188

0.67 (1.02) 0.14 (0.06)* 20.08 (0.03)* 149.92 238

Note: *Significant at 95% confidence level.

Table A2. Use of Violence as Function of Group Size (Burundi and Iraq Included). Model 10 Campaign Variables Group size Goal of regime change Goal of secession External support for campaign Simultaneous violent movement State-level Variables Regime in interstate conflict Regime used violence Total excluded population Beginning year Constant N

Note: *Significant at 95% confidence level.

27.41 (3.86) 7.20 (2.63)* 3.11 (1.41)* 1.35 (1.32) 3.64 (1.39)* 0.96 (1.47) 1.83 (1.82) 3.87 (2.40) 20.13 (0.05)* 247.16 69

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Table A3. Use of Violence as Function of Lines of Mobilization (Controls Included for Ethnic and Religious Fractionalization). Model 11 Campaign Variables Democracy Marxist Ethnic or religious Expel occupation Previous concessions Regime violence State-level Variables GDP per capita Population External conflict Polity (lagged 1 year) Beginning year Ethnic Fractionalization Religious Fractionalization Constant N

Model 12

24.08 (1.90)* 24.68 (1.24)* 6.43 (3.31) 4.76 (2.33)* 20.21 (1.87) 0.97 (1.09) 0.38 (0.69) 0.61 (1.28) 0.77 (0.86)

Model 13

Model 14

Model 15

6.06 (2.42)* 3.69 (1.02)* 0.88 (0.70) 2.02 (1.07)

0.57 (0.51) 0.31 (0.76)

20.76 (1.16) 0.47 (0.43) 1.13 (0.66)

0.00 (0.00)* 0.00 (0.00)* 0.00 (0.00)* 0.00 (0.00)* 0.00 (0.00)* 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 0.36 (1.96) 0.79 (1.17) 1.83 (1.29) 0.80 (1.00) 1.17 (0.83) 0.28 (0.13)* 0.18 (0.06)* 0.29 (0.10)* 0.20 (0.06)* 0.19 (0.05)* 20.11 (0.05)* 20.07 (0.03)* 20.11 (0.04)* 20.11 (0.03)* 20.10 (0.02)* 1.85 (2.67) 1.22 (1.57) 1.57 (1.78) 0.80 (1.39) 0.65 (1.08) 21.52 (2.54)

20.54 (1.55)

20.93 (1.67)

21.52 (1.40)

20.85 (1.09)

227.68 181

147.11 181

226.02 181

218.19 181

191.50 181

Note: *Significant at 95% confidence level.

MARGINALIZATION AND MOBILIZING POWER IN NONVIOLENT SOCIAL MOVEMENTS Selina Gallo-Cruz

ABSTRACT In the growing field of nonviolent social movement studies, questions of power are often layered in inquiries into drivers of mobilization and dynamics of success, from the individual to the societal level. The different ways marginalized groups utilize power are not adequately theorized, however. Here I address paradigmatic approaches to understanding power in nonviolent movements, identifying conceptual limitations to explaining stratification among nonviolent resisters. In response, I develop a framework for better understanding the socially constructed origins of nonviolent power among different mobilized groups. I first provide a sociology of knowledge survey of common theories of power in nonviolent mobilization. I also review literature on mobilization among marginalized populations to identify valuable insights lacking in nonviolent movements studies. I then explore one case of marginalized nonviolent resistance, that of the Mothers of the Plaza Mayo who mobilized for an end to the Argentine Dirty War. Through this case, I develop a social constructionist framework that can be generalized to better understand how stratification shapes nonviolent resistance differently for different actors. I conclude by proposing a general framework of inquiry, guiding scholars to pay attention to four dimensions of conflict and resistance when examining the power dynamics of nonviolent movements: the temporal context of conflict, the degree of repression, actor status and positionality, and how nonviolent strategies and tactics correspond to each of these dimensions. Keywords: Marginalization; mobilization; social constructionism; nonviolence; power theory; The Madres of the Plaza Mayo Power and Protest Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Volume 44, 91–115 Copyright © 2021 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X20210000044008

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Scholars have long debated the sources and nature of power in the polity. Studies of state power tend to center on detailing the institutional origins of political influence and change. In social movements studies, questions of power are often layered in inquiries into drivers and dynamics of mobilization and mobilizing success, from the individual to the societal level. In the growing field of nonviolent studies, debates over whether power emerges through structure or rational strategies have sometimes led to intellectual stalemates over the best ways of understanding the origins, dynamics, and outcomes of nonviolence. The types of power marginalized groups utilize and the ways they utilize this power are not adequately theorized in conventional power-theorizing frameworks. More troubling to those of us focused on stratification in and across movements is the blanket assumption that nonviolent resistance might appeal to all actors for the same reasons or that nonviolent tactics might have universal outcomes, no matter which groups employ them and under different contexts, despite sometimes great disparities in social status and stratification. Here I conduct a meta-theoretical assessment of current approaches to understanding power in nonviolent movements. A sociology of knowledge of nonviolent studies illuminates the conceptual advantages and oversights of different theories. I focus on one variable I believe is significant but undertheorized across intellectual camps, that of how marginalized groups find nonviolent power. To begin to expand theorization of marginalization in nonviolent mobilization, I develop a social constructionist framework of nonviolent power. I argue that understanding how contextually unique actor statuses intersect with mobilizing opportunities helps to account for varied dynamics intrinsic to a stratified population. To illustrate the social construction of actorhood and power in a mobilizing field, I depict different opportunities for different expressions of actorhood as linked to different potential outcomes. I begin by surveying distinctive theses in nonviolent studies on how power develops. I sketch these approaches in a comparative and temporal map of conflict to illuminate how these different analyses of power diverge over the stages of conflict and in their definitions of how power is realized. I then explore one case study of a movement of marginalized nonviolent actors, the Mothers of the Plaza Mayo in Argentina. This case helps to better illustrate how marginalized actor status can expand the paradigm’s limited purview on nonviolent power. I conclude with an outline of four analytical dimensions necessary to consider to understand how marginalized actors experience and navigate nonviolent mobilizing power in different ways.

POWER IN NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE The power of nonviolence is understood to emerge through the power of people to organize, persuade, disrupt and interrupt, and redirect social forces in entirely nonviolent ways to the favor of social change. But different ontological assumptions inhere in different theoretical explanations of this power. Social scientists conceptualize nonviolence as a form of claims making comprising at least one or sometimes all of four types of political change efforts:

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(1) protest and persuasion, including marches, rallies, and symbolically charged forms of public advocacy, (2) noncooperation, including boycotts and general strikes, (3) intervention, including roadblocks or occupations (Sharp, 2008), and (4) alternative institution-building, where resisters build new social systems that effectively transform and provide alternatives to the contested features of targeted social systems (Kurtz & Kurtz, 2015; Smithey & Kurtz, 1999). Scholars have scrutinized hundreds of cases of effective nonviolent resistance. Because this research has resulted in the construction of typologies of forms of and orientations toward action and change (Carter, Clark, & Randle, 2009; Chenoweth, 2011; Lakey, 1968; Maney, 2007); the identification of different components of nonviolent mobilization linked to favorable outcomes (Ackerman & Kruegler, 1994; Chenoweth & Stephan, 2012; Gregg, 1935; Kurtz & Smithey, 2018; Sharp, 1973, 2005, 2008; Smithey & Kurtz, 1999); and the assessment of the confluence of conditions with actions that shape movement success or failure (Bartkowski, 2013; Nepstad, 2011, 2013b, 2015; Ritter, 2015; Schock, 2005, 2015), a meta-level survey helps to make sense of the divergent ways scholars have come to conceptualize and study power in nonviolent resistance. A comparison illustrates that power is conceptualized differently in different conflict phases: from potential to action, to outcome; and, power is conceptualized in distinctively different ways, as domination over common resources or as the realization of a creative goal. A great number of “people-power” studies, particularly the studies of savvy strategy developing from a Machiavellian framework, focus on how power eventuates in a desired outcome, where one group wins out over the other.1 One general thesis on people-power, therefore, defines power as domination (of a variety of economic, political, social, and cultural resources), which occurs in a hierarchical system of how contended resources will be distributed to the favor of one group over the other. This thesis ends in an eliminative outcome where one group’s power is gained only because it is taken from another. This thesis can be developed through a variety of approaches at different entry points in the development of different phases of power. Nonviolent campaign studies and many of the latter stage nonviolent revolution studies follow this trajectory. It is a widely held assertion among political theorists that power is most effectively analyzed as an outcome, many of these studies emphasizing conflictual and competitive outcomes, or power-over concerns (see Joseph, 2004). This limited purview helps focus in on competition among contenders in an agreed upon political field but de facto eliminates concerns over groups that vie for completely different political goals than those held by incumbent power-holders.2 However, a review of different types of nonviolent power studies reveals that a power outcome need not always be eliminative. A second general thesis hones in on favorable conditions as driving strategic and tactical success. Political process accounts more often than strategy-focused campaign studies give greater introspection to whole movement lifetimes, expanding the frame beyond climactic, regime-change stand-offs (Lakey, 2011; Tilly, 2004). Indeed, many frameworks aim to simply provide a map of elements in the social environment which are

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theorized as operable conditions to facilitate power development over the lifetime of a conflict. The concept of “field theory” in social movements study, pioneered by Ray’s (1999) comparative analysis of Indian women’s movements, has more recently gained good conceptual traction and does just this type of social mobilizing power mapping, seeing power as contingent on how different social actors are located differently throughout early, high, and late conflict periods.3 Political process accounts can follow either of two different outcome trajectories denoted in Fig. 1, ending in power-over accounts of domination-oriented resource struggles (see, for example, Fox Piven, 2008; Paley, 2001) or detailing how movements forge new social and political spaces in a society at large. For marginalized groups, gaining power in society at large often means a larger-scale mobilization effort but importantly, gaining power entails mobilization for inclusion into a polity or, mobilization aimed at transformation and extension of power-sharing within the polity, not necessarily the elimination of another groups’ power in that polity. It is therefore crucial to demarcate the distinction between “power-over” focused studies from “power-to” mobilization scholarship, the latter tracing power as empowerment. Power-to focused organizers in the US Civil Rights movement aimed at expanding access to resources among Blacks, not in taking those resources away from whites; the women’s movement focuses on creating equality for women, not in arresting the power of sexism for women to oppress men; the gay rights movement seeks to gain inclusion and equal rights for LGBTQ individuals, not to take those rights away from heterosexual individuals; and many in the environmental movement aim to institute healthy and sustainable living practices and policies, as so many strands of nonviolent peace movements promote creative initiatives without regard to elimination of any targeted groups. These are all examples of power-to nonviolent movements.

Fig. 1.

Three Phases of Power.

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While they may have clear contenders in campaign battles where a power-over conceptualization is apropos, to understand the broad goals and lifetimes of these movements necessitates a more meta-level understanding of power analysis. Vinthagen and Chabot (2007) and Reed and Foran (2002) find power a useful concept for explaining both processes of mobilization and outcomes. These studies present a social constructionist thesis (see also Baumgarten, Daphi, & Ullrich, 2014; Eyerman, 1991; Fuist, 2013; Jasper, 1997; Johnston & Klandermans, 1995; Meyer, Whitter, & Robnett, 2002; Polletta, 1999b; Polletta, 2004; Polletta, 2006) in outlining the social and historical changes that enable the empowerment of resisters into broad-based mobilization. In this sense, they share a general conceptual affinity with other social constructionist theories of political change that find concepts like discursive structures (or framing), legitimacy, and authority more useful mechanisms for understanding what drives social and political change at a macro-level when utilitarian frameworks prove insufficient (see Jepperson, 2002; Koenig & Dierkes, 2011). Still, this analytical refraction does not account for the different experiences of marginalized actors within and across these movements. I add to the need for greater attention to contextual location and variation, a more nuanced understanding of how marginalized actors engage with nonviolent resistance techniques with differing dynamics and outcomes. Marginalized actors are positioned at a different nexus of organization within the polity, so the geography of what constitutes an alignment of favorable political, economic, and cultural conditions varies greatly (Cockburn, 1999; Enloe, 2014). As Oliver (2013) has noted, Some groups have more influence; some are repressed more. In particular, the political opportunities available to members of majority ethnic groups are different from those available to isolated disadvantaged ethnic minorities. Opportunities for resourceful ethnic minorities are different from those for resourceful ethnic majorities. General social movements theory should incorporate these distinctions into its core. Otherwise, it risks marginalizing itself by claiming that a general theory is a theory of affluent majorities and relegating movements by oppressed minorities to the periphery of theoretical concern (235–236).

MARGINALIZATION AND MOBILIZATION While analytical blind spots persist in social movements theories that tend to treat mobilization trajectories as largely unified (Armstrong & Bernstein, 2008), in-depth case analysis of movement sectors reveals layers of mobilization, inter-movement divisions, and hierarchical arrangements of mobilizing labors (Balser, 1997; Barkan, 1986; Cole & Luna, 2010; Crawford, Rouse, & Woods, 1993; DoetschKidder, 2012; Edwards & Marullo, 1995; Gamson, 1995; Jakobsen, 1998; Kretschmer, 2014; Reyes & Ragon, 2018; Robnett, 1997; Sartain, 2007; Woehrle, 2014; Wolfson, 1993), all of which can follow various lines of stratification, along lines of class, race, ethnicity, citizenship, education, and gender, for example. Analysts of special movements among the most marginalized populations have provided important historical, empirical correctives to grand theories of peoplepower as a coherent organism-like social force (Aksoy, 2015; Baldez & Montoya,

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2005; Boris, 1993; Boyle, 1993; Fallon, 2008; Khalil, 2014; Luna, 2009; McAllister, 1988, 1991; Paschel, 2016). And scholars working to glean insights from studies of the most marginalized offer us several important considerations to be incorporated into a framework for marginalized mobilizing power. First, we understand that because marginalized actors experience oppression in unique and overlapping ways, the nature of marginalized actors’ distinctive grievances differentially shapes the nature of their resistance (Einwohner, Hollander, & Olson, 2000; Harriss, 2006; Mattoni, 2012; Rosigno, 1994; Van Delinder, 2009). Marginalization can create an impetus that crosses other serious social divisions in a surge of collective mobilization (Hasson, 1993; Kuumba, 2002; Neuhouser, 1995; Stephen, 1995; Van Delinder, 2009; West & Blumberg, 1990), but so too can it reinforce social boundaries that impose barriers to mobilization (Freeman, 1978; Neuhouser, 1995; Rhode, 2014; Van Delinder, 2009; Vogt, 2015). Tsutsui’s work, in particular (2017, 2018), has shown that the social construction of actorhood can at one historical period serve as a vector for systemic repression while, at others, or in the shifting from local to global polities, can provide new opportunities for mobilization, as the distinctive nature of actor status construction can also significantly shift across contexts. In her expanded review of ethnic mobilization studies, Oliver (2017) elaborates on the foundational importance of historical legacies. She explains that how ethnic and racial minorities are constructed in the processes of state formation directly affects how they are stratified into unequal political and social systems. Significant among the outcomes of these legacies, Oliver (2017) identifies: “access to democratic processes for achieving group goals, experience of repression, need for allies, identity construction, processes of consciousness raising, and bases of mobilization” (p. 1). Marginalization shapes different patterns of mobilization, framing of movement issues, the perception and arrest of different political and cultural opportunities, and different movement identities and organizational forms (Kuumba, 2002; Zemlinskaya, 2010). Marginalization within movements shapes which types of actors become movement leaders and how movement leadership develops in stratified spheres (Robnett, 1997), and the course of tactical and strategic development and success (Asal, Legault, Szekely, & Wilkenfeld, 2013; Blee, 1991; Einwohner, Hollander, & Olsen, 2000; McCammon, 2003), and radicalization (Neuhouser, 1995). Considering the insights of stratification-focused mobilization studies, I suggest an important remedy to oversights on unequal actor status is found in closely examining the many different ways different social groups are constructed and how these constructions shape the forms of power they pursue. Institutional theory treats actors and thus actor statuses as historically socially constructed. Although institutional theory tends to focus on sameness and not stratification, institutional theory generally emphasizes that the assumptions we make about different actors, the roles we ascribe to them, what we expect from them in any given web of relations, all of these dimensions of actorhood are constituted in historically unique ways across different social contexts (Meyer, 2010). “Neo” institutional theories explain that actor construction often can be but should not be taken for granted in political and global analysis because whole

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social systems of social organization are predicated on assumptions and beliefs about who individuals are and what they are capable of (Drori, Meyer, & Hwang, 2006; Meyer & Jepperson, 2000). This point is underscored by the fact that there exists sometimes profound decoupling between national proclamations of citizen entitlements and on-the-ground realizations of them, and this can explain historically significant forms of inequality. A noninstitutional history of global waves of women’s rights movements provides one detailed example (Berkovitch, 2002). Correspondingly, a feminist social constructionist theory of power contends that much of what we have and can experience in the social world stems from the collective identity we are socially accorded by more powerful others who dominate the social institutions defining stratification. Feminist theorists have long articulated the many ways in which women, as a social category, based on the social construction of what can be expected of the female sex, have been assumed to have particular abilities, strengths, potentials, weaknesses, and limitations that have underlined the categorical ways in which they have been excluded or limited within a range of social institutions (Bartky, 1990; de Beauvoir, 1949; Fisher & Embree, 2000; Hein¨amaa & Rodemeyer, 2010; Kruks, 2001; Lorde, 2007; MacKinnon, 1989; Mohanty, 2003; Moraga, 2015; Okin, 1989; Pateman, 1988; Young, 1990). Ontological conceptions of actorhood undergird the unequal distribution of other more tangible forms of resources. And these more tangible expressions have perennially galvanized constructionist theorists to think deeply on the constitutive dimensions of such stark disparities. A social constructionist thesis on stratification and mobilizing power writ onto studies of large scale conflict and mobilization would posit, therefore, that the map for mobilization may be drawn in part from macro-phenomenological scripts and expectations orienting the dynamics of our collective relationality, as these scripts also correspond to the distribution of other political, social, and economic resources. As Mohanty (1986) has so eloquently argued, “It is not color or sex which constructs the grounds for these struggles. Rather, it is the way we think about race, class, and gender-the political links we choose to make among and between struggles” (p. 207). Critical race theorists have also followed from a social constructionist account of inequality, detailing the ways in which individuals are assumed to possess qualities of lesser or greater potential and ability based on their racial identities and how these assumed powers have varied phenomenally across temporal, cultural, and political contexts (Alexander, 2012; Appiah & Gutmann, 1996; Blum, 2002; Bonilla-Silva, 2013; Crenshaw, 1989; Kousser, 1999; Mallon, 2006; Wilson, 2010). This concept has salience not just for understanding how individuals deal with the crisis of status disparity among the nexus of social worlds in which any one group regularly travels; it has importation to a mobilization analysis of how power is extended differently to different collective actors in different social contexts. Said (1994) elaborated of these processes at the international level that our experiences of oppression are so entrenched in categorical scripts and actor statuses even as they stem from socially constructed sources, that they are able to fuel phenomenal global political and economic transformations of power. Bracey II (2016) and

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Reyes and Ragon (2018) have likewise emphasized the need for Black movements and ethno-racial movements to theorize mobilization directly through a critical race studies lens. In line with this thinking, some multi-institutional analyses of political process have raised caution to how we study the ways resources are accessed by different mobilized constituencies, be they symbolic or material (Armstrong & Bernstein, 2008; Castellano, 2015; Oliver, 2013; Petras, 2008; Snow & Owens, 2014). Feminist critiques of nonviolent people-power assumptions, specifically, have deconstructed Sharpian nonviolence theory to argue that the many ways in which resources hold different value to different collectively organized social actors reveals a serious limitation of power-over analyses: its assumed precondition that resources hold a common denomination of value across contenders, that conflictual actors all want the same things (McGuinness, 1993; see also; Elshtain, 1995; Margolis, 1989). These and other studies of the many ways in which movements explicitly committed to nonviolence are also stratified (see Gallo-Cruz, 2016), offer many important caveats to universalist elaborations suggesting savvy strategy or favorable conditions could be arrested with equal effects across diverse and stratified populations. In my study of women’s nonviolence movements, case comparison reveals that some women’s movements experience an amplified political “invisibility,” that is, they were disregarded by authorities as lacking true political power before the conflict and, despite their best efforts to protest loudly and with great impact, they were also ignored during the conflict (Gallo-Cruz, 2021). This biased assumption, that women lack the power to make any meaningful political impact, affords women an unexpected and shielded form of power, off the radar of regime expectations and repression. To explain this phenomenon across movements and various other mobilized but marginalized social groups, I argue that a social constructionist framework is needed. A social constructionist lens points us to the sociological intersection of the nature and boundaries of political conflict, as well as the nature and degree of repression, and the historically constructed stratification of social statuses, in interaction with the strategies and tactics of resisters. This adds a multi-layered complexity to nonviolent power theorizing, but one that is essential to explaining the complex stratification of power before, during, and following political conflicts. Below I detail one particular case study to demonstrate how a social constructionist lens on marginalization enhances nonviolent power theorizing. I use this one highly documented case study as anomaly to the normal paradigm to illustrate how marginalized peoples may realize mobilizing power in unexpected ways, the “unexpected” understood as a key mechanism shaping successful nonviolent resistance (Gregg, 1935; Sharp, 1970). As I will illustrate below, this has occurred for the Mothers of the Plaza Mayo in Argentina through three phases of conflict. Because this case is extensively documented, I have utilized secondary data including national and case histories, memoirs and interview collections, news reports, intergovernmental organization, non-governmental organization (NGO), and government documents, and case studies. I have employed a historical process tracing method, examining first, the emergence and development of mobilization among the Mothers as compared with other resistance actors in the common context

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of conflict and repression then, following their mobilization strategies, experiences, and outcomes throughout the course of the conflict and in its aftermath. This systematic examination allowed me to weigh and compare the impact of different social-environmental variables upon the Mothers’ mobilization efforts and their strategic and tactical choices (Bennett, 2008; George & Bennett, 2005; Lange, 2012; Mahoney, 2004; Mahoney, 2012). To better understand how their socially constructed statuses played a role in these processes, I then scrutinized the development of resisters’ actorhood status in the polity before, during, and in the late stages of mobilization, and also weighed theirs and others statuses against the tactics and strategies of each group of resisters, resources, and networks, the nature of their different experiences of repression, and the different mobilization outcomes. Following my exploration of the dynamics of power in this particular case, I propose a generalizable framework that can incorporate this multi-layered analysis. I conclude by outlining a thematic approach for applying a social constructionist lens to the study of nonviolent mobilization and power among marginalized groups.

MARGINALIZED MOTHERS AND THE ARGENTINE DIRTY WAR Between 1976 and 1982, some 30,000 people, about 80% of them between the ages of 16 and 30, were “disappeared” by Argentina’s ruling military junta. That they have been called disappeared refers to both the manner in which they were suddenly removed from society without warning or due process and that it occurred without a trace as to their whereabouts, although it is now known or assumed that 90% of them were killed. About 10% of women in captivity were pregnant and gave birth during their imprisonment (women represented 30% of captives overall). And an estimated 400 babies and small children, most born in captivity, were kidnapped from these victims and placed under illegal adoptions through the military networks of the junta. Like other dirty wars, this was not a civil war, but a war waged by a military government against civilians who did not voluntarily submit to the warfare and by means that utilized state resources in subversive ways. During this dirty war, victims were abducted by military-police forces in unexpected and typically (but not always) nighttime home raids. The victims were usually sent to detention centers for political interrogation, were often tortured through beating, starvation, waterboarding, masking, sexual assault, and the electrical prod was frequently used to torture many sensitive bodily areas including the genitals. After torture, most of the victims were held temporarily in detention centers (346 active detention centers were reported following the war’s end) and they were eventually killed, many of them drugged and dropped into the ocean on military “death flights.” For these reasons, scholars now also increasingly note that the aim and effect of the dirty war was in fact a form of genocide against the assumed political enemies of the military state. It was in this context that “Las Madres de la Plaza Mayo,” or the Mothers of the Plaza Mayo, were born. This name of “Las Madres” meaning “the Mothers,”

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was given to a collectively organized group of Argentine mothers of the disappeared during the dirty war of the late 1970s and early 1980s, following their critical acclaim by a supportive public. Although they were not referred to this name throughout the conflict, they were known, rather, as “Las Locas” or the “Crazy Women” (Fisher, 1989), a label telling of how they were received by authorities who wished to dismiss them and their political claims. Following the dirty war, and once the name Las Madres had been conferred, they registered a formal organization of Las Madres de la Plaza Mayo, in honor of the location where their weekly protests had been held in the city’s center plaza. Although they were derided and treated with disdain by the regimes they contested throughout the dirty war, so celebrated now are the Mothers of the Plaza Mayo in Argentina and in world history that hundreds of public statements have been composed and orchestrated to praise, study, analyze, and emulate their activism, in books, journals, news and magazine articles, theses and dissertations, websites, musical albums, peace and human rights awards, conferences and speaking events. Typical conceptualization of nonviolent power would be inadequate for explaining resistance during the Argentine dirty war, for capturing the entirety of the field of contenders and the innocently targeted victims, or for understanding how and why the Mothers were able to mobilize in ways that forever changed the political landscape. Firstly, the Argentine dirty war, neither a civil war, nor a publicly orchestrated genocide, but one carried out surreptitiously by a military engaged in a haphazardly organized repression, and its resistance, cannot fit neatly into a traditional nonviolent campaign or regime change movement framework. The early field of conflict was at first characterized by a harsh anti-insurrectionist campaign that came to be known as the “Proceso,” or the “Process.” This campaign was not unique in recent Argentine history. It followed six other coups d’´etat in the 20th century. Like many before this one, the lines between populist support and military takeover were blurry. It is important to note that just before this particular junta, inflation at a rate of 335% had been used to justify a restoration of state control via the “bombs, death, and ideology” approach that was common of other military takeovers (Finchelstein, 2014). A power-over approach that would focus only on the transfer of rulership would overlook those resisters who had organized via formal political processes, from the outset of the Proceso. While it might not seem a social movement tactic, in this context of sweeping violent repression, it was a bold move against state power, challenging military law with democratic process. Legal action was taken among those most courageous to voice their resistance as they openly inquired about missing persons, despite the disappearances that had often come with military rule (though never of this scale, to be understood only after the war’s counts of total disappearances). Among these resisters, many formed new organizations. An organization called the League of Human Rights, comprised of lawyers and judges, brazenly formally challenged the regime by filing thousands of writs of habeas corpus, though most courts denied their processing. Many other groups organized to place political pressure on the regime both at home and through international lobbying. These included the Families of the Disappeared for Political Reasons;

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the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights; the Ecumenical Movement for Human Rights; the Latin American Peace and Justice Service Argentine League (Hodges, 1991); a fathers’ group founded by an attorney, Emilio Migñone (Steiner, 2003); and the Center for Legal and Social Studies (Bouvard, 1994). Fig. 2 details that, first, in the early stage of high repression, all the typically identified resources utilized to facilitate resistance by organizing beyond established legal processes, including political opportunities and indigenous networks, were closed off. Repression ensured resistance was eliminated among those labeled subversive, all those actors assumed threatening. This included student groups, leftist political coalitions, lawyers, professors, union organizers, and laborers. While about 1/3 of the disappeared were, in fact, women, they were disappeared as belonging to one of the other social groups targeted, if not labor organizers or intellectuals, they were hospital workers or police officers purged by the regime. The Mothers began to vocalize opposition to the disappearances early on. But the Mothers, many of them conservative housewives, were not counted among the potentially threatening; they were assumed powerless. So, they were ignored, made fun of by police and other officials they petitioned, or when they gained attention, they were lied to or verbally harassed. That they presented themselves as serious political contenders was made a mockery and they were chided that their children were probably picked up as terrorists or prostitutes. This “political invisibility,” the authorities’ disregard of the Mothers political power, gave the Mothers an ironic and unexpected organizing space, free from the repression others experienced. As the Mothers mobilized more publicly in 1977, growing from 12 mothers to hundreds of mothers, they marched in the Plaza Mayo, considered the center of

Fig. 2.

Invisibility, Mobilization, and Power in Argentina.

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the city and of public political importance. They marched even as repression was executed in broad daylight. When a journalist was gunned down in public, they petitioned the President for a meeting. Wasting no time awaiting his reception, they also began actively lobbying foreign journalists to publicize their stories to international audiences. They immediately gained radio time on Voz de America and BBC radio. Despite their disregard by the regime, the Mothers gained in regard and respect among a population growing in fear of the regime’s impunity. Public fears of repression heightened and many people silenced themselves of open opposition for their own safety. Many also began to take confidence in the “Crazies” marching on the Plaza. Soon, people come to them with reports of more disappearances. Then, 300 Mothers gathered nearly 24,000 petitions and presented this petition to the regime, demanding knowledge of the disappeared. Still, they were largely ignored and the disappearances surged in numbers, with 36% of them occurring in 1977 and over 51% occurring during the Madres’ growing mobilization in the following years. Just as they were dismissed as irrelevant to the political field, more repression created more mothers looking for their disappeared loved ones, and the movement grew. New Mothers found power in spaces off the radar of the regime’s repressive focus. On the one hand, their power, unseen by the regime, could be considered in a “power-over” analysis, the power of peace and reconciliation over the violence of the disappearances and the torture and detainments. But the Mothers’ claims during the early and high stages of conflict had nothing to do with political rule. They simply wanted to know where their loved ones were and demanded their safe return. Thus, pushing this limited conception of power on the Mothers’ campaign limits a full understanding of their mobilization efforts. Theirs was also an empowerment-focused movement, the Mothers mobilizing a “power-to,” the power to envision a democratic society, a fair and just process for all citizens. It was both a campaign-based movement, but not for resources the regime wanted, and a movement to restore human rights, expand citizenship in a time of political repression, and rebuild democracy, a transformative effort. It is important to document how their efforts at this stage of the conflict also traversed political fields, working at once as domestic organizers and as lobbying authorities in international and transnational fields.4 Tactically, the Mothers wrote reports on disappearances they had learned about, and documented their condemnations of the regime on paper money and in flyers inserted into Church missals. They lobbied international professionals visiting Argentina for their conferences and tourists that had come for the World Cup, scouring the papers for news of any large group of international outsiders scheduled to come. Soon they raised funds to travel to the Vatican to lobby the Pope and to Washington D.C. to meet with Senator Kennedy and a number of other international NGOs. These expanded field-mobilization efforts also render the typical framework limited to fully explain the Mothers’ nonviolent mobilizing power. The regime continued to ignore the Mothers and focused their efforts instead on international diplomatic meetings in France and in Geneva where their diplomatic standing with powerful international others was called into question. But the Mothers

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acted as vital vectors of information to these outside authorities. The Mothers had been constantly collecting and funneling reports through foreign journalists. They would gain visibility only through proxy of external authorities. When theirs and others’ reports flooded the offices of the US Embassy, the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights and the Organization of American States who in turn demanded the regime offer information and explanation, the regime acknowledged to outsiders that some “subversives” had been detained, as they then scrambled to cover the extent and nature of those detainments. The Mothers were both visible and influential in the expanded transnational field of human rights. That their power is socially constructed is emphasized by this expanded field analysis. In comparison of the Mothers’ mobilization effects at home and abroad, it is apparent that their socially constructed status had a direct effect on their organizing outcomes. Because they were disregarded in the local polity as “crazy housewives,” the Mothers amplified their social and political power by shifting their focus into an expanded conflict field. Somewhat to their surprise, they gained heightened visibility and respect in this international arena. To add to the limitations of the regime’s disregard of the Mothers’ efforts, the Mothers’ political inexperience at home gave them even greater credibility as truth-telling advocates among the international human rights community. Their efforts were picked up by human rights groups in Sweden, France, and around the world. Starting with a generous donation of $25,000 kronos from a group of supporters in the Netherlands, other groups began to raise money to support the Mothers’ formal registration as an NGO that could work for a peaceful end to the dirty war. They also were befriended by Catholic peaceworker Adolfo Perez Esquivel who invited a small group of them to receive the Nobel Peace Prize with him in 1980. Their altered ontological status in the transnational conflict field opened access to resources and opportunities and skills for action otherwise cut off at home. It was in these socially constructed political spaces where the Mothers were ignored domestically and lauded internationally that they could both oppose the repression, demanding its end, as they also prefiguratively envisioned the most desirable transformation. For this reason, a conflict resolution and post-conflict field analysis is vital in explaining the power of the marginalized. In its final stage, the war came to an end through a combination of internal and external pressures. Some of these were geopolitical changes, as the regime at the time (the presidency had changed hands from Rafael Videla to Roberto Viola in 1981 and to Leopoldo Galtieri in 1982) could no longer stand up to its opponents abroad. The Mothers had effectively continued to ramp up their mobilizing efforts, and they became an internationally critically acclaimed formal human rights organization. The Mothers’ organized some of the largest protests the country had known, demanding information and reconciliation following the disappearances, orchestrating a large 24-hour march around the plaza, an occupation of the Cathedral, and a public ten-day fast in the city center. Instead of inter-systemic battles for power, however, the Mothers, still unrecognized as true contenders by the regime, worked for a counter-systemic power.

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This stems in part from their marginalized social position as Mothers of the disappeared inspired their exceptional approach to justice and reconciliation. They persisted long after the war and the democratically elected transition in 1983. The Mothers continued large marches in the Plaza but now, each one held a photo of their loved-one disappeared. Their mobilizing power still grew as they became a beacon of justice and healing. By the late 1980s, their marches included tens of thousands of supporters. They demanded information about the fate of each victim of the dirty war and refused official efforts to close the doors on the past, proposals to compensate families economically for their losses, or to exhume bodies buried as final documentation of the end of the dirty war. The Mothers pushed for prosecution of all involved, resisting amnesty offered to lower ranking officers, and they collected and publicized a “Gallery of Repressors,” officers they wanted held accountable for their crimes. A newer committee of Mothers called themselves the “Grandmothers of the Plaza Mayo” and began focusing exclusively on the reuniting of the babies born in captivity and put up for illegal military adoptions. Through DNA testing, the Grandmothers have organized the reunification of approximately 25% of kidnapped children with their genetic grandparents and extended families. Through so many other efforts they have mobilized against any conclusion to the dirty war’s impunity that would not bring justice for lives lost and disrupted. In this way, many scholars have praised their efforts as completely reconfiguring the “politics of memory” in Argentina, instituting a new legacy commitment to human rights (Barahona de Brito, Gonz´alez Enr´ıquez, & Aguilar, 2001; Bosco, 2004; Jelin, 1994). This act of power, waged far into the post-conflict period, is also not a power-over any one regime nor is it a solely formal political campaign. Rather, it is a deeply political movement pushed forward through radical and transformative cultural ideals about justice, reconciliation, and healing. An assessment of the different mobilization trajectory of the Mothers of the Plaza Mayo offers a foundational framework for understanding marginalization in mobilization. The Mothers’ passage and mobilization through three phases of conflict was characteristically different than other activists who mobilized against the regime for a number of reasons. First, their status at the outset of the conflict relegated them as “unthreatening” and assumed powerless and thus fortuitously off the radar of repression. In several unexpected ways, the disregard the Mothers experienced proved beneficial to this particular context of high repression.5 Their mobilization strategies and tactics grew over the period of conflict in ways significantly shaped by their status and the changing nature of the local field as well as their movement into new and different fields. As the local mobilizing field was closed off during growing repression, the Mothers mobilized freely in unrecognized spaces, then with greater visibility, regard, and respect in international spaces gaining new resources and support for their cause. Their power in the transnational arena grew the Mothers’ authority to work on reconstruction efforts and as internationally recognized leaders of the human rights movement in Argentina following the dirty war. Equally important to their unique structural opportunities, their social experience as housewives and Mothers gave them a distinctive social

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understanding of justice that in turn equipped them with a distinctive approach to reconciliation and political transformation far into the post-conflict period.

A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST FRAMEWORK A social constructionist framework is much needed to address the myopia in power theories that, by default, assume all actors to be driven by common motivations, in pursuit of common outcomes, or engaged with common strategies and tactics in the same ways. Time and political geography constitute foundational considerations as the nature of conflict and repression is contextually dependent. A social constructionist approach means that we first ask, “how could this have happened differently?” and then scrutinize contextual commonalities and distinctions to understand why. Here I have explored in depth the socially constructed nature of actor status in the case of the Mothers of the Plaza Mayo. To emphasize the socially constructed nature of actorhood is not to rob individuals of their agency, as rational-choice theorists so often wrongly surmise. Rather, the social construction of actor status is an understanding of central importance to the study of inequality. Different actors’ statuses, as they have developed and continue to be constrained by a convergence of historical forces and social institutions, have much to tell us about why otherwise equally capable individuals realize different levels of power in any given polity. My objective here is to bring this vital understanding into the study of nonviolent mobilization and power. To do so, we must give greater attention to the particular forms of power the most marginalized of resisters realize, even (and perhaps especially) in highly repressive environments. Through enduring historical economic, political, and cultural legacies, this socially constructed status imposes a structure of stratification relegating some actors to be treated quite differently than others, in both settled and unsettled times. The nature of socially constructed statuses also leads marginalized actors toward different motivations and resources for navigating conflicts in unique ways. This may result in mobilizing opportunities distinctive to the particular ways these actors have experienced political repression. The socially constructed nature of marginalized statuses is emphasized through comparative analysis, both historical and transnational, as the context of the field and the actors’ position in it become more apparent. I urge scholars to consider multiple layers that together shape the contours of how nonviolent strategies and tactics are engaged with and how they work. Strategies and tactics are employed in dynamic social fields, each differentially impacted by an idiosyncratic historical legacy and also the intersection of patterned social institutions and power relations. The diagrams I have provided offer a pictorial framework for understanding how marginalization shapes the mobilization pathway. A social constructionist analysis can follow through four analytical dimensions to add greater specificity to the unique trajectories of different movement histories. Scholars should pay special attention to each movement’s: stages of conflict, degree of repression,

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actor status and positionality, and particular and changing engagements with different nonviolent strategies and tactics as these other dimensions shift. Stages of Conflict A stage of conflict examination helps to explain how and why movements have followed particular trajectories. A data-driven analysis will help to determine how many stages to demarcate and which to focus on. In my diagrams, I have depicted the conflict resolution as a transition defining line with the post-conflict period as a third stage. But my qualitative historical analysis of the movement of the Mothers of the Plaza Mayo unpacks how the Mothers’ identities, strategies, and power changed form, leading up to, through and following this demarcation of electoral regime change. For different studies, the resolution period could be scrutinized in greater detail when trying to understand the nature of nonviolent tactical outcomes or distinctive actors’ roles in this post-conflict process. Certainly, this period is one in which marginalization tends to reappear, deepen, or change form and minorities become politically invisible in new ways. Although, if understanding the relationship between strategical and tactical efficacy and regime change is the object of analysis, outlining and studying mobilization through earlier stages may be more pertinent. Period analysis should also be considered with degree of repression, as the nature of repression is liable to change corresponding with how new actors enter the field at different stages, or how strategies and tactics shift, and following other political, economic, and social changes. My analysis has demonstrated that both forms of “power-over” and “power-to” nonviolent mobilization may change over time. To understand how and why, we must give greater attention to the unique sociological ecological properties of each conflict stage. Repression The nature and degree of repression is an essential variable determining part of how nonviolence works and how different actors mobilize. In the Argentine dirty war, repression was uniquely socially constructed as it followed the regime’s collective perception of who threatened their power. Repression closed opportunities for some and opened new opportunities for others. The study of repression is broad in political sociology and international studies, an extensive review of which is beyond the scope of this article. As of late, nonviolent scholarship has given closer attention to how repression follows resistance, both violent and nonviolent (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011), military loyalties or defection (Nepstad, 2013a), and in the face of global waves of rightwing populism (Sombatpoonsiri, 2018). Kurtz, Smithey, and colleagues (2018) detail the myriad ways in which repression can undercut regime authority and open new opportunities for nonviolent power. I have emphasized the unexpected effects of socially constructed statuses on repression, where marginalized actors elided the most heinous violence because they were not assumed to be serious political contenders. While other forms of marginalization lead to direct targeting, violence, and killing, the degree of

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repression and its socially constructed development and execution merits close sociological scrutiny in any study of nonviolent resistance. But it should be studied in interaction with other dimensions of the social construction of the field of conflict. Scholars should ask, “Why have repressors focused on the targets they pursue?” And, “How?” Also important to ask is, “Who have they ignored?” And, “Why?” In the case of the Mothers of the Plaza Mayo, I traced the changing nature of repression following the Mothers’ lobbying of outside authorities to whom the regime was more attentive and deferential. Where Goffman (1956) once presented a social constructionist account of the nature of deference and demeanor as a form of obligated regard for others, both subordinate and symmetrical, the opposite frame can be applied in a repression analysis. We should ask, “Who is so regarded as worthy to challenge or attempt to eliminate as a contender through violence?” And concordantly, we should also ask who is not and why. Answering why impels us to study the historical development of the field (before, during, and sometimes following the conflict) as well as the historical nature of how actor statuses and their relations have been constructed within that field. Actor Status The status of the Mothers of the Plaza Mayo changed little from the time preceding the onset of the dirty war through their early and even high stages of mobilization; at least, their status changed little within the domestic field in the eyes of repressors. It was important for me to research the stratification of Argentine society before the dirty war to better understand how their status acted as a key variable imbuing them shielded from repression and thus with enhanced mobilizing power. The statuses of their children, as intellectuals and legal and labor advocates, were statuses immediately targeted by the junta as threatening and potentially powerful. But the junta was working with a different cognitive understanding of power than the people were and the international human rights regime. In their theory of the cultural construction of modern agency, Meyer and Jepperson (2000) trace common global tropes of modern actorhood extending Mead’s thesis that we create ideas of Others and how actors are to correspond with them in distinctive role-playing exercises, though Meyer and Jepperson (Meyer & Jepperson, 2000) focus on a modern, global scale. From these historically particular constructions, they argue, socially constructed forms of agency follow, as authority, legitimacy, and the responsibility to act follow scripted legacies. Here I suggest we add a stratification lens to understanding the social construction of actorhood, as stratification studies have helped to underscore how very different conceptualizations and constructions of otherhood are writ on institutions and into politics during both settled and unsettled times. We cannot fully understand the power of nonviolent mobilization without first parsing out the particularities of different conceptions of actorhood that lead some actors to repress others, but not all others, and some resisters to support the strategies and tactics that uphold their ideals of who should be entitled to particular rights and forms of citizenship.

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Strategies and Tactics Only after understanding these three contextual layers of history, repression, and actor status and stratification, can scholars fully understand how different nonviolent strategies and tactics are employed to build people power. Much has been written on which strategies and tactics are powerful across social contexts and which are constrained by different social, political, and economic forces. Nonviolent studies have not yet given close enough scrutiny to how different actors use nonviolent mobilizing tactics with disparate outcomes and how these are related to pre-existing forms of social stratification. I have presented a framework for considering mobilization over the development of a conflict, under different degrees of repression, and corresponding to different actors who may have distinctive conceptualizations and motivations for their grievances. Scholars wanting to better understand how marginalization shapes mobilization and nonviolent power should ask questions of strategic and tactical efficacy through the lenses of history, political context, and stratification. A social constructionist approach could be applied to Sharp’s (2008) taxonomy of nonviolent resistance forms (protest and persuasion, nonviolent intervention, and noncooperation) through a case comparative approach that analyzes historical stages, repression, and actor status and stratification with success in each of forms of nonviolent resistance. Campaign databases such as the NAVCO dataset 3.0 (Chenoweth, Pickney, & Lewis, 2017) includes tactical selection data from 26 countries. The Swarthmore Global Nonviolent Action Database is another excellent resource that, like NAVCO, is campaign organized, but can provide a starting point into a study of movements. Questions that could be asked of strategies and tactics and layered into a multi-dimensional analysis include, “How have historically marginalized actors come to experience repression in new ways?” “Do different nonviolent tactics shape these trajectories?” “How does repression change tactical choices and outcomes for marginalized groups?” “How does political invisibility change the strategic and tactical choices of marginalized movements?” And, “Which forms of tactics do marginalized resisters use with greater success and under different degrees of repression?”

IN CONCLUSION One way to begin to understand how marginalization shapes nonviolent mobilization is to remind ourselves of some of the lessons we have learned from the most general level study of conflict. Not all conflicts are equal. Some conflicts unfold between comparable contenders. Others deepen already profound power disparities. Some develop quickly. Others grow slowly and take decades or longer to resolve. Some conflicts consume whole societies. Others are carefully managed in isolated and targeted incidences. Nonviolent conflicts also occupy diverse forms. Here I have taken a survey of different sociological approaches to conflict to better understand how questions of inequality among resisters often lie outside of the typical frame. To remedy this

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oversight, I have developed a social constructionist approach to understanding marginalization, mobilization, and power through one case study that provides some generalizable insights. This framework highlights actor status as one significant variable explaining nonviolent strategic and tactical opportunities and successes. General level surveys of tactical and strategic effectiveness have provided foundational knowledge of when and why nonviolence works. This knowledge now begs the important questions of, for whom does nonviolence work, how, and under what conditions? Future studies should question the stratification dynamics among marginalized peoples that may differently affect the ways they find mobilizing power. As socially constructed techniques for conflict resolution, much greater specificity and nuance must be given to understanding how different actors engage with nonviolent strategies and tactics in divergent ways and with unequal outcomes. I suggest we begin to acknowledge that visibility and power have vantage points defined by sociological legacies in societies with great diversity and often great inequality. The social constructionist framework I have provided makes for an excellent starting point for scholars to dig more deeply into case studies on nonviolent power and to begin to illustrate how inequality maps onto fields of conflict in some predictable and some unexpected ways.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author offers thanks to the support of the Kroc Institute’s Gender, Conflict, and Peacebuilding Fellowship and research support provided by College of the Holy Cross as well as to scholars’ generous insights in presentations given at the UC Irvine Center for the Study of Democracy, the University of New Mexico Sociology Department, and the Smith College social movements colloquium. Many careful suggestions from editors and anonymous reviewers helped to make this a much-improved manuscript.

NOTES 1. This definition of power as outcome is also common among social movement scholars that address the “power in movement,” where power is identified in sweeping changes in the organization of personal lives, in policy, or in the structure of the polity more generally (Tarrow, 1998). Scholars have noted that a much greater number of social movements studies attempt to disentangle what leads to successful power outcomes (Banaszak, 2005). This could mean an outcome that in effect achieves a “balancing of power,” where political power is shared by multiple actors in a strategic effort to hedge a monopolization of power by any one, more powerful actor (Lobell, 2014). Or it can provide more agnostic accounts of how variables of different forms of social power coalesce into broad-based mobilization. 2. Lukes’ seminal thesis on power, power he defined as outcomes defined by resourcedomination (1974, also 2005), fits squarely in this model. Lukes, like Sharp and also Gramsci on whom Lukes draws, has assumed power to be waged in a competitive and eliminative fashion where “A exercises power over B, when A affects B in a manner contrary to B’s interests” (1974:27). Furthermore, Lukes elaborates that the distortion of B’s interests and the complete usurping of B’s power better qualifies A’s true and complete power over B. While different scholars in the family of Marxian power theory analyses differ on the subtleties of how power works through different combinations of material

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conditions and cultural-ideological orientations, the Machiavellian notion that consent must be withdrawn from the oppressor has become the operative measure of power among “power-over” studies (Fox Piven & Cloward, 1966; Gamson, 1975). Gramsci, Bourdieu (1972), and Foucault (1990) could all fold into such a power-theory family tree on this account. 3. Some of these attempts follow a more utilitarian outlining of key conditions (see Fligstein & McAdam, 2015) and others work out more cultural-analytical explanations of the various tracks in which different types of institutional arrangements can follow through from one phase of power to another (Armstrong & Bernstein, 2008), although such field theorizing has yet to engage with power explicitly and extensively. 4. This field-shifting mobilization might be considered a “boomerang” strategy to bring outside political pressures to bear on domestic authorities (see Keck & Sikkink, 1998). Although, the Mothers were admittedly acting out of desperation to do anything and everything to end the dirty war and, unlike other NGOs studied in the development of the boomerang concept, the Mothers had no transnational ties or organizational associations before their mobilization against the dirty war. 5. Elsewhere (Gallo-Cruz, 2021) I elaborate on how the Mothers’ political invisibility helped to allow them a free space for collective action (see also Polletta, 1999a).

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SECTION II POWER OF INSTITUTIONS AND TRADITION

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ILLEGITIMACY, POLITICAL STABILITY, AND THE EROSION OF ALLIANCES: LESSONS FROM THE END OF APARTHEID IN SOUTH AFRICA* Eric W. Schoon and Robert J. VandenBerg

ABSTRACT Illegitimacy is widely identified as a cause of revolution and other forms of transformative political change, yet when and how it affects these processes is ambiguous. We examine when and how illegitimacy affects the stability of political regimes through a historical analysis of South Africa’s National Party (NP) and its apartheid regime, which lasted from 1948 to 1994. Many scholars of South Africa identify the regime’s illegitimacy as a catalyst for the end of apartheid. Yet, consistent with assertions that illegitimacy does not result in political instability, the NP maintained power for decades despite a domestic crisis of legitimacy and a global movement that decried the apartheid regime’s illegitimacy. Interrogating this contradiction, we detail how the regime’s illegitimacy contributed to the negotiated revolution in South Africa when it resulted in unacceptable costs for the allies that the government depended on for survival, motivating those allies to withdraw support. Building on our findings, we detail how turning attention to the ways that illegitimacy affects relationships with allies – rather than particular outcomes, such as revolution or state failure – allows us to account for variation in both when and how illegitimacy matters. Keywords: Apartheid; illegitimacy; legitimacy; revolution; South Africa; relational sociology *

Authorship is equal and alphabetically listed.

Power and Protest Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Volume 44, 119–143 Copyright © 2021 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X20210000044010

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Illegitimacy is widely identified as a cause of revolution (Beck, 2011, 2014; Sharman, 2003), state failure (Goldstone, 2008), and other forms of transformative political change (Roscigno, Cantzler, Restifo, & Guetzkow, 2015; Wimmer, Cederman, & Min, 2009; Wimmer & Min, 2006), yet the way that it affects these processes is ambiguous. Multiple scholars have observed that there are no evident mechanisms linking illegitimacy to political instability (e.g., Kurzman, 2004; O’Kane, 1993; Pakulski, 1986). This collection of scholarship highlights that, while legitimacy may foster stability and compliance with authority systems, authority systems may nevertheless retain compliance and stability while being perceived as illegitimate (see also Beck, 2017). Thus, despite illegitimacy being frequently identified as a cause of political transformation, when and how illegitimacy matters remains unclear. Our purpose is to examine when and how illegitimacy affects the stability of political regimes. We do this through an analysis of the National Party (NP) in South Africa, which controlled the South African government from 1948 until the first allrace elections in 1994. As a minority government that retained power through systematic repression of ethnoracial and political minorities, the NP government existed in what Lipset (1959) defines as a crisis of legitimacy, facing opposition from an overwhelming majority of the citizens over whom it held power. Consistent with arguments that illegitimacy cannot explain political instability, the NP maintained power for nearly a half-century despite widespread domestic illegitimacy and the rise of a global movement against apartheid. Nevertheless, defying then-contemporary expectations, in 1990 the NP initiated negotiations for a transition away from minority rule while at the height of its material capacity (Giliomee, 1995; Waldmeir, 1997; Welsh, 1990), and both expert assessments during the late apartheid era and subsequent research by area specialists have attributed the end of the NP’s reign to its illegitimacy (e.g., Asmal, 1989; Bakker, Raab, & Milward, 2012; du Toit, 1981; ¨ Tambo, 1984; Totemeyer, 1985; Waldmeier, 1997; Welsh, 1990). This inconsistency between the seeming inconsequence of illegitimacy to the NP’s persistence and the ultimate centrality of illegitimacy to its demise reflects theoretical debates over illegitimacy’s causal relevance, and thus provides a unique historical lens for examining how illegitimacy affects political instability. Our analysis shows that as perceptions that the apartheid regime was illegitimate grew more widespread, allies of the NP began to experience social, political, and economic costs because of their association with the regime, leading them to withdraw their support. As we detail below, the NP’s ability to retain the support of its cadres and the white South African population depended on its ability to preserve diplomatic standing in the international community, bolster economic growth, and sustain an ideologically committed base. It depended on relationships with key allies to accomplish these tasks. In the face of a growing opposition to apartheid, these allies experienced mounting pressure from their own constituencies to support the anti-apartheid movement, ultimately leading them to break with the NP. Thus, white – primarily Afrikaner – South Africans faced growing global isolation, prompting efforts from within the NP to end the system of minority rule.1

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These historical processes offer important insights into the relationship between illegitimacy and political stability. First, our analysis highlights the importance of alliances for understanding the effects of illegitimacy. Rather than illegitimacy affecting the regime’s stability directly, we detail how illegitimacy impacted the regime’s relationship with its allies. Thus, rather than assuming illegitimacy acts as an independent variable that produces a particular type of change in the dependent variable (i.e., regime stability), our analysis supports a relational perspective (Emirbayer, 1997) that sees the effects of illegitimacy manifested in the dynamics of interaction. Second, and relatedly, this focus on the relational dynamics of illegitimacy is important because it helps to account for why illegitimacy appears to matter a great deal in some cases but little in others, and why illegitimacy did not appear to adversely affect the apartheid regime for much of its history. The majority of those who viewed the regime as illegitimate throughout its rule had limited capacity to directly influence the regime itself. However, these actors successfully influenced the allies that the NP depended on, prompting them in turn to abandon the regime. Thus, we observe the effects of the NP’s growing illegitimacy indirectly and non-linearly, with negative perceptions of the regime influencing behavior within the broader network of relationships that the NP relied on politically, economically, and ideologically. Third, this relational approach to illegitimacy helps us move beyond the long-standing conflict between constructivists and realist positions that respectively privilege normative considerations versus material factors to explain sociopolitical outcomes. Rather than treating explanations that privilege illegitimacy as incompatible with explanations that privilege economics or instrumental considerations, we show how economic and instrumental factors are intertwined with normative considerations.

LEGITIMACY, STABILITY, AND REVOLUTION Numerous scholars have argued that legitimacy is necessary for durable political stability (e.g., Beetham, 2013 [1991]; Call, 2012; Hechter, 2009; Zelditch & Walker, 2003). Legitimacy fosters stability because it imposes normative pressure to maintain the order as it exists (Beetham, 2013 [1991]). The effects of legitimacy on the stability of a social order are demonstrated in experimental research, which finds that legitimacy creates structural bias against instability such that the validity of entities or practices has a direct negative effect on attempts to foment change (Thomas, Walker, & Zelditch, 1986; Zelditch & Walker, 1984, 2003). These studies support the assertion that generalized acceptance of a social order’s legitimacy motivates compliance with the order, even among those who individually do not believe in its legitimacy (Zelditch & Walker, 1984, 2003). Based on the stabilizing effects of legitimacy, many studies of political processes have advanced the corollary assertion that illegitimacy will result in political instability. Illegitimacy is thus often identified as a key causal condition for explaining transformative political change (e.g., Hechter, 2009; Sharman, 2003; Wimmer et al., 2009; Wimmer & Min, 2006). Still, some scholars have challenged the assertion that illegitimacy (or a loss of legitimacy) causes extreme manifestations

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of political instability, such as revolution or other forms of state failure (e.g., Kurzman, 2004; O’Kane, 1993; Pakulski, 1986; Skocpol, 1979). Their arguments imply that the effects of legitimacy and illegitimacy are asymmetric: while legitimacy might bolster the stability of a political system, illegitimacy does not cause instability. Among those arguing that illegitimacy does not cause instability, some point to the fact that, throughout history, many regimes have exercised power in the absence of legitimacy (Beck, 2017; Pakulski, 1986; Skocpol, 1979). In her study of social revolutions, Skocpol (1979) critiques legitimacy-based explanations of social revolution by highlighting the importance of intra-regime stability and material power rather than popular perceptions. Others highlight the fact that legitimacy is relative, arguing that political instability can be explained equally well without invoking legitimacy at all. For instance, in her critique of research that privileges legitimacy or illegitimacy in explanations of political processes, O’Kane (1993) argues that any given entity will be viewed as legitimate by some but illegitimate by others, and thus illegitimacy cannot effectively explain the instability of regimes. Similarly, Kurzman (2004) contends that a loss of legitimacy only matters in the context of revolution when viable alternatives are present, in which case evaluations are relative rather than absolute. The Relationality of Legitimacy While prominent critiques challenge legitimacy-based explanations of political instability, they also emphasize a particular feature of legitimacy and illegitimacy, which stands to inform our investigation into when and how illegitimacy affects regime persistence: relationality. Legitimacy is often analyzed as an attribute or property – something that an entity either has or does not have (Suddaby, Bitektine, & Haack et al., 2017) – that affects the likelihood of various outcomes for the entity in question (e.g. Call, 2012). However, foundational theories of legitimacy conceptualize the construct as embedded in relationships rather than as an attribute of the entities in those relationships (e.g., Beetham, 2013 [1991]; Johnson, Dowd, & Ridgeway, 2006; Zelditch & Walker, 1984). This is evident in Weber’s (1978 [1924]) essays, which explore how legitimacy bolsters subordinates’ support or acceptance of authority (see also Zelditch & Walker, 2003). In Weber’s writings, legitimacy is not something that an entity simply has or does not have, but rather something that emerges via interaction between an authority and its subjects. This relational dynamic is most explicit in Weber’s discussion of charismatic authority, where he observes that charisma itself is not the basis for legitimacy. He writes, “This basis lies rather in the conception that it is the duty of those subjects to charismatic authority to recognize its genuineness and to act accordingly” (Weber, 1978 [1924], p. 242). Thus, rather than conceiving of legitimacy as an attribute that is simply present or absent, legitimacy is understood as emerging through interaction. The significance of this distinction is reflected in the considerable attention Weber paid to the instability of charismatic legitimacy (see Schoon & West, 2018). This instability results from the fact that the operative relationship is between an individual and her or his

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followers rather than between more durable institutions (i.e., traditional positions of power or bureaucratic systems) and their subjects. The importance of the relational dynamics of legitimacy for understanding the stability or instability of political systems is emphasized by Skocpol (1979, p. 32), who writes, what matters most is always the support or acquiescence not of the popular majority of society but of the politically powerful and mobilized groups. … Even after great loss of legitimacy has occurred, a state can remain quite stable … especially if its coercive organizations remain coherent and effective.

Skocpol’s statement suggests that different relationships have distinct implications for a political regime. Moreover, the relevance of illegitimacy may be contingent on the nature and importance of the relationship. Subsequent research similarly emphasizes how states and regimes must maintain relationships with multiple audiences (Beck, 2011, 2014; Hafner-Burton & Tsutsui, 2005; Keck & Sikkink, 1999; Meyer, Boli, Thomas, & Ramirez, 1997), each of which evaluates legitimacy on different terms and has varying capacities to influence the exercise and stability of political power (O’Kane, 1993; Schoon, 2015, 2016, 2017). Research highlighting the relationality of legitimacy provides two critical insights into how illegitimacy affects regime stability. First, it suggests that a loss of legitimacy may occur in some relationships but not in others. Second, it highlights how certain relationships matter more for regime persistence than others. Taken together, this scholarship suggests that understanding when and how illegitimacy affects regime stability requires an examination of how evaluations of legitimacy affect the dynamics of interaction within the relationships that regimes depend on to maintain their multiple and complex functions.

METHODS In the sections that follow, we examine when and how illegitimacy affects the stability of political regimes through an analysis of the National Party (NP), its period as the dominant force in South African politics, and its eventual loss of power. Our goal is not to provide a novel explanation of how apartheid ended, but rather to account for the role that illegitimacy played in the end of apartheid and to situate the effects of illegitimacy in relation to material and political conditions. To this end, our analysis began with a review of scholarship on the end of apartheid. Synthesizing across existing explanations, we traced the history of the NP in South Africa. We specifically sought to identify mechanisms that facilitated the NP’s rise, explanations of how it maintained power, and explanations for the fall of the NP. Many of these explanations privileged different causal conditions (e.g., international pressure, economic recession, legitimacy deficits). Rather than adjudicate these explanations, we used them to construct a multicausal understanding of the conditions that contributed to the end of apartheid, and examined the relationships among these conditions. As we detail below, this synthesis led us to focus on specific allies of the regime operating in three domains – international politics, business, and academia – whose withdrawal of support jointly precipitated the NP’s historic reversal in initiating negotiations with the opposition.

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We used this historical background as a point of departure for examining more specifically how assessments that the NP was illegitimate influenced the end of apartheid. Reactions to the NP were varied and often polarized across different sectors of South Africa’s population and among international actors. Moreover, reactions to the NP and apartheid evolved from the 1950s through the 1990s. Building on our synthesis of prior scholarship, we compiled primary sources about key events and decisions by allies identified in our review of existing scholarship. These primary sources allowed us to identify how illegitimacy impacted those decisions and actors. Sources included period news reports (located using electronic news archives including EBSCOhost, Gale, LexisNexis, and ProQuest), government reports, public statements, and interviews given by key actors and officials, memoirs published by key actors involved in the apartheid regime or the opposition movement, United Nations resolutions and transcripts, videos of floor debates in the United States congress, and essays published in the ANC’s political journal Secheba that reported on meetings with allies of the regime. Operationalizing Illegitimacy Definitions of legitimacy vary widely, as do approaches to operationalization (see Suddaby et al., 2017). Following recent research in political sociology and political science (e.g., Call, 2012; Schoon, 2015), we rely on Suchman’s definition of legitimacy as “the perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions” (1995: 574) and conceptualized illegitimacy as the inverse of legitimacy (see Schoon, 2014). For the purposes of our analysis, we focus specifically on evaluations of the apartheid regime that were rooted in normative or moral judgments. Some researchers define illegitimacy in more general terms as “worthiness of opposition” (Lamb, 2014, p. iv), or in more legalistic terms as a violation of established rules (Beetham, 2013[1991]). However, the former approach allows for the possibility of evaluations that are more material in nature, while the latter focuses more on legal frameworks, which the NP regime fundamentally altered in the course of governing. Here, our goal was specifically to distinguish normative opposition to apartheid from material or strategically motivated opposition to the regime. Consistent with this goal, we treated explicit condemnation of the NP or apartheid regime as morally or normatively undesirable, improper, or inappropriate as evidence of evaluations of illegitimacy.

CASE BACKGROUND: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE NATIONAL PARTY AND APARTHEID By any measure, the negotiated end to apartheid in South Africa stands as one of the most anomalous moments in modern political history. After nearly a halfcentury in power, the Afrikaner-dominated National Party – whose white supremacist vision had long-defined the South African state – unexpectedly

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sought a compromise with the opposition on a new constitutional dispensation, ultimately handing over power to the activists and guerrillas they had sought to repress just a few years earlier. Explanations for why this occurred have repeatedly emphasized the NP’s loss of legitimacy as central to this political revolution (e.g., Asmal, 1989; Bakker et al., 2012; du Toit, 1981; Tambo, 1984; ¨ Totemeyer, 1985; Waldmeir, 1997; Welsh, 1990). At the time of the NP’s rise to power, white minority rule was a defining feature of the prevailing colonial order (see Saunders, 2000). However, by the early 1960s, South Africa along with neighboring Rhodesia and the Portuguese possessions of Angola and Moçambique were conspicuous outposts of white rule in a period of rapid decolonization (de Blij, 1962). Branded as a relic of the former colonial order, the apartheid regime incurred the enduring enmity of the Organization of African Unity – a multi-country organization established in part to ensure the sovereignty and independence of African nations – and other formerly colonized countries, as well as Eastern Bloc powers eager to expand their influence in the global South (ANC 1967; Klotz, 1995; Pfister, 2003; Vosloo, 1978). South Africa’s deteriorating standing in the world community was particularly evident at the United Nations, where a majority of member states voted to expel the South African delegation from the General Assembly in 1974 (Svenbalrud, 2012). South Africa would come to occupy a distinct place as an outcast state, condemned in numerous UN resolutions, subject to a far-reaching assemblage of economic sanctions, and the target of a mandatory arms embargo. Domestically, from the time that the NP rose to power, the government faced a popular crisis of legitimacy, where major groups in society lacked access to power through the established political system (Lipset, 1959). The NP drew its support from a unified Afrikaner electorate, which was large enough to outvote the smaller population of English-speaking whites. The NP’s electoral success, however, relied entirely on the disenfranchisement of non-white South Africans (Trapido, 1963). These conditions motivated a broad, multiracial coalition of native Africans, Coloreds, Indians, and white leftists to oppose the NP and the imposition of its apartheid agenda from the outset.2 This group, led by the African National Congress (ANC), challenged the government first through nonviolent means, then later through acts of sabotage and guerrilla warfare (Jordan, 2004; Mandela, 1964, 2013 [1994]). Nevertheless, at no point did the opposition pose a meaningful military threat to the government, which maintained the capacity for repression throughout the NP’s period in power (Ellis & Sechaba, 1992). In the early 1960s, the government crippled organized opposition, imprisoning many key leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) and other opposition organizations, while forcing the rest into exile (Bakker et al., 2012). Still, opposition continued to boil below the surface, and in 1976, black youth took to the streets to protest racial inequality in education in what became known as the Soweto uprising (Mafeje, 1978; Mandela, 2013 [1994], ch. 80). Soweto marked the beginning of a renewed period of popular opposition to NP rule. Although never reaching a sufficient magnitude to threaten the overthrow of the NP directly, domestic resistance to Afrikaner minority rule had, by the mid1980s, catalyzed a global anti-apartheid movement, as well as precipitating

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something like a permanent state of siege across the country. David Welsh, a political scientist working at the University of Cape Town at the time, summarized the NP’s situation as follows: At present – and contrary to what many outsiders appear to believe – the South African government is not on the verge of collapse, putatively requiring only concerted heave to topple rotting structures. Its crisis of legitimacy endures, but its coercive power remains formidable, and probably no more than a small degree of its potential was deployed in putting down the violence of 1984-6. (Welsh, 1990, p. 9).

Mike Louw, who served at the time as deputy director of South Africa’s National Intelligence Service, put the dilemma in more personal terms: The entire world turned their backs on us; my children were growing up knowing that the world hated them that they were welcome nowhere. The entire nation was being stigmatized (interview with Waldmeir, 1997, p. 50).

In his own account of the period, Nelson Mandela similarly emphasized the role that legitimacy concerns played in breaking the “illegitimate, discredited minority regime” (Mandela, 2013 [1994], p. 597): The enemy was strong and resolute. Yet even with all their bombers and tanks, they must have sensed they were on the wrong side of history. We had right on our side, but not yet might. … It simply did not make sense for both sides to lose thousands if not millions of lives in a conflict that was unnecessary. They must have known this as well. It was time to talk. (Mandela 2013 [1994], p. 525).

Thus, while armed opposition played a role in the NP’s departure from power, even by the admission of apartheid’s opponents, it was not actually overthrown by force of arms (see also Ellis & Sechaba, 1992). Situating these factors in relation to one another, explanations of why apartheid ended point to a coalescence of conditions associated with international relations, the domestic economy, and the ideological foundations of apartheid, all of which helped to catalyze the negotiated revolution that ended the NP’s reign (see Giliomee, 1995). In her extensive first-hand account, Waldmeir (1997) details how foreign allies, South African business interests, academics working out of institutions such as Stellenbosch University, and Afrikaner religious denominations such as the Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk) played key roles as strategic partners of the regime, and how changes in their stance toward apartheid motivated shifts in state policy. While other scholarship details how the Dutch Reformed Church actually lagged behind the NP in embracing reforms (Kuperus, 1996), on each of the three remaining fronts discussed by Waldmeier there were specific actors or groups of actors whose changing positions were instrumental in prompting the leadership of the NP to reverse course on its long-standing policies. Diplomatically, the NP depended on the patronage of the United States, whose support insulated it from the effects of international condemnation and growing economic sanctions. In the domestic context, the NP’s ability to maintain a robust economy depended on a mutually beneficial relationship with white leaders in the

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South African business community. Of particular importance in this domain was the Anglo-American Corporation, a mining conglomerate that dominated the South African economy to such an extent that its subsidiaries accounted for roughly half of the shares traded on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (Lelyveld, 1982). Finally, the NP depended ideologically on Afrikaner institutions of higher education – most notably the prestigious Stellenbosch University – both to provide an intellectual justification for the persistence of apartheid and to train the NP’s cadres. For each of these allies – the United States government, the Anglo-American Corporation, and Stellenbosch University – we trace the sequence whereby each actor’s commitment to supporting the status quo eroded, ultimately setting in motion changes that extended far beyond the actors themselves.

ALLIES, SURVIVAL, AND THE EFFECTS OF ILLEGITIMACY In the following sections, we provide an overview of the relationships between the NP and the key allies in international relations, business, and academia who were instrumental to the regime enduring for more than four decades. We then detail how assessments that the NP was illegitimate altered the orientations of these allies toward the NP, prompting them to withdraw support. International Relations During the decades of global rivalry between Western nations and the Soviet Union, South Africa’s strategic position on the trade routes around the Cape of Good Hope, its well-trained military, and its consistent opposition to communism all served to endear it to American policymakers. The tendency to view events in southern Africa through a Cold War lens similarly colored US attitudes toward the ANC and its partner organization, the South African Communist Party (SACP). Thus, for most of the Cold War period, the division between the first-world and second-world camps in international relations provided a firm foundation for US support of the NP (see Betts, 1979). In addition to these diplomatic considerations, the capital interests anchoring US support for the NP closely intertwine with domestic factors. Leaders of the US and other capitalist countries were reluctant to forgo the loss of prosperity likely to arise from forfeiting South African trade to other economies (Kaempfer, Lehman, & Lowenberg, 1987). In 1983, at the height of the struggle over apartheid, the United States was the leading source of South African imports, shipping over 2.2 billion dollars in goods that year (Belli, Finger, & Ballivian, 1993, p. 68). The consensus that partnership with South Africa was beneficial to capital interests and conducive to prosperity in the American and British economies served as a major obstacle to global efforts to pressure the NP diplomatically and economically (Svenbalrud, 2012; Taylor, 2000), allowing the NP to mitigate many of the political costs associated with South Africa’s growing global isolation.

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South African Business In addition to ensuring white political supremacy and the strict separation of races, apartheid also sought to achieve the economic advancement of the Afrikaner population. Beginning in the early twentieth century, the Afrikaner nationalist movement was oriented toward providing Afrikaners with opportunities to overtake the wealthier English-speaking whites while keeping the non-white population locked in a position of subordination (O’Meara, 1977; Trapido, 1963; cf.; Pretorius & Vosloo, 1974). This left the South African business community in a position that was, on balance, quite favorable to wealth accumulation. Economically, the apartheid system deflated the cost of widely-available black labor, effectively underwriting a significant portion of the operating costs for white-owned businesses. The NP depended heavily on cooperation from business in order to execute their agenda in a manner viewed as legitimate by their white constituencies and foreign partners. With the cooperation of significant portions of the business community, South Africa achieved rapid economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s, allowing the NP to deliver on their campaign promise to economically elevate the Afrikaner population (Trapido, 1963). The importance of South Africa’s business elite to the NP’s efforts to maintain the support of the voting population is most pointedly illustrated by the relationship between the NP and the Anglo-American Corporation. Although noted for the liberal views held by its upper management, Anglo-American nevertheless called in government security forces to suppress striking black miners in the 1970s and again in 1987, and the ANC in its subsequent submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission would point to evidence of extensive collaboration between AngloAmerican and the apartheid security apparatus (ANC 1997; Battersby, 1987). In its final report, the Commission found that Anglo-American benefited materially from the apartheid regime, providing less to its black workers in terms of wages and housing even than what was permitted under apartheid-era laws (Tutu, 1998, p. 34). Furthermore, the value of Anglo-American’s endorsement of the NP is evident in Anglo-American’s efforts as one of the most visibly reformist actors in the South African business community to make the case against sanctions in the foreign press, and to do so with a credibility that the government itself could not marshal (see Relly, 1986). In this respect, Anglo-American was not unique among South African businesses, many of which profited handsomely under apartheid (Tutu, 1998) while buttressing the economic viability of NP rule. This afforded Anglo-American specifically – and the business community at large – a form of veto power over the policies of the apartheid regime. Business elites declined to exercise this veto for several decades when conditions in South Africa were generally favorable to their interests. However, once it became apparent that the apartheid model was no longer profitable, the business community withdrew support from the NP and began openly negotiating with the opposition and campaigning for reform.

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Academia Academics and educators played central roles in the Afrikaner nationalist movement from its earliest beginnings (O’Meara, 1977) and were some of the most loyal supporters of the apartheid regime (Hugo, 1998). The Afrikaansspeaking institutions of higher education were bastions of support for the NP. In contrast to the English-speaking white universities where the discipline of social anthropology provided an academic forum for criticizing apartheid, the analogous field of volkekunde (Afrikaans for ethnology) taught in the Afrikaner universities served to advance an essentialist perspective on race and ethnicity. As such, volkekunde differentiated between ethnic categories in a way that supported the NP’s vision of racial separation and provided a scientific framework for justifying apartheid policies (Gordon, 1988; Sharp, 1981). In addition to providing an academic foundation for apartheid, Afrikaansspeaking academia also rendered an important service to the government by reinforcing the socialization of educated young Afrikaners into the apartheid ideology (Kotz´e, 1990). Under the NP, South African institutions of higher education stood at the apex of a pedagogical system engineered to reproduce racial inequality (Johnson, 1982), and the Afrikaans universities in particular functioned as training grounds for the NP ruling class. This was especially true of Stellenbosch University, which historically occupied a vital place in Afrikaner cultural life (Duffy, 2003; Perlez, 1989). Nearly all of the NP leaders who served as head of government during the apartheid era had ties to Stellenbosch, including Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, who taught sociology there before going on to become the political architect of the apartheid system (Miller, 1993). An additional agent of political socialization at the Afrikaner universities was the Afrikaans National Student Union, which functioned as a wing of the Afrikaner nationalist movement and served as a training ground for future leaders of the NP (Gordon, 1988; O’Meara, 1977; Waldmeir, 1997, p. 209). Yet, academics exerted their strongest influence through the support of racebased policy-making. Afrikaner anthropologists played a leading role in designing the segregated system of native African (Bantu) Education that served as the pedagogical cornerstone of apartheid (du Toit, 1984). The inequalities that were institutionalized through this system were among the core grievances of black youth against the government (see Mafeje, 1978; Unterhalter, 1989). Intellectuals also exerted influence outside the universities through powerful institutions like the Afrikaner Brotherhood and the Dutch Reformed Church. The Brotherhood – a political secret society that held enormous sway in NP circles – was intimately bound up with the Afrikaner intelligentsia from the very beginning (O’Meara, 1977), and its chairman during the 1980s was a professor and vice-chancellor at the Rand Afrikaans University (Hugo, 1998, pp. 32–33). The Dutch Reformed Church was similarly enmeshed with the NP (Waldmeir, 1997, p. 269), and the church’s political positions were heavily influenced by academic theologians. Furthermore, the highly networked character of the Afrikaner upper class ensured that prominent intellectuals often enjoyed close personal ties with the political elite. Perhaps, the most telling illustration was the

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at-times contentious link between Professor Willem de Klerk and his brother, President Frederik Willem (“F. W.”) de Klerk (see de Klerk, 1991). Illegitimacy and Alliance Erosion The NP’s allies in international relations, business, and academia were each instrumental in their own way to sustaining the apartheid regime. Following the renewal of the anti-apartheid rebellion in the late 1970s and the rise of the global anti-apartheid movement, the NP’s allies reassessed their ties to the regime, ultimately withdrawing their support in whole or in part, and in many cases initiating collaborations with the ANC and other opposition movements working to eliminate apartheid. While the NP and apartheid were long viewed as illegitimate by the majority of the South African population and condemned by many states and by the United Nations, the regime’s hold on power only became untenable when the constituencies who viewed the NP as illegitimate expanded to the point that the NP’s allies were adversely affected by their ties to the regime. On the diplomatic front, moral and normative opposition to apartheid had been growing worldwide almost since the moment of its inception, although the US resisted redirecting their policies vis-`a-vis South Africa until fairly late in the process. One of the early catalysts for condemnation had been the Sharpeville massacre, which led the UN Security Council to call on South Africa to “abandon its policies of apartheid and racial discrimination” (UNSC, 1960). Although South Africa had faced condemnation in diplomatic circles for its racial policies for decades, the 1976 Soweto uprising marked a watershed in South Africa’s international standing as domestic opposition to the NP gained greater international attention, and perceptions that apartheid was illegitimate gained broader salience (Mafeje, 1978). Following Soweto, forceful resistance to apartheid became an inescapable fact of South African life. The government responded by increasing repression and implementing restrictions on press freedom (Lever, 1981). Meanwhile the UN registered global opposition to the NP’s policies in South Africa by unanimously imposing an arms embargo, finding that “the acquisition by South Africa of arms and related mat´eriel constitutes a threat to the maintenance of international peace and security” (UNSC, 1977, p. 5, italics in original). As a new generation of politicized black youth left South Africa to join the ANC in exile, the liberation movement seized the opportunity to step up its guerrilla war against the apartheid state and reconstitute underground political networks which had been defunct inside the country since the government crackdown of the early 1960s (Barrell, 1992). The resumed armed struggle and the support it garnered from the non-white population inside South Africa strengthened the ANC’s hand as it dispatched its emissaries all over the world. The opposition movement established de facto embassies known as “exile missions” in numerous foreign capitals, directly challenging the legitimacy of the sitting government in the councils of nations (Pfister, 2003, p. 52). The introduction of a new constitution in 1983 that provided political representation for South Africa’s Colored and Indian populations (but not native

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Africans) constituted an attempt by the government to bolster its legitimacy domestically and stem the rapid erosion of its support internationally ¨ (Totemeyer, 1985; Van Vuuren, 1985). Although it achieved some minor success in co-opting Colored and Indian support for the government, the new constitution fueled black opposition, further driving resistance that played a pivotal role in undermining support for apartheid both within the white South African population and abroad (Waldmeir, 1997). Citing the low turnout among Coloreds and Indians eligible to vote in parliamentary elections and growing resistance in the streets, the ANC leadership in exile called on the non-white population to render South Africa ungovernable: We have succeeded to mobilize and unite millions of people to reject the legitimacy of the apartheid regime, to unite behind the organized democratic forces of our country as their authentic representatives and to accept consciously the perspective of a united struggle for a free South Africa, refusing to be misled by false promises of reform and gradual adaptation or amendment of the apartheid system (Tambo, 1984).

In a similar vein, the UN Security Council responded to the new constitution by resolving that only the total eradication of apartheid and the establishment of a non-racial democratic society based on majority rule, through the full and free exercise of universal adult suffrage by all people in a united and unfragmented South Africa, can lead to a just and lasting solution of the explosive situation (UNSC, 1984, italics in original).

At this juncture, the US was governed by a conservative administration reluctant to break ranks with the Afrikaners. However, a highly organized and increasingly influential social movement against apartheid was gaining ground within the US. – even within the Republican Party (Klotz, 1995; Moorehead, 1987) – transforming the NP’s illegitimacy from a tangential foreign policy consideration into a salient issue for the American electorate. As a growing number of Americans demanded action, defending the NP became increasingly untenable for the Reagan administration. These problems were exacerbated by the pugnacious nature of South African President, P. W. Botha. At the very moment in May 1986 when South Africa was engaged in delicate negotiations with the British Commonwealth over the future of apartheid, Botha ordered his air force to strike suspected ANC installations in three neighboring countries. This incident in turn helped propel the passage of the Comprehensive AntiApartheid Act (CAAA) over President Reagan’s veto (Waldmeir, 1997, pp. 96–97; cf.; Taylor, 2000). The business community in South Africa experienced similarly costly pressure in the face of the anti-apartheid movement. In the private sector, the open break with the NP could be traced back to a structural flaw in the apartheid labor market. Under apartheid, as many skilled jobs as possible were reserved for white workers, while black workers were almost entirely confined to menial labor. However, the growth of the South African economy created a demand for skilled workers, and many more native African workers were gradually allowed to fill higher-status jobs. This change precipitated the belated recognition of black trade

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unions, establishing organized labor as one of the few official channels through which black South Africans could legally register their political grievances (Financial Times staff, 1981). Mobilizing this new opportunity, black trade unions organized work stoppages known as political strikes, motivated not by grievances against the employer but rather against the government itself. Finding themselves in the position of supervising a politicized workforce that viewed the government as illegitimate, business leaders began to undertake political activity themselves, giving rise to institutions such as the Consultative Business Movement (Nel & Grealy, 1989; see also; Mandela, 1990). Furthermore, with a worldwide movement against trading with or investing in South Africa taking hold, the AngloAmerican Corporation and other companies operating in the region came under enormous pressure to present themselves as a liberalizing force in South African society (Coker, 1981; Kaempfer et al., 1987; Mangaliso, 1997; see also; Relly, 1986). In doing so, they began criticizing the status quo and publicly reaching out to the opposition (Lieberfeld, 2002; Nel & Grealy, 1989). Much like the business community, Afrikaner academics were also enmeshed in a transnational community of thinkers and institutions and faced mounting pressure over their support for the NP in the form of academic boycotts. However, the growing consensus that the apartheid regime was illegitimate permeated the South African academy more subtly but perhaps more powerfully through engagement with the international scholarly community. The Afrikaner universities were connected to the wider world of academia through the exchange of visiting scholars and publication in international journals. While Afrikaner academics would strike a very different tone in discussing the South African situation in an overseas forum compared with at home (e.g., compare Pretorius & Vosloo, [1974] with Vosloo, [1978]), the privilege afforded by Afrikanerdom’s most prestigious institutions of higher education clearly offered a freedom to question NP dogma to an extent not available elsewhere (Perlez, 1989). As a result, Stellenbosch in particular would play a leading role in the negotiated end of apartheid. The End of Apartheid As the deterioration of the NP government’s legitimacy increasingly affected the NP’s allies, those allies withdrew their support. This withdrawal of support rendered the status quo in South Africa untenable and set the stage for the transition of power. In many cases, the NP’s allies also took steps to recognize and negotiate with the opposition movement, thus tacitly legitimating the ANC at the cost of the NP. This process marked the beginning of a consensus for change in South Africa which laid the foundation for the end of minority rule. In this respect, the transformation of American policy toward South Africa is instructive. The Reagan administration had always steadfastly adhered to a policy of constructive engagement, avoiding moral condemnation of South African policies while promoting commercial investment on the theory that economic growth and a strong bilateral relationship would be more conducive to reforming apartheid than confrontation (Crocker, 1980; cf.; Relly, 1986). Beyond its unwillingness to directly pressure South Africa for reforms, the administration

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engaged in wide-ranging strategic collusion with the NP to ensure American hegemony in Southern Africa (Cokorinos & Mittelman, 1985). When he became embroiled in a showdown with Congress over the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, President Reagan made clear that his decision to veto the measure was based on the military and economic importance of the relationship with South Africa, stating that “No single issue, no matter how important, can be allowed to override in this way all other considerations of our foreign policy” (C-SPAN, 1986). In contrast, advocates of the CAAA focused explicitly and almost exclusively on the illegitimacy of the NP regime. As Representative Mel Levine of California said during the floor debates regarding the veto override, This administration has remained unmoved, with its feet stuck in cement and its head stuck in the sand as one of the most important moral struggles of our time – the battle against apartheid – passed it by. … Mr. Speaker, the case for even modest sanctions, such as this bill now contains, now is compelling. The moral case for such action is overpowering (C-SPAN, 1986).

Representative William Gray of Pennsylvania framed the decision to override in even starker terms: [T]he president said that [passage of the CAAA] would just be moral posturing. Well, let me tell you something my friends. Sometimes we need to feel good about who we are, what we stand for, and what we participate in. … Today we have a choice. We can stand with P.W. Botha, apartheid, and Ronald Reagan. Or, we can stand with the American people. I hope that we stand with the American people (C-SPAN, 1986).

By adopting the CAAA over Reagan’s veto, Congress bypassed the accepted purview of the executive branch in US foreign relations in a move that was unprecedented in the twentieth century, dictating a radical change in policy toward South Africa. The fact that normative factors were able to overwhelm Cold War strategic considerations in determining US policy toward South Africa at a time when the Soviet Union remained a very real challenge to American interests only serves to underscore the extent to which the NP’s growing illegitimacy was undermining the regime on the world stage. According the exiled South African law professor Winston Nagan, the CAAA was, of vital importance because it calls for explicit recognition of the South African national liberation movements … and their affiliates[,] and recognizes the role they will play in the process of projected negotiations designed to end apartheid. The recognition of a national liberation movement – however unified – by the U.S. government sends a powerful signal to the global community that the liberation movement is a legitimate force (Nagan, 1987, p. 338).

The passage of the CAAA constituted a major blow to the apartheid state. In passing it, Congress demonstrated the extent to which a bipartisan consensus surrounding the illegitimacy of state-sanctioned racial supremacy was overcoming a long-entrenched commitment to reflexive anti-communism. The passage of the CAAA also underscored the extent to which the anti-apartheid movement had taken hold worldwide, showing that it could forge a bipartisan

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consensus to redirect the policy of one of South Africa’s closest allies over the objections of its own chief executive (Klotz, 1995). This abandonment of the apartheid regime by its foreign backers was mirrored inside South Africa by economic and intellectual elites, who increasingly distanced themselves from the government and began dealing directly with the ANC. A major shift registered in September 1985 when the chairman of the Anglo-American Corporation led a delegation of South African businessmen to Zambia to meet with ANC leaders, despite vociferous protests from the government that the meetings would lend the opposition “legitimacy and respectability” (Cowell, 1985). In short order, it became one of many such delegations, allowing the ANC to present itself as a credible government-in-waiting and emphasizing the degree to which events were outpacing the NP in South Africa (see Lieberfeld, 2002; cf.; Kurzman, 2004). In 1987, the South African business community reached out to the Mass Democratic Movement (a semi-legal front for the exiled ANC) in an effort to negotiate a solution to costly political strikes (Nel & Grealy, 1989). With the political stock of the NP steadily dwindling and the future of South Africa seeming increasingly uncertain, major commercial interests such as Anglo-American saw it as being in their interest to deal directly with the ANC (Waldmeir, 1997, pp. 73–74, 79). Here, the explicit calculus appears to have been material. However, the volatility that the business community aimed to stem was the direct result of the growing domestic and international anti-apartheid movement, which forcefully decried the illegitimacy of the regime. At the same time, a growing number of scholars at Stellenbosch University and elsewhere were openly challenging the morality of apartheid. From the mid1980s onward, meetings of South African academics with the ANC became increasingly common (Lieberfeld, 2002). Initially, these meetings were frowned upon at home, so much so that in 1985 the government withdrew the passports of a group of Stellenbosch students to prevent them from traveling abroad to meet ANC leaders (van der Merwe, 1997, pp. 20–22). However, as more and more prominent white South Africans went overseas to encounter for themselves the ostensible enemy, the taboo on meeting with the opposition rapidly weakened (Waldmeir, 1997, pp. 63–69). In 1987, a group of dissident intellectuals visited with opposition leaders in Dakar, Senegal (ANC 1987; Lieberfeld, 2002, pp. 363–364), and the following year a group of prominent Afrikaners that included professors from Stellenbosch sat down in West Germany with the ANC and representatives of the Soviet Union, breaking a long-held prohibition on contact with the communist superpower (Schmemann, 1988). By the end of the decade, meetings with the long-time enemy had become sufficiently normalized that a group of law faculty – most of them Afrikaners – from nine prominent South African universities met openly with the ANC in neighboring Zimbabwe for a conference on the role the law would play in a future South Africa (van der Westhuizen, 1989). These traveling groups of executives and professors were better positioned to gain insight into the thinking of the ANC leadership than what was available to the government directly, leading the National Intelligence Service to tacitly approve the meetings by asking the Stellenbosch philosophy

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professor Willie Esterhuyse to serve as a confidential channel to the ANC on its behalf (Esterhuyse, 2012; Waldmeir, 1997, pp. 75–76). Although the tangible impact of academic boycotts on South African university life appear in retrospect to have been modest (Baumert & Botha, 2016), the psychological effects were profound. One South African academic referred to “the dead chilly international atmosphere [which had] a much greater inhibiting effect than overt boycott action” (quoted in Haricombe, 1993, p. 519). In the face of this pressure, a growing number of scholars began to openly challenge the legitimacy of apartheid. Early in 1987, the jurist James Fourie and the economist Sampie Terreblanche (the latter a long-time NP advisor) publicly resigned from the NP in protest against the slow pace of apartheid reforms (Financial Times staff, 1987). Shortly afterward, there was an academic revolt against the NP at Stellenbosch University when Terreblanche and 26 other professors published a statement of no-confidence in the government, calling the president’s efforts at reform a “sham” (Nelan, 1987, p. 38). Reporting on the events at Stellenbosch, Washington Post reporter William Claiborn (1987, p. A1) wrote, “In a drastic departure from National Party policy, the group [of faculty] called for black participation in Parliament in a way that is ‘acceptable to the majority’…” Claiborn (1987, p. A1) quotes Terreblanche, who said, We want full black participation in the decision-making processes… This implies that we recognize that a situation will eventually be reached in South Africa in which whites…will relinquish their exclusive and decisive ability to enforce decisions which have consequences for all South Africa’s people.

When a pro-NP newspaper attempted to minimize the statement as the work of a handful of malcontents in a faculty of over 700 members, an additional 300 of their colleagues stepped forward to add their signatures (Friedrich, Hawthorne, & Nelan, 1987). Coming from the intellectual capital of Afrikanerdom, this was a stinging rebuke to the NP. That same month, Willem de Klerk, a respected journalist and academic, resigned from his post as editor of the Afrikaans weekly Rapport in protest over government interference in his paper’s political coverage. This move was symbolically significant not only because of de Klerk’s status as one of South Africa’s foremost political commentators but also because his brother was at the time chairman of the NP and next in line to become president of the country (see de Klerk, 1991). While businessmen and professors were protesting and openly parleying with the opposition, a new generation of academics were also drawing the Afrikaner churches in a reformist direction. Much of the credit for this goes to Johan Heyns, a professor of theology at the University of Pretoria (see Waldmeir, 1997, pp. 11, 138–139). One of Heyns’ most notable public achievements was securing permission from the government for a pro-ANC demonstration to go ahead in Cape Town in September 1989 – a decision that was seen as a major step for the NP on the road to ending apartheid. In this effort, he rallied the support both of the business establishment (the managing director of Shell South Africa marched at the head of the procession) as well as the British ambassador to South Africa. In the words of Patti Waldmeir, the Financial Times’s South Africa correspondent,

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President de Klerk “knew he could not afford to alienate, simultaneously, the West, the Church, the business community, 30000 black Capetonians – and the redoubtable Mrs. Thatcher” (1997, p. 139). Driven by these developments, the pace of political change in South Africa accelerated dramatically. On February 2, 1990, President F.W. de Klerk made an unanticipated declaration lifting restrictions and prohibitions on a wide array of opposition organizations, including the ANC and SACP, releasing political prisoners, ending media censorship, radically reducing the use of emergency powers, and freeing Nelson Mandela (de Klerk, 1991, pp. 42–45). Nine days later, Mandela walked out of prison and into leadership of the ANC (Mandela, 2013 [1994], ch. 100). This began four years of negotiations between NP and ANC to establish the framework for a democratic South Africa. Talks broke down multiple times as civil violence pitting ANC supporters against members of the Zulu-dominated Inkatha Freedom Party swept the countryside and black townships. Discredited by decades of apartheid and by evidence of collusion with Inkatha in its campaign against the ANC, the government lacked the legitimacy to restore order as the country careened toward civil war (Mandela, 2013 [1994]; Waldmeir, 1997). Leveraging its extensive ties with the opposition, the Anglo-American Corporation and other members of the business community stepped into the breach by establishing networks of civic organizations to address the violence and intervening to negotiate between the warring parties (Charney, 1999, pp. 192–193). Under enormous pressure to deliver a political resolution, NP and ANC compromised on a formula for transition to multiracial democracy, opening the way for South Africa’s first election open to all races in the spring of 1994. The ANC’s landslide victory and the inauguration of Mandela as South Africa’s first black president marked the completion of the negotiated revolution and the restoration of the South African state’s legitimacy both domestically and internationally.

DISCUSSION Interrogating the assertion that the NP’s widespread illegitimacy contributed to the negotiated end of apartheid, our examination of the historical processes that culminated in the transition to multiracial democracy offers insights into when and how illegitimacy affects the stability of political regimes. From the start of its reign, the NP government faced a domestic crisis of legitimacy. Nevertheless, sharply limited suffrage and restrictive labor laws effectively undermined the legal, political, and economic ability of the country’s non-white majority to oppose the regime. Moreover, given its economic and strategic importance within the context of the Cold War, the government of South Africa was able to foster strong alliances with Western powers and bolster South Africa’s economy, thereby further insulating the NP from domestic challenge. Similarly, economic growth, strong support from business leaders, and ideological support from the academy helped the NP maintain the allegiance of its voting constituency. Under

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these conditions, the government was capable of countering both violent and civil opposition domestically. Similarly, just over a decade after coming to power, the apartheid regime faced rapidly diminishing international illegitimacy. Beginning in 1960, South Africa was condemned by successive UN resolutions and ultimately subjected to wide-ranging sanctions. However, unerring support from the US and continued support from business elites in South Africa helped mitigate the economic and political effects of these sanctions for decades. It was not until the NP’s allies were adversely affected that the apartheid regime’s illegitimacy posed a threat to its persistence. As global opposition to apartheid expanded, constituents in the US increasingly demanded action on the part of their government, forcing a reckoning between long-standing policies supporting South Africa and the growing political salience of opposition to apartheid. Similarly, as South Africa’s economy evolved and business required more skilled labor than the white population could satisfy, a growing contingent of non-white laborers who collectively denounced the regime as illegitimate began organizing and pressured businesses to rethink their relationship with the government through the widespread use of political strikes. In academia, the importance of international exchange for South African academics coupled with the rapid marginalization and subsequent ostracization of scholars who provided a scientific veneer to justify apartheid era policies resulted in a sea change in the dominant views of Afrikaner academics. The effects of this transformation reverberated through the upper echelon of the NP due to close connections between the NP leadership and leading Afrikaner intellectuals, undermining the NP’s strongest claim that apartheid was scientifically and theologically justified. As the NP’s most important allies began to withdraw support from the regime, their hold on power became untenable. Significantly, Welsh (1990) pointed out at the time that the government’s coercive power remained formidable and argues that if the government had chosen to do so, it likely could have held on to power much longer than it did (see also Ellis & Sechaba, 1992, p. 200; Mandela, 2013 [1994], p. 525). Yet, the NP was isolated it from its traditional sources of support, and the arrangements whereby it had previously been able to retain power without relying purely on coercive force were undermined. Faced with his government’s steadily deteriorating position, President de Klerk decided to begin negotiations with the opposition in an effort to retain some level of political power for South Africa’s white minority (see de Klerk, 1998). Rather than threatening the persistence of apartheid directly, illegitimacy contributed to the apartheid regime’s demise only when it began to damage the regime’s relationships with key allies. Thus, rather than arguing that illegitimacy has causal primacy over material or strategic considerations, we observe these conditions as intersecting. In the case of the US Congress’ passage of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, we see that moral and normative evaluations actually did take precedence of material and strategic arguments. In the case of the business community, growing normative and moral opposition ultimately influenced material considerations, and in the academy we see a combination of the two. However, with each of these allies, we are able to understand the impact that illegitimacy had on the end of apartheid.

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Our findings extend prior observations that legitimacy and illegitimacy may have different implications depending on who is making the evaluation (see Schoon, 2015) and provides insights into why illegitimacy matters a great deal in some cases, but little in others. Moreover, our findings align with Kurzman’s (2004) assertion that legitimacy or illegitimacy only matter insofar as there is a viable alternative to the regime. The ANC’s efforts to cultivate its own legitimacy as a credible government-in-exile were instrumental to its success in fomenting change (see Bakker et al., 2012; Pfister, 2003). Our analysis does, however, offer additional insights into how such alternatives matter for the effects of legitimacy. In this case, having a viable alternative may have been a necessary condition, but it was insufficient for fomenting political change. The ANC – which was established decades before the rise of the NP – began building support gradually over the years and already had widespread support prior to the beginning of the negotiated revolution. Thus, while the ANC’s viability as an alternative to the apartheid regime inarguably contributed to the negotiated revolution, our findings suggest that the withdrawal of support was a more proximate cause for the transition of power. Consistent with neo-institutionalist approaches to the study of legitimacy (see Suchman, 1995), research on state legitimacy typically isolates the various social fields that a state operates within, distinguishing between (among others) legitimacy in international society (e.g. Hafner-Burton & Tsutsui, 2005) or the world system (Meyer et al., 1997) versus legitimacy at the domestic or subnational levels (i.e. Beck, 2014; LaFree & Morris, 2012; Lipset, 1959; Sharman, 2003). Our analysis demonstrates the importance of examining how these fields are connected by tangible social relationships, such that perceptions of illegitimacy at a domestic level (e.g. in the US) can influence interactions at the international level, and evaluations of illegitimacy in a political domain can directly influence interaction in the field of business. In this way, understanding how illegitimacy affects political stability requires us to look at how legitimacy affects interaction within relationships between actors rather than simply focusing on how legitimacy or illegitimacy affects interactions between positions in a given social field. These insights into the effects and dynamics of illegitimacy stand to inform research on the role of legitimacy and illegitimacy in more contemporary cases of political instability. For example, shortly after the Syrian Civil War emerged from the 2011 revolutionary wave in the Middle East, more than two thirds of all United Nations member states condemned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his regime as illegitimate and recognized the Syrian National Coalition as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people (Lund, 2017). While available evidence shows that both the Assad regime’s use of violence and the regime itself were widely viewed as illegitimate, the regime was able to survive and, as of this writing, has gained the upper hand in the Civil War with the assistance of Russia and other international actors. On its face, this case appears to add to the list of regimes that have retained power despite widespread loss of legitimacy (Beck, 2017). Yet, our analysis helps to situate why such widespread illegitimacy failed to weaken the regime’s hold on power. While more than 116 countries signed a declaration stating that Bashar al-Assad had lost legitimacy, these countries

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posed little direct threat to the regime. Moreover, Russia engaged in extensive efforts to avoid sanctions and justify providing direct support of the Assad regime (see Schoon & Duxbury, 2019). Thus, our findings help to situate why illegitimacy failed to matter in this case, while it appears to have mattered a great deal in others.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ¨ ukokutan, ¨ The authors would like to thank Barıs¸ Buy Richard Lachman, Austin Knuppe, the participants in The Ohio State Department of Sociology Power, Inequality, and Economy working group, and at the University of Michigan Department of Sociology Theory Workshop for helpful comments and critiques on earlier versions of this paper. Any errors remain the sole responsibility of the authors. Please direct correspondence to Eric W. Schoon, Department of Sociology, 238 Townshend Hall, The Ohio State University, 1885 Neil Avenue Mall, Columbus, OH 43210–1222. E-mail: [email protected].

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT The authors are unaware of any conflicts of interest.

NOTES 1. The Afrikaners are a white population concentrated in southern Africa who descend from Europeans (mainly Dutch, French, and German) who settled in the region from the 17th century onward. 2. Under apartheid, each resident of South Africa was classified as either White (European-ancestry), Black (indigenous African), Colored (mixed-race), or Indian (i.e., descendants of immigrants from British India).

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WHALING IN KOREA: HERITAGE, FRAMING, AND CONTENTION AGAINST INTERNATIONAL NORMS Bradley Tatar

ABSTRACT South Koreans in the city of Ulsan claim that eating whale meat is a tradition, but what is the role of SMOs in making whaling into a tradition identified with a local identity? In following account of a confrontation that took place in Korea between anti-whaling protesters from Greenpeace and local defenders of whaling, it is shown that tradition is not an inevitable outcome of conserving the past; instead, it is an outcome of mobilization, framing, and choices made by movement participants. Tradition in the whaling town of Ulsan was formed through the encounter between opposed social movements, prompting strategic choices of counterframing, frame bridging, and the dissonance between framing and feeling rules. Through the encounters with transnational activists, the Korean defenders of whaling refashioned themselves as rooted cosmopolitans, utilizing global norms to justify local practices in the name of heritage and tradition. Keywords: Discursive opportunity structure; framing; Greenpeace; heritage; Korea; whaling

INTRODUCTION Prior to 1986, the port city of Ulsan in the southeastern corner of South Korea boasted an active fleet that harpooned minke whales in the East Sea of Korea. Ulsan’s long history of whaling is remembered today with nostalgia in a way that is shocking to persons who believe that whales should not be hunted. A visitor to the Jangsaengpo Whale Museum in Ulsan wrote, Power and Protest Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Volume 44, 145–173 Copyright © 2021 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X20210000044011

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I had a difficult time walking through this museum[…]I was expecting to see a museum dedicated to whales and found a museum that described how whales were caught and processed for their meat. (Hines, 2007)

However, what may be more shocking to outsiders who visit Ulsan is that upon exiting the museum, one faces a long avenue with an array of restaurants specializing in the sale of minke whale meat. In contrast, the people in the Jangsaengpo district believe that the museum’s focus on whaling reflects their history and their collective destiny. Many of the local residents donated whaling implements and other artifacts for display in the museum. Upon the opening of the museum in 2005, Ulsan South District Chief Executive Lee Che-ik proclaimed, “The opening of the Whale Museum revives the forgotten history of whaling and lets us think of whales as a living resource for tourism” (Lee, 2005b). The notion that whaling is not only a revival of the past but a hope for the future is a signature concept of the Korean pro-whaling mobilization centered in the Jangsaengpo neighborhood of Ulsan. Hence, it may be properly referred to as the whaling revival of Ulsan, for its effort to blend history, identity, and commercial success (Figs 1 and 2). The target of protest for the Ulsan whaling revival is the South Korean government, which issued a decree in 1986 that made whaling illegal in South Korea, in response to the moratorium on commercial whaling approved by the International Whaling Commission (IWC), of which Korea is a member. However, in 1995, the residents of Jangsaengpo organized the first whale festival in Korea, with whale meat provided for festival patrons. The neighborhood residents lobbied for the creation of an exhibit hall, to commemorate the importance of whaling in their history (Kyungsang Ilbo, 2003). However, when the news came that the city of Ulsan would host the 57th meeting of the IWC in 2005, city officials decided to expand the planned exhibit hall into a museum. Currently, the museum is a centerpiece of the Jangsaengpo Whale Culture Zone (WCZ), a whale-themed leisure park for tourists (Choi, 2017). The development of the WCZ has coincided with a campaign to legalize whaling and to promote the consumption of whale meat (Tatar, 2014). In this manner, the campaign to revive whaling is institutionalized in the heritage industry that was created for tourists. It is necessary to ask, why do whaling and whale meat consumption continue as a tradition in Ulsan? The importance of whaling cannot be explained by the fact that it is traditional, since many traditions are abandoned once they are no longer needed. Many former whaling communities around the world have moved on to whale-watching, a non-lethal form of tourism (Hoyt & Parsons, 2014; Neves, 2010). Furthermore, the city of Ulsan is no longer economically dependent on whaling, having been transformed into a center of automotive manufacturing, shipbuilding, and petrochemicals. In the following, it is argued that the Korean revival of whaling became a desirable goal of collective action as a reaction to the Korean program of industrialization and its attendant ideology of modernization. The origins of the Korean whaling revival can be identified in two episodes of heightened mobilization, one immediately after the democratization of the country

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Map showing location of Ulsan in relation to other Korean cities.

in 1987, and another which occurred in 2005. Each of these episodes should be understood as responding to a specific political opportunity structure, which refers to the aspects of a political system which may either encourage or discourage mobilization of a particular group (McAdam, 1996; Meyer, 2004; Meyer & Staggenborg, 1996). Political opportunity structures include both stable and volatile dimensions (Gamson & Meyer, 1996), and clearly the democratization of South Korea presented a new opportunity structure to those who resented the ban on whaling. Furthermore, the hosting of the IWC meeting by the city of Ulsan in 2005 and the arrival of a contingent of Greenpeace protesters presented a volatile and challenging situation, as well as new opportunities to present the case for whaling. One of the most important responses to the political opportunity structure is framing, the “active, processual phenomenon” by which beliefs and meanings

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Jangsaengpo Whale Museum in 2015, with the restored whaling ship Jinyang 6 in the foreground. Photo by author.

are produced and disseminated to legitimize and motivate social movement mobilization (Benford & Snow, 2000, p. 614). A frame is an “interpretive package” (Ferree, 2003, p. 308) which is aimed at social movement members, bystanders, and policy makers, and it is negotiated as a set of shared meanings that emerge through the definition of a situation as one in need of change (Benford & Snow, 2000). The functions of a frame are diagnostic (identifying the cause or apportioning blame for a problem), prognostic (identifying the actions to be taken), and motivational (activating emotions and identifications that impel action) (Benford & Snow, 2000). Frames acquire meaning in relation to discursive opportunity structures, the “institutionally anchored ways of thinking” that make certain ideas easier to accept and hence more “resonant” with a public (Feree, 2003, p. 309). The interactive relationship between framing processes and the changes in the political structures are critical to understanding the emergence of social movements (McCarthy, McAdam & Zald, 1996). Framing processes may serve to undermine the legitimacy of an existing political structure, but they also must respond to the disadvantages imposed by the existence of a dominant discourse which produces differentials of opportunity, imparting more resonance to some frames rather than others (Ferree, 2003; McCammon, Muse, Newman, & Terrell, 2007). To evaluate the resonance of a frame, Ferree (2003, p. 308) argues, it is necessary to observe how the frame is connected to hegemonic ideas, prior histories of contention, material interests, and also core values and identities. Thus, frames are connected to a discursive opportunity structure, the “institutionally anchored ways of thinking that provide a gradient of relative political acceptability to specific packages of ideas” (Ferree, 2003, p. 309). The strategic uses of a frame will differ according to the local institutions, history, and culture, so it is

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important to compare the outcomes of strategic framing in different national contexts (Ferree, 2003; McCammon et al., 2007). Since the early 1970s, transnational organizations such as Greenpeace have carried out anti-commercial whaling mobilizations around the globe (Epstein, 2008; Szerszynski, 2002). Generally, the whaling issue is portrayed as arraying local against global norms in many varied local contexts. Hence, it is important to compare the framing processes of anti-whaling and whaling mobilizations in different societies. Tarrow (2005) draws attention to the different ways that frames are utilized by contentious actors in transnational and local contexts, arguing that internationalization is a discursive opportunity structure that empowers actors who are rooted to a locality, the rooted cosmopolitans. The rooted cosmopolitans introduce transnational norms by framing them in national and subnational contexts (Tarrow, 2005, p. 46). In this perspective, the framing approach is appropriate for the study of how transnational norms enter into local politics. Given that frames are units of meaning shaped (both unintentionally and intentionally) by actors through their choices (Ferree, 2003), the study of frames is methodologically appropriate for investigating how transnational norms are transformed through their deployment in local discursive opportunity structures. Currently, a perspective that highlights the agency of actors mobilized by SMOs is much needed for the study of contentious transnational politics of whaling, as most existing research relies on the world-polity approach, which examines how ethical, legal, and social norms are diffused through the international society, creating an impression of global consensus but in fact provoking local reactions (Meyer, Boli, Thomas, & Ramirez, 1997). Although it is a productive approach for the study of contention, it is one that focuses on the “dynamic relations between states” (Epstein, 2006, p. 32), and the relations between non-state actors do not come into sharp focus. Another approach which relegates social movements to epiphenomenal status is the spatial-ontological study of assemblages. Through this approach, Choi (2017) and Blok (2014) already have demonstrated that Korean and Japanese whaling traditions have been transformed through adoption of transnational frames. Both in Korea and in Japan, whaling supporters incorporated global forms of knowledge and ethics into local practices of whale meat consumption, strategically making their departure from global norms seem less radical. However, these authors do not portray social movements as a major part of the process of the selective adoption of transnational norms. Instead, they argue that selectivity is exercised by the ethno-epistemic assemblage, a network of spatial relations which enrolls specific norms along with humans, animals, materials, technologies, ontologies, and social practices. The assemblage selects and controls the global flow of cultural and non-cultural materials, with humans themselves exerting little influence. The following case study from Korea illustrates that whaling mobilization is not a case of local versus global norms, but of the incorporation of the global in the local. This is premised on the idea that “movement actors are agents who make decisions about how to respond to opportunities” (McCammon et al., 2007, p. 732). It is crucial that studies of whaling should provide accounts of

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micromobilization and contests of framing to illustrate the decisive role of movement participants in the incorporation of global norms into local conceptions and practices of whaling. A few whaling studies have focused on SMO mobilizations (Bailey, 2012; Blok, 2008; Erikson, 1999; Singleton, 2004), and the current one will expand the comparative perspective. The Korean whaling revival also affords a case study that illustrates the transformation of frames. Snow (2004, p. 393) called attention to the lack of empirical studies that demonstrate the ways in which framing processes reconstitute culture, relative to the larger number of studies of frame alignment processes. The following account of Korean whaling shows a realignment of local frames in relation to transnational institutions which is indicative of cultural transformation. In the following, attention is focused on the mobilizations that occurred in the city of Ulsan in 2005, as the city hosted the 57th annual IWC meeting. The meeting set the stage for confrontation between pro-whaling and anti-whaling movements. It is usual that confrontations occur within the IWC meeting, as delegates clash over the appropriate policies for cetacean management (Bailey, 2012; Iliff, 2008). Nevertheless, in 2005, there was also significant conflict occurring outside of the meeting, spilling into the streets. The anti-whaling forces were led by the Korean Federation of Environmental Movements (KFEM), which had invited their allies in Greenpeace International to bring a contingent of protesters to Korea. The pro-whaling forces were represented by the Jangsaengpo Defenders, a neighborhood coalition, and its allies in the Ulsan city government. The face-to-face confrontations between these locally mobilized groups of protesters illustrate some of the ways in which the IWC as an institutional structure produces norms but does not control their meanings; the confrontation process is one in which meanings are locally remade and recombined through contentious encounters. The work that follows draws upon participant-observation, ethnographic interviews, and textual analysis of media documents. Eleven interviews were carried out with the Jangsaengpo activists and the public officials of the Ulsan Namgu Bureau of Whale Tourism between 2009 and 2013. Five interviews were carried out with anti-whaling activists. Participant-observation was carried out by the author at the Ulsan Whale Festival, from 2010 through 2016. Newspaper reports were collected from the Internet; these news stories are here quoted and interpreted in relation to the author’s understandings gained from participantobservation at whale-related public events in Ulsan and interviews with local participants. Greenpeace maintained a weblog (Greenpeace, 2005b) of the daily events at the Whale Embassy Occupation, but this document was removed from the Internet in 2014. However, a number of press releases and descriptions of the events in Jangsaengpo remain on the Greenpeace website, including photographs which enable identification of the Jangsaengpo activists who met with Greenpeace and KFEM. Special thanks is due to Jim Wickens, who was the organizer of the Whale Occupation Embassy in 2005, for assisting the author to understand the events of the protest. However, the following interpretation is entirely the author’s own and may contain errors of misrepresentation.

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In the following, the confrontation which took place in Ulsan in 2005 will be portrayed as a local manifestation of a worldwide conflict between the various social groups arrayed behind the anti-whaling and pro-whaling positions. Hence, the first section provides background on the global whaling conflict and the institutionalization of pro-whaling and anti-whaling norms within the IWC. The second section will broadly outline the specific frames utilized in the worldwide conflict over whaling, in order to present the idea that local conflicts play out differently through the strategic use of framing. Following up on the description of pro-whaling and anti-whaling frames, the selective use of specific frames by the proponents of the whaling revival in Jangsaengpo will be explained. In the fourth section, the confrontation between the activists of Greenpeace/KFEM and the Jangsaengpo Defenders which took place in 2005 will be narrated, and the fifth section will detail the cultural changes that occurred in Korea directly as a result of the encounter. The sixth section provides discussion and interpretation of the accounts of face-to-face negotiation and the emergence of tradition and heritage as resonant counterframes within the specific discursive opportunity structure of Ulsan. The final section concludes that the cosmopolitan use of transnational frames exerts transformational changes in the culture of whaling.

THE IWC AND THE WHALING CONFLICT The Korean conflict over whaling appears to reflect the global conflict that has occurred within the International Whaling Commission (IWC) between the prowhaling and the anti-whaling member countries. The IWC was founded in 1946 with the goal of managing the exploitation of whales as a resource, but since the 1970s, its mission has shifted to conservation and even the protection of whale species (Bailey, 2009; Epstein, 2008; Heazle, 2004; Iliff, 2008). In particular, the IWC has served to promulgate an anti-whaling norm at the global level when the member countries voted for a pause in whaling, now referred to as the moratorium on commercial whaling. As a policy since 1986, the moratorium has garnered vigorous opposition from the countries that label themselves as whaling nations – Japan, Norway, and Iceland – because whaling is a significant part of their national identities (Blok, 2008; Epstein, 2008). However, subnational communities have also emerged to voice a claim to whaling, arguing that it is integral to their culture and to their collective identities (Epstein, 2008; Singleton, 2018). Cultural anthropologists have also argued that coastal communities have the right to defend their whaling traditions and cultural distinctiveness, against the homogenizing influence of global capitalism (Ii, 2013; Kalland, 2009). The notion that global ethical norms are imposed by Western countries upon other societies in the manner of “cultural imperialism” has figured large in the Japanese defense of whaling (Morisita, 2006). Although the IWC is an organization of countries that have voluntarily ratified the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), Korea, Chile, and Peru only joined the

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IWC after facing extreme pressure from the IWC member states (Birnie, 1985). Furthermore, the United States has legislated a unilateral mandate to pursue punitive sanctions against other nations, beginning the 1969 amendments to the Endangered Species Act of 1966 (Birnie, 1985). It was followed in 1971 by the Pelly Amendment to the Fishermen’s Protective Act of 1967, granting presidential powers to impose embargo on fishery products from nations deemed to carry out activities harmful to marine conservation (Epstein, 2008, p. 146). Finally, in 1979, the Packwood-Magnuson Amendment to the Fisheries Conservation and Management Act required exclusion of nations from fishing within the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of the United States if their nationals had violated international conservation policies. Both South Korea (Birnie, 1985, p. 949) and Japan (Morisita, 2006) have been on the receiving end of these US sanctions until agreeing to withdraw objections to resolutions on the floor of the IWC. Scholarship on whaling politics has shown that the anti-whaling movement emerged first, and the movements to continue whaling emerged as countermovements (Blok, 2008; Epstein, 2008; Riese, 2017). At the interstate level, the prowhaling mobilization is based on the norm of national sovereignty over territorial resources and at the local level is based upon the norm of cultural relativism and the rights of communities to maintain whaling traditions. Since 1982, subnational communities have forged their identities in opposition to the international moratorium on whaling, drawing upon the discourse of rootedness, in contrast to the transnational and deterritorialized identity of anti-whaling activists (Epstein, 2008, p. 241). The IWC distinguishes between commercial whaling and Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling (ASW), the latter carried out for the preservation of indigenous cultures, and its products to be distributed through tribal and kinship networks rather than commercial markets. However, Kalland (2009) and Bailey (2008, p. 302) point out that in many parts of the world the cultural aspects of whaling are not limited to aboriginal peoples. Hence, the distinction between commercial whaling and ASW is ambiguous, with a “lack of clarity and specificity” (Bailey, 2008, p. 300), which has enabled the anti-whaling activists to frame ASW as merely a disguised form of commercial whaling. The ambiguity of the anticommercial whaling frame also enabled the aboriginal peoples to ally with the small-scale whaling communities of Norway, the Faeroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland, forming a transnational countermovement to defend and promote sustainable whaling and hunting of other marine mammals (Bailey, 2008). As a result, Bailey concludes that the anti-commercial whaling norm failed to become established worldwide, through the rise of a transnational whaling advocacy network. The origins of the Korean mobilization in defense of whaling are dissimilar from the cases of Norway, Japan, and Iceland, and the Korean case deserves closer analysis. The question to address in the Korean case study is whether the transnational norms of “whaling is a tradition and a cultural right,” and “whaling is sustainable,” will automatically translate to Korea, or only under specific circumstances. It is true that anti-whaling activists have campaigned against

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aboriginal whaling, arraying them against the most vulnerable and ancient remnants of indigenous communities (Bailey, 2008; Erikson, 1999). Blok (2013, 2014) has shown that the Japanese government has tried to take advantage of this contradiction by portraying Japanese whaling as equivalent to other indigenous whaling cultures, but with little success in convincing other nations and NGOs. Meanwhile, Korean whale meat consumers claim to respect the anti-commercial whaling norm by consuming the meat from cetacean bycatch (Choi, 2017). Worldwide, the variations in success of the anti-commercial whaling norm suggest that a distinction between commercial whaling and indigenous whaling is not inherent in the norm itself, but emerges locally through the framing processes carried out by SMOs and activists. Hence, the framings of anti-whaling and anti-commercial whaling have resulted in distinctive outcomes in Korea, owing to the discursive opportunity structure of Korean politics. Generally, in Korea as elsewhere in the world, the anti-whaling SMOs and activists are portrayed as cosmopolitan in orientation and transnationally networked, while the defenders of whaling are portrayed as parochial traditionalists. However, in the following description of a confrontation between Greenpeace protesters and Korean whaling revivalists, it is shown that an exchange of ideas took place which transformed the whaling revivalists into rooted cosmopolitans. The mechanism of this exchange and transformation was frame bridging.

FRAMES OF WHALING AND ANTI-WHALING: A GLOBAL COMPARISON According to Snow and Benford (1992), master frames are those which are generic, have a very general domain, and do not correspond to a specific social movement (Snow & Benford, 1992). For example, the frame of “sustainability” can apply equally well to the idea of sustainable harvest of whales, as it does to the notion of protecting whale species for conserving biodiversity. Yet, in spite of their generality, the master frames have the ability to organize and assemble other frames, which are “derivative” (Snow & Benford, 1992). Hence, hearing the term “sustainability,” we know the theme is related to human relations with the environment, although the ideological content may locate anywhere on the spectrum of ecocentric to anthrocentric. Master frames tend to diffuse in cycles, spreading out to SMOs throughout the ideological spectrum (Snow & Benford, 1992). Perhaps one of the most important aspects of framing is that the same frame can be used by social groups that have opposed or incompatible ideologies (Oliver & Johnston, 2000). One clear example of this is the frame of extinction that was examined in the work of Ladle and Jepson (2010). The concept of species extinction has been variously defined by social actors with different ideological agendas. Ladle and Jepson (2010) present a typology of seven different extinction frames, each defined differently and corresponding to a different set of institutionalized social practices. For example, the concept of

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“Linnean extinction” generates a mood of urgency and crisis which can generate support for policies that create protected areas for wildlife; the concept of “ecological extinction” supports and legitimizes the activities of zoological parks and other entities that carry out breeding programs in captivity (Ladle & Jepson, 2010, p. 110). Overall, the notion of extinction invokes anxieties about loss, decline, and crisis. It exerts an emotional valence through its rules of feeling ¨ & Duyvendak, 2009), which can be added to other frames. The extinction (Broer frame operates as a master frame, which “organizes and assembles” other frames, enabling the processes of amplification, bridging, and extension (Ladle & Jepson, 2010, p. 98). The processes of movement-specific frames are frame bridging, frame amplification, frame extension, and frame transformation. These serve in various ways to carry out the functions of frame alignment, which is the linkage of “interpretive orientations” between the beliefs, understandings, and goals of the individuals who participate in social movements and the SMOs that organize their joint activities (Snow, Rochford, Worden, & Benford, 1986, p. 464). The processes of frame alignment are crucial to micromobilization, because social movement participants are ideologically and culturally heterogeneous, and the leaders of the SMO must communicate the salient aspects of the situation in a way that can motivate and unify the participants’ actions toward a common goal (Ketelaars, Walgrave, & Wouters, 2017; Oliver & Johnston, 2000). Some frames have a greater mobilizing capacity than others, so movement organizers and participants experimentally search for a greater “resonance” of frames (Ketelaars ¨ and Duyvendak (2009) argue that variations in resonance can et al., 2017). Broer be better understood if “rules of feeling” are added to “rules of framing,” by which movement participants may make choices based upon their emotional responses to a frame. They point out that a lack of fit “between people’s framing and feeling rules and the rules of dominant discourses” is likely to result in an ¨ & experience of dissonance and a proliferation of counterdiscourses (Broer Duyvendak, 2009, p. 341). One of the most important processes of frame bridging occurred in the linking of animal rights and welfare to species conservation. Ideological commitment to animal rights leads to demand for the care and welfare of individual animals, often leading to conflict with species conservation, which may involve lethal population control measures or other efforts for the benefit of the species at the expense of individual animals (Callicott, 1988). The pioneering “Save the Whales” campaigns of the 1970s transformed the great whales into flagship animals through the use of the extinction rhetoric (Epstein, 2008). By mobilizing activists to protect individual whales in the water and advancing claims to protect the great whale species, Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd carried out the bridging work to link animal rights and species conservation (Epstein, 2006). Another important bridging frame which occurs in the whaling debate is “science.” Environmentalist NGOs attempt to mobilize citizens and influence policymakers by providing reliable scientific information, either carrying out their own research or by compiling the research of others (Bailey, 2009; Yearley, 1993). However, there is much scientific uncertainty in determining which species are

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under threat of extinction (Ladle & Jepson, 2010), and scientific uncertainty has factored into the debates within the IWC about the sustainability of whaling (Bailey, 2009; Heazle, 2004; Iliff, 2008; Singleton & Lidskog, 2018). Several members of the IWC Scientific Committee have argued in favor of maintaining the moratorium on commercial whaling, based on estimates that whale species have not rebounded to their historical abundance levels (Epstein, 2008; Singleton & Lidskog, 2018). This claim is disputed by Japanese researchers, who also use population abundance estimates to argue that minke whales [Balaenoptera acutorostrata and B. bonaerensis] are abundant and perhaps even overabundant (Blok, 2008). While the “abundant whale” frame and the “extinction-threatened whale” frame are ideologically opposite, they are both linked to the frame of “science” and undermined by the frame of “scientific uncertainty.” Finally, another crucial frame that must be considered is the “heritage” frame. This is a frame that is generally mobilized at the subnational level to amplify the ideology of localness, rootedness, and a sense of connection to the past (Epstein, 2008). While whaling represents a strategy of localism for community building, it bridges with a transnational discourse of multicultural rights and cultural relativism (Blok, 2013). Hence, the emotional and affective attachment to a localized identity is claimed as a motivation for whaling, based on the rights of communities to maintain their existence (Kim, 2015). As Singleton (2018) has argued, the whaling communities in Europe, North America, and Asia have in fact changed their manner of acquiring and consuming whale meat and are therefore practicing whaling traditions that are newly invented or elaborated, but nonetheless effective in promoting traditionalist solidarities. This is certainly true in the city of Ulsan, where the Jangsaengpo Whale Culture Zone has been constructed in the former wharf district. The array of luxury restaurants, the museum, and the whale festival all provide new ways to enjoy the Korean whaling tradition.

ORIGIN OF THE KOREAN WHALING REVIVAL In the city of Ulsan, the wharf district of Jangsaengpo was formerly a town developed by the Empire of Japan as a multicultural whaling station which housed not only Koreans but also Norwegians, Chinese, and Japanese workers (Watanabe, 2009). After the defeat of the Empire of Japan and Korea’s liberation in 1945, the Koreans in Jangsaengpo continued whaling and carried out a lucrative export trade with Japan (Ii, 2013). The prosperity brought by whaling made Jangsaengpo wealthy, such that Jangsaengpo was the first place in Ulsan where new consumer items such as radios and televisions appeared in the 1960s and 70s (Go Jung-Goo, personal communication, May 20, 2011). Today, when people remember the prosperity of the past, they recite a canonic joke, “When a whale was hauled to port in Jangsaengpo, even the stray dogs ran down the street with 10,000 won banknotes clamped in their mouths!” (Fig. 3). However, the township of Jangsaengpo, and the surrounding districts of Meamdong and Daehyeon-myeon were soon to undergo economic transformation.

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Fig. 3. A statue in Jangsaengpo depicting the days of prosperity bestowed by whaling, when stray dogs were said to run with money in their mouths. Photo by author.

Following the military coup of May 1961, the military junta issued an executive order designating Ulsan as the site for a national industrial district. The groundbreaking ceremony was held on February 3, 1962 in the hamlet of Napdo in Jangsaengpo (Kang, 2012). At the ceremony, the soon to be president Park Chung-Hee proclaimed, “Dark smoke rising from the factories is the symbol of our nation’s growth and prosperity” (Yoon, 2006, p. 76). Industrialization was considered to be the national destiny. During the period of authoritarian rule in South Korean history, the ideology of modernization constituted the discursive opportunity structure, with effects that lasted following democratization in 1987. Under the regime of Park Chunghee, it was considered a national duty for all citizens and workers to aid in the economic and social modernization of the fatherland (Moon, 2005), and anything related to Korean tradition was portrayed as “backwards” and an obstacle to development (Lee, 2005a). The elites promoted the adoption of Western and Japanese culture thought to be conducive to economic modernization (Chang, 2012). Even following the democratization of South Korea in 1987, Chang argues that “developmental citizenship” continued to prevail, meaning that the obsession with economic development continued to be the dominant discourse of governance. During the 1960s and 70s, whaling continued, but it was excluded from the plan for industrial development. In this same period, the industrialization of the Jangsaengpo area caused many residents to be forcibly removed from their homes, with the government relocating them to a tent city called Bugok-dong in 1963 (Han, 2015). This caused the disappearance of several hamlets that had previously participated in the whaling economy, although the main town of Jangsaengpo continued whaling (Hur, 2014). Finally, in the 1980s, pollution-related

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illnesses were affecting many citizens who resided in the environs of the Ulsan factories, and the government declared a zone for emergency relocation in the area of Meam-dong, including the Jangsaengpo whaling town (Lee, 2012). The forced relocations depopulated the township and had a disruptive effect on the whaling industry (Hur, 2014). However, the residents of Jangsaengpo did not want to abandon their homes, in spite of the pollution. Starting in 1985, they organized a committee to visit the government offices to present the demand to remove the village from the relocation zone designation, and members of the Jangsaengpo Youth Association worked to keep the residents unified in opposition (Park, 2009). After years of sustained agitation, in 1993 the government delisted the town from mandatory relocation. Clearly, this episode of mobilization against forced relocation had an impact on the subsequent mobilizations against the ban on whaling. The villagers themselves made an association between the two episodes of mobilization, by arguing that their town had declined in population as a result of the moratorium on commercial whaling, instead of resulting from the effects of industrialization and forced relocations. The attribution of blame to the whaling moratorium instead of to the wider social and economic transformations can be understood as a “reorganization of social memory” (Hur, 2014). The story of depopulation and urban decline is often repeated in the Korean news media, when Ulsan citizens discuss the moratorium. For example, After the prohibition of whaling, the number of residents decreased from 25,000 to 1,600. From the early 1990s, the Ulsan Petrochemical Complex expanded to nearby areas, leaving almost no trace of the whaling harbor (Kim, 2003).

The framing of Jangsaengpo as the “endangered community” points toward the need to do something to save the community. Social movement frames serve to identify a situation as unjust, to identify culpable agents, and to “articulate and align a vast array of events and experiences” in a way that points to specific action to be taken (Snow & Benford, 1992, p. 137). The culpable agents in this case were government agencies, one agency seeking to relocate the town, and another government ministry which had allowed a foreign entity (the IWC) to impose a ban on whaling. Hence, the “endangered community” frame in Jangsaengpo calls for action to restore the “culture of whaling.” Jangsaengpo residents have acted on the “endangered community” frame with direct campaigning for the legalization of whaling in Korea, but also through efforts to reconstruct the so-called “culture of whaling” as a commodified image of the past. In 1995, the Korean government restored local elections for mayors, city councils, and district executives (Shin, 2004). Jangsaengpo residents leaped at the opportunity presented by the new local political structure. They attempted to revive their culture by organizing the first Jangsaengpo Whale Festival, now celebrated annually. According to whale meat restaurant owner and journalist Yoon Kyung-Tae, the purpose of the festival was to convey “the nostalgia of whaling” and to “fortify the solidarity of the citizens” (Yoon, 2008a). A former chairman of the festival organizing committee explained the goals of the festival as cultural rather than political. Lee Man-Woo explained, “The festival had to be

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about more than just whale meat. We had to provide drumming, and other performances, like they do in Taiji (Japan)” (Lee Man-Woo, personal communication, September 9, 2011). In other words, the festival organizers wanted to turn their culture into a commodity. The idea of turning a culture into something that can be sold and consumed is a key idea behind the notion of heritage (Oakes, 1998). Nevertheless, as Smith (2006, p. 12) argues, heritage is a discourse that must establish a material reality for itself in order to produce claims that it represents a real collective identity. From the perspective of the Jangsaengpo residents, this meant that whale meat should be available, for consumption at the festival as well as to be sold daily at the town’s restaurants. After 1986, the only legal way to obtain whale meat was from fisheries bycatch, which occurs when the whale is entangled in a fishing net by accident, and is legal if the net is not targeting whales but only fish (MacMillan & Han, 2011). According to the former director of the Jangsaengpo Whale Museum, Park Seon-Goo, “The whale food culture is maintained through the meat obtained from whales that were accidently caught in nets. For the whale festival, the restaurants provide whale meat for those who want to try the food, or who miss the taste of whale meat” (Park Seon-Goo, personal communication, April 11, 2013). Here it is important to make clear that the master frame of the pro-whaling movement in Korea is not nationalism, as it is in Japan (Blok, 2008), and it is not sustainable use as it is in Norway or Iceland (Bailey, 2009). The master frame in Korean whaling is endangered community, which arises from the specific history of Korean industrialization by which the Meam-dong/Jangsaengpo district was subjected to socioeconomic changes that were harmful to the human communities in the region. From the master frame of endangered community, the Jangsaengpo residents carried out a bridging to the frame of heritage. Heritage frames the efforts to “reconstruct” or “revitalize” the neighborhood, as a strategy of “community defense.” The community defense frame includes the “revival of heritage,” as well as the frame of “bycatch is not whaling.” Master frames which organize and articulate the movement-specific frames provide a key for comparison between local movements. The Korean pro-whaling activists do utilize frames borrowed from the Japanese mobilization, such as “the abundant whale” or “sustainable use,” but for the Koreans, these frames are subordinate to the master frames of “endangered community” and “heritage.” The Japanese pro-whaling movement uses “science” as a master frame, as the assertions that whale species are abundant (not endangered) are based upon scientific research and publications (Blok, 2013). Similarly, the anti-whaling SMOs also depend upon scientific research as a source for their claims, especially the “endangered whale” frame which derives from arguments that most whale species have not recovered to population levels that existed before historical whaling took place (Singleton & Lidskog, 2018). Thus, both Japanese pro-whaling and international anti-whaling movements depend upon the “science” frame and are therefore vulnerable to the problems of scientific uncertainty (Heazle, 2004). Since their master frame is “heritage,” not “science,” the Korean pro-whaling activists do not hesitate to utilize scientific uncertainty to counterframe against

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the claims of environmental groups. In an interview with Jangsaengpo activist Go Jung-Goo, from the Whale Culture Preservation Association (WCPA), he specifically targeted the scientific validity of anti-whaling claims. If it is necessary to protect the population of whales, we will gladly do it, as long as there is scientific evidence and precise data to support that measure. This is what we ask. Please, give us the information, that more investigations should be carried out which show that in fact, the whales are in danger of extinction. However, without giving us any sort of scientifically reliable evidence, we are being told that we simply cannot hunt the whales (Go Jung-Goo, personal communication, September 20, 2011).

Hence, for this movement activist, the validity of scientific evidence related to whales is subordinate to the frame of heritage, not science. Mr. Go expressed his dissatisfaction with the scientific investigations that are carried out and emphasized that what is most important is the social “reality” of Jangsaengpo and its tradition. His dissatisfaction extends also to this author and other social scientists who fail to adequately emphasize the importance of heritage. There has not been adequate effort from the researchers to learn about the reality of Jangsaengpo. Various researchers have come to Jangsaengpo to study it, but they only pay attention to superficial things without trying to know the reality of Jangsaengpo. (Go Jung-Goo, personal communication, May 20, 2011)

Another important difference from other pro-whaling movements is that the Jangsaengpo people are no longer carrying out whaling. The other subnational whaling communities of the world, such as the Inuit, the Faeroe Islands, and the Makah, have revived and elaborated their traditions by actually carrying out whaling. In contrast, the emphasis on preserving “whale food culture” has focused the Koreans’ activism on the act of eating whale meat, rather than carrying out whale hunts. They have developed marketing practices intended to ignite consumer demand for whale meat, such as the “Korea-Japan Whale Meat Cookoff” (Yoon, 2008c). The core group of Korean activists are not whalers, but whale meat retail business owners, such as the journalist Yoon Kyung-Tae, who is the founder of the Whale Meat Merchants Cooperative Association of Jangsaengpo (Heo, 2013). Finally, it is also important that Korean restaurant owners publicly disavow whaling, stating that they sell only legal whale meat sourced from bycatch (Moon, 2011). In addition to restaurant owners, the customers of whale meat restaurants also proclaim their intentions to comply with Korea’s legal prohibition of whaling (Tatar & Jung, 2018). Researchers have found this is a tactic to conceal that much of Korea’s whale meat retail business is sourced from illegal whaling (MacMillan & Han, 2011). Nevertheless, the frame of “bycatch is not whaling,” subordinated to the domain of “heritage,” is based upon the claim that local whale meat consumption is not a violation of the moratorium. In other words, the bycatch frame differentiates the local practice as one that does not violate the international and national anti-whaling norms. In this sense, Choi (2017) labeled the consumption of bycatch as a hybrid practice that combines the whale conservation norm with the whaling norm.

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In summary, the bridging of the master frames of endangered community and heritage is a result of the specific history of Jangsaengpo and has shaped the whaling revival that occurred from the start of the Jangsaengpo Whale Festival in 1995 until the present day. Having identified the master frames and the movement-specific frames, it remains to be shown how these frames are amplified, articulated, and transformed in an actual case of micromobilization. For this purpose, the following section describes the encounter between the activists of the Jangsaengpo whaling revival and Greenpeace International, which occurred in 2005.

THE WHALE EMBASSY OCCUPATION IN 2005 The city of Ulsan hosted the annual meeting of the IWC from June 20–24, 2005, with hundreds of delegates arriving from around the world. According to the meeting planners, it would give Ulsan the chance to establish the city’s reputation as an international “city of whales,” and delegates would be encouraged to visit the Jangsaengpo Whale Museum, which was scheduled to open on May 31, which is designated as “Oceans Day” in Korea (Chosun Ilbo, 2005a, March 7). However, the IWC meeting in 2005 also presented an opportunity to the anti-whaling activists of the Korean Federation of Environmentalist Movements [KFEM] and Greenpeace International, who planned a protest to influence Korea to withdraw its support for Japanese pro-whaling policies (Chosun Ilbo, 2005b, March 18). As they prepared for the IWC meeting, some of the Korean organizations supporting the resumption of whaling adhered to scientific arguments, following the Japanese example. At the 2005 IWC meeting, the Korean National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives [NFFC] and the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries [MOMAF] argued that it was necessary to begin hunting dolphins for the purpose of scientific research and for Korea to eventually return to commercial whaling (Chosun Ilbo, 2005d, June 20). An official statement sent from MOMAF to Greenpeace on May 7 stated that, “These policies are based on scientific and rational studies on cetacean resources” (MOMAF, 2005). Ulsan resident and fisheries expert Byeon Chang-Myeong argued that whaling is necessary because dolphins and whales contribute to depletion of fishery stocks; Byeon himself founded the Committee for the Resumption of Korean Whaling (Lee, 2005c). Clearly, scientific arguments for whaling abounded. However, in the following account of the encounter between Greenpeace and the local pro-whaling movement in Ulsan’s Jangsaengpo neighborhood, it is clear that scientific rationales for whaling fell by the wayside, relegated to a secondary role as cultural arguments for whaling came into the forefront. The increased reliance on arguments for cultural rights for whaling occurred as a consequence of the encounter with KFEM and Greenpeace. In face-to-face encounters at the site of protest, the Korean advocates of whaling strategically argued for a cultural need to consume whale meat. This claim to a “cultural right” was connected to two different frames. First, the narrative of community decline produced a movement-specific frame calling on citizens to save the Jangsaengpo community

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from depopulation and extinction; activists argued it could be saved through an economic revitalization brought about by cultural revival. This “endangered community” frame represents the commodification of whale meat as beneficial to the entire community, rather than merely of benefit to the owners of whale meat restaurants. Second, the master frame of heritage justified the development of tourism, with the idea that the whaling traditions must be passed on to future generations. Although these discourses certainly preexisted the encounter with KFEM and Greenpeace, the encounter led to the emergence of a novel combination of frames that subsequently took hold in Ulsan as an institutional narrative: the idea that tourism would be the best vehicle for preservation of whaling culture and the revival of the community. The KFEM/Greenpeace campaign was called “Goraeya torawa” in Korean and “Come Back Whales” in English. It began on March 18, 2005, when Greenpeace volunteers sailed the Rainbow Warrior II into the port of Incheon to join their allies in the KFEM (Greenpeace, 2005a). The campaign was intended to influence the Korean vote at the IWC meeting. Setting sail from Incheon to Ulsan, the Rainbow Warrior sailed into the Jangsaengpo harbor in Ulsan on April 4, 2005. On April 5, KFEM and Greenpeace hosted an “open boat” event, allowing members of the public to tour the craft. There were festive activities such as painting t-shirts with whale emblems, musical performances, and the display of whale photographs. The goal was to explain to the Korean public that caring for the health of ocean ecosystems would be of equal benefit to whales and to fishing communities, and ending whaling would be the first step in that direction (Card, 2005). On April 7, the activists from the Rainbow Warrior began the encampment they referred to as the Whale Embassy Occupation. They erected a geodesic dome in front of the Jangsaengpo Whale Museum and unfurled a banner which read, “Extinction starts here.” On a large mound of soil from the construction of the museum, they erected numerous planks cut into the shapes of double-fluked whale tails, to serve as funerary cenotaphs for whales killed by hunters. The Greenpeace members resolved to occupy the spot until the city of Ulsan would agree to cancel the construction plan for the whale meat processing plant. They remained encamped on the spot for a total of 77 days, from April 7 until June 24, 2005 (Figs 4 and 5). The goal of the Whale Embassy was to introduce the “extinction” frame to the Korean public by presenting information about whales through this frame. Located directly adjacent to the Ulsan Whale Museum, the Greenpeace activists were able to divert the museum visitors to the encampment to provide an ecologically-oriented educational experience about whales. They were located in the same place where the public celebration of Oceans Day was planned for May 31, and it was also the location for the Whale Festival to be celebrated from June 18–31. Visitors, whether curious or hostile, were welcomed into the embassy and engaged in conversation about the importance of whale conservation. However, Jangsaengpo residents felt their land had been invaded and claimed that the activists had illegally landed on Korean soil (Yoon, 2008b). On the morning of April 11, the protesters awoke to find a display of plastic banners with

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The geodesic dome of the Whale Embassy, erected on April 7, 2005. Photo by Jeremy Hibbert-Sutton (used with permission).

Fig. 5. Cenotaphs shaped like whales’ tails, erected on a mound of dirt behind the Whale Embassy. Photo by Jeremy Hibbert-Sutton (used with permission).

pro-whaling slogans and pictures of bombs. According to the “Come Back Whales” blog maintained by Greenpeace: Translated into English, the main banner reads, “Environmentalists are killing (the livelihoods of) fishermen, they must wake up.” More disturbing however is the means with which they suggest they want to wake us up with two ticking bombs next to the words “Jangsaengpo Defenders.” Other banners read “We strongly support scientific whaling for whale resource research;” “Let’s hunt dolphins which destroy fish stocks;” “Why can’t we catch whales like the damn Japanese do?” and the ominous words, “We will protect Jangsaengpo like our ancestors did” (Greenpeace, 2005b).

In the next few days, there were “more counterprotests by locals,” but the initial efforts to remove the protesters were made by the authorities. The first

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effort came on April 15, when officials from the IWC visited and requested the camp to disband. On May 7, there was a meeting with officials from the Ulsan City Council, and on May 10 the officials came to deliver eviction notices, ordering Greenpeace to vacate the site by May 16 (Greenpeace, 2005c). Greenpeace defied these orders. There were also hostile visits from agitated groups of fishermen and contingents of angry senior citizens, all of which increased the tension in the Whale Embassy. Jim Wickens, leading the Greenpeace encampment, wrote on the blog that the “locals are seething.” In an interview with the author, Mr. Wickens clarified that he was forced to engage in strenuous efforts to convince the Greenpeace volunteer activists to strive for the same goals. The volunteers were not ideologically homogeneous, with some who were more focused on animal rights issues and others on environmental issues. Some volunteers resolved to act individually or in small groups to carry out actions not recommended by Greenpeace. “I had volunteers who proposed to go to the sushi restaurants [that had fish tanks] and try to liberate the fish by releasing them back to the ocean” (Jim Wickens, personal communication, March 11, 2018). In other words, he was constantly tasked with frame alignment issues, which included bridging the animal rights and environmental frames of anti-whaling action. The main goal of the Greenpeace volunteers was to stop the whale meat plant from being constructed and to pressure South Korea not to support any initiative at the IWC meeting that would grant whaling rights to member countries. Efforts to persuade the authorities to cancel the planned whale meat processing plant involved lengthy meetings and standoffs. The Greenpeace delegation met with Ulsan City Hall, the Korean Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, and the Ministry of Trade and the Environment. At the same time, the camp members attempted to improve relations with the local community by offering free English lessons for children, showing free movies, and giving presentations about whales. On May 19, a steamroller threatened to flatten the encampment, and the following day a contingent of bulldozers arrived to remove the mounds of dirt on which the whale tails were displayed. The Greenpeace activists fanned out to protect the mounds from the bulldozers and negotiated with the construction crew. Throughout the campaign, the KFEM and Greenpeace utilized the extinction frame to target the local practices of Koreans in Ulsan. They sought to portray these practices as violations of the international norms as promulgated by the IWC and its member governments. According to the Greenpeace blog, the volunteers visited locations where whales were being butchered, and photographed to portray these as acts violating the international norm. On one such occasion, the whale meat processing workers intentionally spilled the animal’s blood on the Greenpeace volunteers; on another occasion, the workers in a truck laden with whale meat shouted at the Greenpeace volunteers (Greenpeace, 2005b). In the international news media as well, the Whale Embassy encampment focused on the local Korean practice of using cetacean bycatch, which they viewed as a thinly disguised practice of commercial whaling. Jim Wickens was quoted by the LA Times, “The Koreans make a big song and dance about how

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they don’t harpoon whales, but you don’t need a harpoon to kill a whale. It is very easy to drown a whale in your net” (cited in Demick, 2005). Likewise, KFEM organizer Choi Ye-Yong told BBC News that “the accidental catch is not accidental” (Y.Y. Choi, as cited in Black, 2005). The conflict with the locals reached a head on May 25, when a letter arrived from the representatives of Jangsaengpo threatening to remove the Whale Embassy. Accusing Greenpeace of carrying out an illegal occupation, the Jangsaengpo residents claimed that Greenpeace was also harming the community’s economic future by drawing negative publicity on the eve of the opening of the whale museum, scheduled for May 31 (Kim, 2005). Although a previous ultimatum had been sent by the Ulsan city government, the letter was different because it expressed the grievances of residents from the immediate neighborhood (Greenpeace, 2005d). It was signed by the Jangsaengpo Defenders, which was actually a coalition of four organizations: the Jangsaengpo Development Association, the Jangsaengpo Youth Association, the Jangsaengpo Senior Citizens’ Association, and a fourth, ad-hoc association (Kim, 2005; Greenpeace, 2005d; Lee Man-woo, personal communication, September 9, 2011). On May 26, representatives of the Jangsaengpo Defenders mustered at the Whale Occupation Embassy, determined to air their grievances. In an interview with the author, protest organizer Jim Wickens explained that he had already arranged the meeting with the Jangsaengpo contingent in advance (Jim Wickens, personal communication, August 8, 2014). Described on the Greenpeace website as a “showdown,” the meeting began with a tense atmosphere, as numerous police vehicles deployed outside the tent (Greenpeace, 2005e). The Jangsaengpo representatives began with the story of the community’s decline from a population of 16,000 to only 1,600 as a result of the moratorium on whaling. They explained that the opening of the Jangsaengpo Whale Museum was the community’s only hope to bring visitors and revitalize the economy of the community. They did not demand that Greenpeace and KFEM accept the necessity of whaling; however, they did make a request, as narrated by Mr. Wickens: They explained that the embassy was okay, but the mounds with the whale tails behind were painful for them, striking an all too real chord of the past, while preventing them from embracing the future with Oceans Day and the opening of the whale museum (Greenpeace, 2005e).

The mounds resembled a traditional Korean graveyard and could ruin the image of Jangsaengpo when visitors would arrive to the museum. In a gesture of goodwill, Greenpeace offered to remove the whale’s tails. According to Mr. Wickens, They could not believe what they heard and were genuinely blown away. We explained that we would like to help find alternative ways to economically revive the community in a sustainable but profitable way. Suddenly, the president of the community group said he wanted to learn about whale-watching and would welcome all the advice that we could give him on this. The guy next to him said that he would like to get the children from Jangsaengpo [Elementary] School to come and meet us and help design banners for Oceans Day to hang from the mast. Obviously over the moon, they added that because it was so obvious that we meant well, that Greenpeace could stay until the end of the IWC (Greenpeace, 2005e).

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Hence, the showdown meeting ended with an agreement that toned down the visibility of the protest, while permitting the occupation to continue. The immediate outcome of the meeting was a compromise and a working relationship. According to the Greenpeace blog, the Jangsaengpo leaders invited Greenpeace representatives to come to the village school to talk to the children about importance of protecting whales (Greenpeace, 2005b). The locals were also eager to learn from Greenpeace about whale-watching tourism, which was described by the Greenpeace activists as a way to revive the village without harming living whales (Greenpeace, 2005e). However, there was also an amplification of the “cultural relativism” frame. Prior to 2005, the Jangsaengpo restaurants were already relying upon the claim that bycatch is not whaling, that local practice is different from what the international norm prohibits. In reality, the activists from Greenpeace did not agree that bycatch is not whaling. Rather, they agreed not to criticize or target local practices, out of respect for the local community, but maintained their opposition to all forms of whaling. By removing the whale tail cenotaphs, Greenpeace merely agreed to the idea that local practice should not be targeted by the extinction frame, and their protest would be directed at the IWC itself as the locus of international policy on whales. However, the Korean news media reported on the conciliatory meeting with a different emphasis, with the claim that local practice should be treated as exempt from the international anti-whaling norm. The Korean news reports did not mention the issue of whale tail cenotaphs, but claimed that Greenpeace had recognized bycatch as a legitimate way to derive whale meat for the purpose of cultural survival. For example, Yonhap News Service reported that the Jangsaengpo delegation demanded that Greenpeace recognize whale meat as a cultural tradition of Korea and as indispensable to the economy and survival of Jangsaengpo (Hankyoreh, 2005, May 31). In exchange, the Jangsaengpo Defenders agreed to actively assist Greenpeace in its efforts to protect the environment. The report quoted Greenpeace organizer Jim Wickens as saying, “I now understand the cultural importance of eating whale meat for the people who live here, although my position is still against whaling and the commercial sale of whale meat,” and added, “Greenpeace could not oppose the food customs of a nation” (Hankyoreh, 2005, May 31). In an interview (Jim Wickens, personal communication, March 14, 2018), Mr. Wickens clarified why he made this shift in rhetoric based on the need for local social acceptance of the anti-whaling norm. He pointed out that conservation strategies imposed on stakeholders from the top-down tend to fail, as the stakeholders must be won over in order for the policy to succeed. This is a viewpoint shared by cultural anthropologists who study conservation issues and has been substantiated by field studies (Igoe, 2004; Neves, 2010). Furthermore, Greenpeace has a history of abstaining from criticizing communities that claim whaling as an indigenous cultural practice (Erikson, 1999). Nevertheless, it was understood by the Jangsaengpo representatives as an admission that the consumption of whale meat is acceptable if it is not derived from intentional whaling. From this experience, the Jangsaengpo activists came to believe that Western environmentalists feel a moral obligation to respect the culture of others. Armed with this

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knowledge, they shifted their arguments for whaling to a greater emphasis on cultural rights.

DISCUSSION Clearly, an episode of negotiation and frame bridging occurred involving the Jangsaengpo Defenders and the Greenpeace contingent in Ulsan in May of 2005. The question to address is how was it possible for this bridging to occur? The choices made by the participants can be understood as a process of counterframing, and it was an interaction in which there were strategic gains made in the short term. First, the Greenpeace contingent responded to the framing of anti-whaling as a foreign and imperialist imposition. Countering the image of being foreign imperialists and a large-scale bureaucratic NGO, the Greenpeace activists presented themselves as real people who were willing to listen to opposing points of view. Through their willingness to listen and to show concern for the Jangsaengpo community, they attempted to gain credibility with the Koreans in Ulsan. This leads to the issue of audience, since the Greenpeace activists were clearly aiming their discourses to influence the Korean public and not merely trying to create images for the audiences in Western countries. From the start, the Greenpeace activists held events intended to influence the Korean public, including an “open boat” event when the Rainbow Warrior docked, and welcoming all visitors to the Whale Embassy dome. They made it clear that their target was the Korean government, which they hoped would not support Japanese resolutions at the IWC meeting. Hence, their goal of reaching the Korean public made it necessary to counterframe against the imperialist image. Finally, it is important to note that Greenpeace embraced the developmentalism of the Korean discursive opportunity structure. In addition to adopting the community revival discourse of the Jangsaengpo villagers, the Greenpeace activists at the meeting also took on the stance that whale tourism without whaling could provide a sustainable route to economic development. Hence, they shifted their framing from “extinction starts here” to “develop tourist industries to save both the whales and the endangered people of Jangsaengpo.” The resonance of the development frame was irresistible to the Jangsaengpo contingent, and they did temporarily accept an alliance with the Greenpeace encampment. Clearly, both the Jangsaengpo and the Greenpeace activists made some choices that went against their gut feelings. Here it is useful to draw on the notion ¨ and Duyvendak (2009) utilize to describe a clash of dissonance which Broer between feeling rules and framing rules. The dissonance between framing rules and feeling rules produces a willingness to explore novel modes of frame bridging. The Greenpeace activists chose to defend the rights of a whaling community, such as their rights to cultural autonomy and community development, citing the norm of multicultural diversity. They changed their relationship to Jangsaengpo, formerly a target of protest, and now announced to be an ally, claiming that their continued protests would be targeted only at the IWC.

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For their part, the Jangsaengpo activists also made some choices against their gut feelings by accepting Greenpeace as a legitimate organization that is dedicated to an authentic cause of protecting the environment. They stopped labeling Greenpeace as “invaders” and rebranded them as “guests” and directed others in the village to extend hospitality to them during the period of the encampment. Both of these SMOs made the provisional changes in framing in order to achieve short-term goals. The Greenpeace activists sought to avoid eviction from the protest site and to carry out the occupation until the completion of the IWC meeting. The Jangsaengpo Defenders sought to avoid further incidents of negative international publicity such as were accruing from coverage by international news outlets. Nevertheless, once the Whale Embassy dome was disassembled and the Greenpeace activists had departed Korea, were there any remaining effects? The main effect is that the Jangsaengpo activists were transformed into rooted cosmopolitans of the type described by Tarrow (2005). First, the Jangsaengpo activists gained a heightened awareness of their understanding of international norms, and the resonance of the cultural rights frame in the international community. They became rooted cosmopolitans by selectively using the frames borrowed from other cultures; in doing so they adopted the proactive frame of heritage instead of using the scientific frames in defense of whaling favored in Japan. They borrowed the frame of “sustainable whale tourism” which was taken from Greenpeace and their allies in KFEM, contrasting it with industrial development which they portrayed as harmful to the community. Choi (2017) also provides evidence that the Jangsaengpo tourist frame of “sustainable whale tourism” was taken from the anti-whaling activists, but she adopts a theory of ontological interactions and does not attribute any outcomes to the mobilizations of the Jangsaengpo activists or their counterframing activities. In contrast, it is here argued that the contest of framing and counterframing that took place in Jangsaengpo in 2005 had a lasting impact on the framing strategies of those who took part in the mobilization. The importance of the 2005 episode can be highlighted by indicating that the three Jangsaengpo representatives who attended this meeting later went on to become influential pro-whaling activists. The Greenpeace, KFEM, and Jangsaengpo members at the meeting took a celebratory photo at the conclusion of the meeting, which shows who participated. It is still displayed on the Greenpeace website (Greenpeace, 2005e). The representative of the Jangsaengpo Development Association was Yoon Kyung-Tae, who later established the Whale Meat Merchants Cooperative Association of Jangsaengpo, and serves as its president. He is a third generation whale meat restaurant operator. The representative of the Jangsaengpo Youth Association was Go Jung-Goo, who is now a leader of the Whale Culture Preservation Association, a civic organization dedicated to the preservation of Jangsaengpo’s whaling traditions. The third Jangsaengpo representative was Lee Man-Woo, who chaired the Organizing Committee of the Jangsaengpo Whale Festival. He also later served as president of the Whale Culture Preservation Association. All three of these individuals are prominent

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enough to influence the cultural policies that Ulsan Namgu has pursued in developing the Jangsaengpo WCZ (Fig. 6). In other words, the representatives of the Jangsaengpo Defenders were the same activists who had defended the community against village relocation and dispersal and who had worked to organize the Jangsaengpo Whale Festival and lobbied for the construction of the museum. The encounter with Greenpeace reinforced their view that heritage is the best defense and amplified the heritage frame with a new subordinate frame, “cultural rights.” Hence, in a 2008 newspaper article, the journalist and restaurant owner Yoon Kyung-Tae again quoted Jim Wickens’s 2005 statement, “I now understand the cultural importance of whale meat…” (Yoon, 2008c), using it to argue that whaling must be reinstated for the sake of cultural continuity. Similarly, Go Jung-Goo of the Whale Culture Preservation Association stated in 2011, The environmental organizations from overseas acknowledge the culture of eating whales, but they say that capture cannot be permitted, but what is happening is that our [Korean] environmental organizations are even denying the culture of eating... How is it possible to deny the culture…? (quoted in Lee, 2011)

In conversation with the author, he clarified, “Greenpeace said that they did not intend to deny our Korean culture of whales, but only that they were opposed to the illegal hunting of whales. Once they explained this, we no longer had any problem with them [being here]” (Go Jung-Goo, personal communication, September 20, 2011). Nevertheless, the Jangsaengpo advocates of whale meat learned that the local and national governments are very sensitive to international publicity. On June 14, 2005, the Ulsan city government announced the decision not to build the whale

Fig. 6. Logo of the Jangsaengpo Whale Merchants Cooperative Association, hanging on display at the Ulsan Whale Festival in 2015. Photo by author.

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meat processing facility; in return, the city demanded that Greenpeace remove the words “whale meat factory” from its website and desist from portraying Korea as a pro-whaling nation (Greenpeace, 2005f). The city also sought to avoid criticism from international news media, requesting that merchants refrain from selling whale meat at the 2005 Ulsan Whale Festival; however, the merchants refused to comply and asserted the right to sell it (Chosun Ilbo, 2005c). In other words, the episode at the Whale Occupation Embassy in 2005 reinforced the idea that anti-whaling is a global norm and can count on worldwide support, whereas the whale-consuming culture is a subordinate culture which must petition for a special exception to the usual rule. However, based on the principle of cultural relativism as a global norm, the special exemption cannot be denied to Jangsaengpo. In an interview with the author, Go Jung-Goo explained, What we are claiming here is not just the freedom to hunt whales. What we really want is for our customs to be respected, like the respect Americans have for the native people in Alaska (Go Jung-Goo, personal communication, September 25, 2009)

CONCLUSION Even at the local level, movements in support of whaling cannot exist without transnational resources, but many of these resources are developed in episodes of confrontation. The battle over whale meat which took place outside of the 2005 IWC meeting in Ulsan illustrates the role of SMOs and the importance of interactions between movements and countermovements. Through the frame bridging that occurred, the Ulsan whaling revival was able to incorporate key frames from the anti-whaling mobilization, including “sustainable whale tourism.” This resulted in the promotion of a romanticized social memory of whaling in the whale museum and the Whale Culture Zone tourist complex, which is conducive to the increased consumption of whale meat. The outcome of the 2005 meeting between Greenpeace and the Jangsaengpo Defenders was not predetermined. Rather, it illustrates how social movement actors recognize opportunities and make decisions (McCammon et al. 2007, p. 732). Choices about framing may be contrary to the feelings and instincts of the activists, but the dissonance produced in face-to-face interaction with a countermovement makes it possible to choose from frames and norms in a selective and strategic manner. This is illustrated by the way that Greenpeace chose to support the Jangsaengpo whaling community’s right to community development. Similarly, the Jangsaengpo activists chose to selectively use the proactive framing of multicultural identity, transforming themselves into rooted cosmopolitans who are conversant with the norms of their opponents. Subsequent to the episode of confrontation with Greenpeace, the actors added to their repertoire new ways of conceiving and relating cultural traditions to local and transnational institutions. The Korean whaling revival illustrates that the importance of global norms is not inherent in the norms themselves; rather, what is important is the action taken by activists in order to make a frame become salient, or laden with clear relevance to those whom they wish to influence.

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The issue is to discover the features of the discursive opportunity structure that can make a certain frame strategic.

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Kang, T. A. (2012). With its excellent location, work began on the industrial center within a month. Kyungsang Ilbo [In Korean], January 9. Retrieved from http://www.ksilbo.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno5355948. Accessed on July 2, 2019. Ketelaars, P., Walgrave, S., & Wouters, R. (2017). Protesters on message? Explaining demonstrators’ differential degrees of frame alignment. Social Movement Studies, 16, 340–354. doi:10.1080/ 14742837.2017.1280387 Kim, H. C. (2003). Come on! Let’s go catch a whale! Chosun Ilbo [In Korean], May 22. Retrieved from http://weekly1.chosun.com/wdata/html/news/200305/20030513000010.html. Accessed on March 6, 2019. Kim, K. S. (2005). The Greenpeace-Jangsaengpo citizens’ battle over whales [In Korean]. Hankyoreh, May 25. Retrieved from http://legacy.www.hani.co.kr/section-005100033/2005/05/005100033200505252201215. html. Accessed on October 1, 2019. Kim, C. J. (2015). Dangerous crossings: Race, species and nature in a multicultural age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kyungsang Ilbo. (2003). The problem of the marine park, October 15. Retrieved from http:// www.ksilbo.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno573938. Accessed on May 1, 2019. Ladle, R. J., & Jepson, P. (2010). Origins, uses and transformation of extinction rhetoric. Environment and Society: Advances in Research, 1, 96–115. doi:10.3167/ares.2010.010105 Lee, B. C. (2005a). The political economy of developmental dictatorship. In B. C. Lee (Ed.), Developmental dictatorship and the Park Chung-Hee era: The shaping of modernity in the Republic of Korea (pp. 3–50). Paramus, NJ: Homa & Sekey Books. Lee, K. W. (2005b). The opening ceremony of the Jangsaengpo whale museum [In Korean]. Joongang Ilbo, May 30. Retrieved from https://news.joins.com/article/1607148. Accessed on October 2, 2019. Lee, G. M. (2005c). Byeon Chang-myeong, the chairman of the committee for the resumption of Korean whaling [In Korean]. Chosun Ilbo, May 10. Retrieved from http://monthly.chosun.com/ client/news/viw.asp?nNewsNumb5200505100038. Accessed on October 1, 2019. Lee, B. R. (2011). The stagnant whaling city dreams of resurrection via culture and history. Ulsan Sinmun [In Korean], May 19. Retrieved from http://www.ulsanpress.net/news/articleView.html? idxno5107195. Accessed on October 1, 2019. Lee, H. J. (2012). Building the industrial zone and the relocation of villages reorganized the map of Ulsan. Kyungsang Ilbo [In Korean], March 17. Retrieved from http://www.ksilbo.co.kr/news/ articleView.html?idxno5366026. Accessed on June 4, 2019. MacMillan, D., & Han, J. (2011). Cetacean by-Catch in the Korean peninsula—by chance or by design? Human Ecology, 39, 757–768. doi:10.1007/s10745-011-9429-4 McAdam, D. (1996). Conceptual origins, current problems, future directions. In D. McAdam, J. D. McCarthy, & M. N. Zald (Eds.), Comparative perspectives on social movements: Political opportunities, mobilizing structures and cultural framings (pp. 23–40). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511803987.003 McCammon, H. J., Muse, C. S., Newman, H. D., & Terrell, T. M. (2007). Movement framing and discursive opportunity structures: The political successes of the U.S. women’s jury movements. American Sociological Review, 72, 725–749. doi:10.1177/000312240707200504 Meyer, D. S., & Staggenborg, S. (1996). Movements, countermovements and the structure of political opportunity. American Journal of Sociology, 101, 1628–1660. doi:10.1086/230869 Meyer, J. W., Boli, J., Thomas, G. M., & Ramirez, F. O. (1997). World society and the nation-state. American Journal of Sociology, 103, 144–181. doi:10.1086/231174 Meyer, D. S. (2004). Protest and political opportunities. Annual Review of Sociology, 30, 125–145. doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.30.012703.110545 MOMAF [Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries]. (2005). Korea’s position on distorted claims from Greenpeace. Retrieved from https://www.greenpeace.org/archive-international/Global/international/planet-2/report/2005/5/korean-whaling-mofa-fax.pdf. Accessed on August 1, 2019. Moon, S. (2005). Militarized modernity and gendered citizenship in South Korea. Durham: Duke University Press. Moon, Y. (2011). Whale meat growing in popularity in Busan. The Korea Herald, May 5. Retrieved from http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud520110324000920. Accessed on May 3, 2019.

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Morisita, J. (2006). Multiple analysis of the whaling issue: Understanding the dispute by a matrix. Marine Policy, 30, 802–808. doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2006.02.005 Neves, K. (2010). Cashing in on cetourism: A critical ecological engagement with dominant E‐NGO discourses on whaling, cetacean conservation, and whale watching. Antipode, 42, 719–741. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00770.x Oakes, T. (1998). Tourism and modernity in China. London: Routledge. Oliver, P. E., & Johnston, H. (2000). What a good idea! Ideologies and frames in social movement research. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 4, 37–54. Park, J. H. (2009). The citizens are protecting Ulsan Jangsaengpo. Seoul Sinmun [In Korean], January 23. Retrieved from http://www.seoul.co.kr/news/newsView.php?id520090123006010#csidxac2e424dbf8ff8a83fbc1f7c091383c. Accessed on June 2, 2019. Riese, J. (2017). Hairy hippies and bloody butchers: The Greenpeace anti-whaling campaign in Norway. New York, NY: Berghahn Books. Shin, D. (2004). Confusing responses to regional conflicts: Restructuring administrative boundaries in Korea. In J. Meligrana (Ed.), Redrawing local government boundaries: An international study of politics, procedures and decisions (pp. 172–188). Vancouver, BC: UBC Press. Singleton, B. E., & Lidskog, R. (2018). Science, red in tooth and claw: Whaling, purity, pollution and institutions in marine mammal scientists’ boundary work. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 1, 165–185. doi:10.1177/2514848618768213 Singleton, B. E. (2004). Love-iathan, the meat-whale and hidden people: Ordering Faroese pilot whaling. Journal of Political Ecology, 23, 26–48. doi:10.2458/v23i1.20178 Singleton, B. E. (2018). Making a meal of it: A political ecology examination of whale meat and tourism. In C. Kline (Ed.), Tourism experiences and animal consumption: Contested values, morality and ethics (pp. 87–101). London: Routledge. Smith, L. (2006). The uses of heritage. London: Routledge. Snow, D. A., & Benford, R. D. (1992). Master frames and cycles of protest. In A. D. Morris & C. McClurg (Eds.), Frontiers in social movement theory (pp. 133–155). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Snow, D. A., Rochford, E. B., Worden, S. K., & Benford, R. D. (1986). Frame alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation. American Sociological Review, 51, 464–481. doi:10.2307/2095581 Snow, D. A. (2004). Framing processes, ideology, and discursive fields. In D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule, & H. Kriesi (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to social movements (pp. 380–412). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. doi:10.1002/9780470999103.ch17 Szerszynski, B. (2002). Ecological rites: Ritual action in environmental protest events. Theory, Culture & Society, 19, 51–69. doi:10.1177/026327602401081521 Tarrow, S. (2005). The new transnational activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tatar, B., & Jung, C. (2018). Getting to know the consumer: Toward mitigation of illegal whale meat consumption in South Korea. Marine Policy, 89, 116–123. doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2017.12.024 Tatar, B. (2014). The safety of bycatch: South Korean responses to the moratorium on commercial whaling. Journal of Marine and Island Cultures, 3, 89–87. doi:10.1016/j.imic.2014.08.002 Watanabe, H. (2009). In H. Clarke (Trans.), Japan’s whaling: The politics of culture in historical perspective. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press. Yearley, S. (1993). Standing in for nature. The practicalities of environmental organizations’ use of science. In K. Milton (Ed.), Environmentalism: The view from anthropology (pp. 59–72). London: Routledge. Yoon, E. (2006). South Korean environmental foreign policy. Asia-Pacific Review, 13, 74–96. doi: 10.1080/13439000601029030 Yoon, K. (2008a). Reliving the nostalgia for the vanguard whaling station [In Korean]. Ulsan Jeil Ilbo, April 30. Retrieved from http://www.ujeil.com/news/articleView.html?idxno57763. Accessed on May 2, 2019. Yoon, K. (2008b). Greenpeace improperly crossed the border without clearing customs [In Korean]. Ulsan Jeil Ilbo, May 6. Retrieved from http://www.ujeil.com/news/articleView.html?idxno57987. Accessed on May 2, 2019. Yoon, K. (2008c). The urgency of inheriting Korea’s traditional whale meat cuisine [In Korean]. Ulsan Jeil Ilbo, May 7. Retrieved from http://www.ujeil.com/news/articleView.html?idxno58029. Accessed on May 2, 2019.

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MOBILIZING FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES AND OUTCOMES OF CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN CAMPUS ACTIVISM* Jonathan S. Coley

ABSTRACT Colleges and universities in the United States are common sites of social movement activism, yet we know little about the conditions under which campusbased movements are likely to meet with success or failure. In this study, I develop the concept of educational opportunity structures, and I highlight several dimensions of colleges and universities’ educational opportunity structures – specifically, schools’ statuses as public or private, secular or religious, highly or lowly ranked, and more or less wealthy – that can affect the outcomes of campusbased movements. Analyzing a religious freedom movement at Vanderbilt University, which mobilized from 2010 to 2012 to demand the ability of religious student organizations to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and religious belief, I argue that Vanderbilt’s status as a private, secular, elite, and wealthy university ensured that conservative Christian activism at that school was highly unlikely to succeed. The findings hold important theoretical implications for the burgeoning literature on student activism. *

An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Southern Sociological Society. The author thanks Dan Cornfield, Larry Isaac, Joseph Roso, the editor, and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Please direct correspondence to Jonathan Coley, Department of Sociology, Oklahoma State University, [email protected]

Power and Protest Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Volume 44, 175–200 Copyright © 2021 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X20210000044012

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Keywords: Social movements; higher education; Christianity; religious freedom; LGBTQ rights; qualitative methods

INTRODUCTION The social movements literature increasingly recognizes that colleges and universities are hotbeds of activism (Van Dyke, 1998). In the 1960s, colleges and universities served as central sites for civil rights activism (McAdam, 1982), the second-wave feminist movement (McCammon, McGrath, Dixon, & Robinson, 2016), and the antiwar movement (Klatch, 1999). In more recent years, institutions of higher education have served as sites of Latino student activism (Reyes, 2018), feminist movements (Crossley, 2017; Reger, 2018), LGBTQ movements (Coley, 2018a, 2020; Kane, 2013), and labor movements (Dixon, Tope, & Van Dyke, 2008), among others. Despite the centrality of colleges and universities to much social movement activism, however, scholars have largely failed to examine the unique characteristics of campus-based movements (see critique by Reger, 2018). Furthermore, those scholars who do write about campus-based movements generally focus on issues of mobilization; we know little about the characteristics of colleges or universities that make campus-based movements more or less likely to succeed. The topic is particularly important to consider in light of the rise of conservative student activism across colleges and universities in the United States (see, e.g., Binder & Wood, 2014; Ince, Finlay, & Rojas, 2018; Munson, 2010). According to Binder and Wood (2014, p. 35), just over one in five college students identifies as conservative. Several major right-wing organizations (the Young America’s Foundation, the Leadership Institute, and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute) are strategically mobilizing such students across hundreds of college and university campuses in the United States to promote conservative ideologies and combat the perceived left-wing bias of academia. Beyond such explicitly political organizations, many Christian organizations such as Cru (formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ), InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Navigators, and Fellowship of Christian Athletes are similarly organizing students across US colleges and universities, propagating conservative Christian beliefs to combat what they see as a secular bias of higher education (Krattenmaker, 2010; Magolda & Gross, 2009; Schmalzbauer, 2013; Turner, 2008). Although many conservative political and religious student organizations focus on promoting conservative beliefs on campuses, some of these organizations also protest their colleges’ and universities’ policies, seeking (among other things) more conservative representation among college faculty, changes to curricula, and exemptions to nondiscrimination policies (Binder & Wood, 2014; Ince et al., 2018; Munson, 2010). What conditions affect whether campus-based movements meet with success or failure? In this chapter, I analyze the case of religious freedom mobilization at a university as a way to identify the factors associated with the success or failure of campus-based movements targeting colleges and universities. Specifically, I analyze a religious freedom movement that mobilized at Vanderbilt University in

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Nashville, Tennessee, from 2010 to 2012. After Vanderbilt penalized a Christian fraternity for expelling a gay member in 2010, conservative Christian student groups mobilized to demand the ability to accept members and elect leaders on the basis of their sexual orientation and religious beliefs. Drawing on both observational data and insights from media reports, I show that conservative Christian groups at Vanderbilt successfully mobilized several types of resources in support of their movement: they raised tens of thousands of dollars to spread word of their cause, mobilized hundreds of members of religious student organizations, and attracted the support of leaders of several national religious organizations. However, despite the energetic backing of its conservative Christian participants, the religious freedom movement ultimately failed to achieve its goals. Furthermore, conservative Christian student groups at Vanderbilt suffered multiple negative consequences. To address how a movement that was so successful at mobilizing resources and drawing attention to its cause could still meet with failure, I adapt McAdam’s (1982) political process framework to a campus context, arguing that movements targeting colleges and universities are more likely to succeed when certain educational opportunity structures make schools vulnerable to change. Colleges and universities exhibit certain characteristics that make them more or less likely to respond favorably to student movements’ demands for acceptance and accommodation (Gamson, 1975), including those colleges and universities’ statuses as public or private, secular or religious, highly or lowly ranked, and more or less wealthy. In the case of the religious freedom movement at Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt’s status as a private, secular, elite, and wealthy university made it a challenging target for a movement backed by conservative Christians. I elaborate on these results and their theoretical and practical implications later in the chapter, but first I review past research on campus activism, outline my theoretical framework, and elaborate on my data and methodological approach.

PAST RESEARCH AND THEORY ON CAMPUS ACTIVISM A growing body of work within the sociological literature on social movements examines campus-based activism (Ince et al., 2018). Whereas much early major work in social movement studies assumed that social movements target the state (see critiques by Armstrong & Bernstein, 2008; Van Dyke, Soule, & Taylor, 2004), an emerging literature has shown that schools are common sites and targets of activists (McCarthy & McPhail, 2006; Van Dyke, 1998). I review this literature with a particular focus on specific characteristics of schools that seem to shape the emergence, forms, and outcomes of campus-based movements characteristics that might, in turn, inform conceptualizations of educational opportunity structures.1 One line of research within the sociological literature on campus activism examines predictors of student activism across colleges and universities, from 1960s student activism (Lipset, 1976; Van Dyke, 1998) to more contemporary

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student activism (Coley, 2017; Kane, 2013; Reger, 2018; Soule, 1997). These studies show that certain characteristics of colleges and universities seem to enable student activism: specifically, schools that are elite (Lipset, 1976; Soule, 1997; Van Dyke, 1998), wealthy (Coley, 2017; Soule, 1997), secular (Kane, 2013; Van Dyke, 1998), and able to provide funds to registered student groups (Reger, 2018) are more likely to be home to campus activist groups. By contrast, schools that are low in status, less wealthy, religious, and lacking in funds to provide student groups are less likely to be sites of campus activism. Another line of research on campus activism examines the forms that campus activism can take (e.g., Binder & Wood, 2014; Reyes, 2018; Walker, Martin, & McCarthy, 2008). Binder and Wood’s (2014) book on conservative campus activism compares conservative student groups at two universities, showing that certain types of campuses are more frequently sites of disruptive or contentious kinds of activism. Specifically, they show that a public flagship university seemed to inspire a more provocative form of conservative activism (focused on organizing incendiary events that sparked campus-wide debates over conservative issues) compared to an elite university where an election-focused, campaigning form of conservative activism thrived. Similarly, Reyes’ (2018) book on Latino student organizations shows that a public research university seemed to inspire activism that was more contentious than activism at a residential liberal arts college, where friendlier interorganizational collaborations developed. Combined, these studies underscore how unique characteristics of colleges and universities, especially their public/private status or elite status, can shape forms of campus-based protest. A final strand of literature focuses on outcomes of campus activism. In general, sociological studies examining campus-based activist groups that target colleges and universities tend to emphasize characteristics of activist groups that facilitate success: for example, Rojas (2006) argues that less disruptive forms of protests (such as rallies) were more effective than disruptive protests (such as sitins) in facilitating the spread of African-American Studies departments across colleges and universities, and McCammon et al. (2016) highlight the role of feminists’ “critical community tactics” in facilitating cultural changes in maledominated law schools. By contrast, Lemonik Arthur’s (2011) study of curricular change in higher education emphasizes characteristics of colleges or universities that shape campus movements’ prospects of success. Specifically, she highlights the importance of colleges’ or universities’ stated missions (e.g., religious vs. liberal arts vs. vocational) and administrations’ openness and flexibility, showing that favorable missions and flexible administrators create opportunities for change when movements adopt insider tactics and appropriate framing strategies. In this chapter, I adopt the focus on explaining outcomes of campus activism and similarly consider the role of schools’ religious (or secular) missions; however, I advance the literature by examining how other structural characteristics of colleges and universities identified in the past literature on campus activism (e.g., schools’ public or private status, highly or lowly ranked status, and more or less wealthy status) might shape student movements’ prospects for success.

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THEORIZING EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES AND OUTCOMES OF CAMPUS ACTIVISM To better understand the factors shaping outcomes of campus activism, I adapt political process theory, an influential framework for explaining the emergence, growth, and success of social movements (McAdam, 1982). McAdam’s (1982) theory argues, first, that social movements emerge and succeed when political opportunity structures are open rather than closed. A political opportunity structure that is open is one where (a) the institutionalized political system is open to challengers, (b) elites are either divided over a policy or (c) favorable to a policy that a movement advocates, and (d) the state does not repress the movement (McAdam, 1997, p. 26). Second, McAdam (1982) argues that social movements emerge and succeed when they have access to resources, including human resources (participants, leaders), physical/spatial resources (buildings/meeting spaces), and monetary resources. Importantly, his theory stresses that resources should be indigenous to the challenger group, lest movements put themselves at risk of cooptation or neglect by depending on resources from outside, elite groups. Finally, social movements emerge and succeed when groups experience cognitive liberation, or the recognition that injustices exist, collective action is necessary to address those injustices, and opportunities are available for collective action. Political process theory has been highly influential in social movement studies, inspiring numerous replications, extensions, and critiques. One of the most prominent critiques focuses on political process theory’s focus on the political (Armstrong & Bernstein, 2008): although the theory is helpful for explaining the emergence and success of social movements that target the state, it is less helpful for understanding social movements that target other institutions, such as businesses, religious institutions, or as in this case, educational institutions. In this vein, scholars have identified the characteristics of a variety of other opportunity structures, including gendered opportunity structures (McCammon, Campbell, Granberg, & Mowery, 2001), discursive opportunity structures (Koopmans & Olzak, 2004), industry opportunity structures (Schurman, 2004), and most pertinent to this study, academic opportunity structures (Reger, 2018). Reger’s (2018) study, which addresses how a conservative Midwestern university became home to an active feminist student organization, argues that academic opportunity structures are open to campus activism when they require students to formally register their student organizations; formal registration, in turn, provides student organizations with access to campus funds and meeting spaces, ensures those student organizations establish leaderships structures, and creates paper trails facilitating institutional memory of organizations’ activities. Like Reger (2018), I am interested in how the structure of opportunities at colleges and universities can shape campus activism, but I build on and extend her work in three ways. First, I employ a broader term, educational opportunity structures, to highlight the fact that colleges and universities’ missions often go beyond the academic or scholastic. Second, I examine how educational opportunity structures affect the prospects for student movements’ success, in contrast with Reger’s (2018) study, which concentrates on how academic opportunity

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structures can facilitate student movements’ emergence and continuity. Following Gamson’s (1975, ch. 3) formulation of movement outcomes, I define success as involving both acceptance (here, allowing the existence of conservative Christian student organizations) and new advantages/accommodations (here, allowing those organizations to discriminate on the basis of certain characteristics such as sexual orientation and religious belief). Finally, I draw on insights from the previously reviewed literature on campus activism to identity additional dimensions of educational opportunity structures, dimensions that may be especially helpful for understanding the outcomes of (rather than just emergence and persistence of) campus activism. Although acknowledging that requirements that campus activist groups formally register with a college or university may facilitate those campus activist groups’ endurance, requiring student organizations to register with the university in turn allows the university to co-opt the organization, i.e., provide the organizations with acceptance but no advantages (Gamson, 1975). Indeed, this study illustrates that a university certainly can use student organizations’ registered status to apply rules and restrictions to those organizations that may detract from those organizations’ goals or missions. Thus, I focus on other characteristics of colleges or universities that may be more relevant for understanding outcomes of campus activism. I argue that colleges and universities’ educational opportunity structures vary along at least four dimensions. First, colleges and universities vary in terms of whether they are private or public, a characteristic that has been previously linked to the forms that campus activist groups take (Binder & Wood, 2014; Reyes, 2018). Although private and public schools come in a variety of forms, public schools are by definition less exclusive spaces than private schools; as a result, public universities are more open to challengers and less willing to repress challenger groups (the openness of a polity and the level of repression being two key concerns in McAdam’s [1997] formulation of opportunity structures). Public universities are required by federal courts to adhere to constitutional free speech guarantees and thus allow people representing diverse backgrounds and viewpoints to form groups and hold speeches at public schools (e.g., see Reichard’s (2010) discussion of federal court rulings about LGBTQ student groups at public universities). This openness can even extend to people or groups that seek to deny the rights of others; for example, in recent years, neo-Nazi leader Richard Spencer has been able to speak at a range of public university campuses because “public institutions covered by the First Amendment must accommodate speakers” (Bauer-Wolf, 2017, para. 10). By contrast, private colleges and universities have much more latitude to restrict various groups’ access to campus and censor activities or speech by groups with whom they disagree (Coley, 2018a, ch. 1).2 The implication for understanding the prospects for student movements’ success is that public colleges and universities are more likely than private colleges and universities to be accepting and accommodating of campus activist groups representing a broad range of viewpoints. Second, colleges and universities vary in terms of whether they are religious or secular, a characteristic that has been previously linked to the emergence of campus activism (e.g., Coley, 2017; Kane, 2013; Van Dyke, 1998) as well as the outcomes

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of campus activism (e.g., Lemonik Arthur, 2011). How might this characteristic shape the outcomes of campus activist groups? Religious colleges and universities not only have the ability to restrict access to campus or censor viewpoints of certain groups with whom they disagree (as with other private colleges and universities) but also they even have the ability to discriminate on the basis of certain characteristics that would normally be protected by state and/or federal laws, such as gender identity, sexual orientation, or religious affiliation, as long as that college or university justifies that discrimination on the basis of its religious beliefs (Coley, 2018a; 2018b). In other words, religious colleges and universities are even less open to, and potentially more repressive of, challengers (McAdam, 1997). Overall, the implication for understanding the potential success of campus-based movements is that secular colleges and universities are more likely than religious colleges and universities to be accepting and accommodating of campus activist groups representing a broad range of viewpoints. One important caveat, however, is that religious colleges or universities will likely be more accepting and accommodating of campus activist groups representing those colleges’ or universities’ religious views. Third, colleges and universities vary in terms of prestige. In particular, some colleges and universities have developed reputations as elite institutions, often signaled by high rankings in the US News and World Report’s annual report on US colleges and universities. Elite schools are often vibrant spaces for campus activism (Soule, 1997; Van Dyke, 1998), but are they responsive to demands by campus activist groups? Elite institutions are often quite protective of their reputations and thus look to and often follow the policies of peer institutions to maintain their reputations among elite universities, as the literature on institutional isomorphism would suggest (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; see also; Rojas, 2006). For example, there is a strong norm among elite institutions to be protective of LGBTQ rights: the first LGBTQ college and university group in the United States was founded at Columbia University, and Cornell University and other Ivy League colleges and universities followed closely behind (Coley, 2018a, ch. 1). Attention to a college’s or university’s elite status, and attention to whether an elite college’s or university’s policies align with those of other elite colleges or universities, thus provides important clues as to whether campus activist groups are likely to succeed. Specifically, elite institutions are more likely to be accepting and accommodating of campus activist groups that make demands that have been met by other elite colleges and universities; the degree of alignment with elite schools’ policies is perhaps less of a concern for low-prestige schools. Finally, colleges and universities vary in terms of wealth, with greater wealth previously having been linked to a greater likelihood of campus activism (Soule, 1997; Van Dyke, 1998). Wealthy colleges and universities that benefit from large (e.g., multi-billion-dollar) endowments and have numerous wealthy donors have the ability to weather threats by individual donors to withhold contributions, or threats by parents to withhold their tuition dollars, should the university not accept a student movement’s demands. By contrast, colleges and universities with less money are often much more vulnerable to pressures imposed on them by their wealthiest donors, who may be quite few in number, along with pressures imposed by tuition payers. For example, Coley’s (2018a, ch. 4) study of LGBTQ

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activism at Christian colleges and universities recounts the story of Belmont University, a nondenominational, conservative Christian university that had for years maintained a student handbook ban on so-called “homosexual behavior,” denied requests by LGBTQ students for an official student group, and dismissed employees who came out as LGBTQ. Despite its long history of opposition to LGBTQ rights, in December 2010, the school suddenly decided to adopt a nondiscrimination policy inclusive of sexual orientation and approve an LGBTQ student group after a donor on which it was highly dependent, Mike Curb, gave a statement to the media strongly denouncing the school’s anti-LGBTQ policies (“I promise you, if the matter is not resolved, I will continue speaking out about this the rest of my life” [Coley, 2018a, p. 90]). Attention to a school’s wealth thus provides another clue as to whether schools will be responsive to campus activists. Specifically, wealthy institutions are less likely to be accommodating and responsive to campus activist groups with whom its leaders disagree. Overall, I argue that key aspects of colleges’ or universities’ educational opportunity structures – particularly, their statuses as public or private, religious or secular, elite or non-elite, and wealthy or less wealthy – hold important implications for understanding whether campus activist groups that target their colleges or universities are likely to succeed. Below, I consider the role of educational opportunity structures in the outcomes of religious freedom mobilization at Vanderbilt University while also considering the role of other aspects of McAdam’s (1982) framework, namely, the potential role of indigenous resources and cognitive liberation in the religious freedom movement at Vanderbilt.

DATA AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH To examine factors shaping the outcomes of religious freedom mobilization at Vanderbilt, I draw on ethnographic data and insights from media reports about the religious freedom movement at Vanderbilt, which was most active from 2010 to 2012. The US News & World Report ranked Vanderbilt #17 in the nation and #2 in the South at the time of the movement (Anderson, 2014), and Vanderbilt maintained a sizable endowment of over $3 billion at the time of the movement (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012), making it an elite and wealthy university in addition to a private and secular one. Vanderbilt represents an exemplary early and prominent site of the broader religious freedom movement, which would mobilize even more broadly after the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage (Kazyak, Burke, & Stange, 2018). Vanderbilt is home to many religious student organizations, including organizations associated with Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim faith traditions. As a university located in the so-called Bible Belt, though, Christian organizations dominate the campus religious scene, ranging from parachurch organizations to campus ministries associated with Baptist, Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian faiths (Vanderbilt University, 2019). In all, 30 Christian organizations were present at the university during this time, and many would become active in the religious freedom movement (Smietana, 2012).

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Because the religious freedom movement drew most of its energy from the conservative student population on campus, it may come as no surprise that Vanderbilt has also been home to various right-wing political groups, such as Vanderbilt College Republicans, which supported the religious freedom movement. Adding further to the conservative character of campus life, Greek organizations are a major presence at Vanderbilt. In 2011, 20 fraternities and sororities existed, attracting about 40% of undergraduates (Kylie, 2011). As a 2013 Vanderbilt Hustler report noted, Vanderbilt fraternities have had a reputation of being discriminatory toward gay men (Blaine, 2013), and indeed the religious freedom controversy was sparked by the Christian fraternity Beta Upsilon Chi’s (BYX) decision to expel a gay member, as I describe in the next section. At the same time as it is home to a variety of conservative organizations, Vanderbilt as an institution has shown commitment to LGBTQ rights: the university includes sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression in its nondiscrimination policy; supports several LGBTQ student, staff, and faculty groups; and offers a range of benefits to LGBTQ employees. The university also funds an Office of LGBTQI Life housed in a free-standing, two-story building on campus. As such, Vanderbilt represents a site where an institution’s commitment to LGBTQ rights clashed with the viewpoints of many of its conservative students. To study the religious freedom movement, I adopted an observer role on Vanderbilt’s campus, attending a four-hour town hall facilitated by administrators on January 31, 2012; a protest and a tabling event by supporters of the religious freedom movement on February 10, 2012, and April 11, 2012; and an event organized by Soulforce for supporters of the LGBTQ community on March 14, 2012. I also closely monitored campus discourse and local and national news coverage about the movement throughout the 2010 to 2012 period. To record insights about events on campus, I usually wrote initial field notes as events were occurring. The town hall and Soulforce events, for example, were held in classrooms with desks, making it easy to record notes in an inconspicuous manner. In the case of events held outdoors, I recorded field notes immediately upon returning to an office. I coded field notes by hand, with the goal of producing summaries of basic descriptive information (such as, at the town hall, how many people spoke, the organizational affiliations of the people who spoke, how many were supportive of Vanderbilt’s policy, and how many were opposed to Vanderbilt’s policy) and identifying recurring analytic themes, especially themes relevant to the ways conservative Christian groups were involved in the movement and the outcomes of the religious freedom movement. I supplemented insights from field notes with information from media coverage and movement websites. At the time of the movement, Vanderbilt was home to several student newspapers, from its main paper The Vanderbilt Hustler to a satire newspaper known as The Slant, a progressive newspaper known as Orbis, and a conservative and libertarian newspaper known as The Vanderbilt Torch. Thus, I collected physical newspapers produced during this time period, read all 60 articles relevant to the religious freedom movement, and coded these articles with an eye toward identifying information relevant to understanding the religious freedom movement at Vanderbilt. Next, using LexisNexis, I identified news stories published

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about “Vanderbilt University” accompanied with the search terms “nondiscrimination,” “sexual orientation,” or “religious freedom” from November 2010 through December 2012; these searches uncovered 107 unique stories appearing in outlets ranging from the Associated Press to USA Today to The Tennessean to NPR to CNN to Fox News. I read each story, similarly coded them for information relevant to the activities of and outcomes of the religious freedom movement, and incorporate relevant information or quotes. Finally, I read, watched, and analyzed all content from the movement’s website, VanderbiltReligiousFreedom.com, including 12 videos it had uploaded to YouTube. Ethnographic observations, media coverage, and content produced by the movement each provided their own unique insights but were also useful for purposes of triangulation. Specifically, because the events I observed were public, they were generally well-covered by media outlets and reacted to on the website of the movement itself, allowing me to verify that others made similar observations about the events. YouTube videos were especially valuable, allowing me to provide exact quotes from events such as the town hall that I had summarized in my field notes. I draw on such data in the following sections, which detail the emergence, rise, and decline of the religious freedom movement at Vanderbilt.

BEGINNING OF THE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM CONTROVERSY AT VANDERBILT In April 2010, the Christian fraternity BYX (pronounced “Bucks”) at Vanderbilt expelled a gay member, citing its Code of Conduct, which stated that “sex is a gift of God to be enjoyed only inside the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman. Therefore, we will not condone such activity as homosexuality…” (Furlow, 2010, p. 1). The Vanderbilt Hustler broke news of the episode in November 2010 (see timeline of events in Table 1), relaying the anonymous gay member’s account of his expulsion: “[The chapter president, Greg Wigger] said that someone had approached the officer corps and suggested that I might be struggling with homosexuality. He would not tell me who told the officer corps, or when, or on what basis my sexuality had come into question, but said that the entire officer corps had been apprised of this person’s suspicion,” the 2010 alumnus told the Hustler. According to the 2010 alumnus, he told Wigger that he was gay. At that point, Wigger asked the 2010 alumnus what he meant by “gay.” “(Wigger asked if I) was … sexually active or just attracted to men? I told him that I was not sexually active,” the 2010 alumnus told the Hustler. “He insisted that this information would stay between the two of us. Ten days later Greg told me that I had been deactivated”… The former member… confirmed to the Hustler that he was given the option by fraternity president Wigger to leave the fraternity or face expulsion after having a discussion with Wigger about his sexual orientation (Furlow, 2010, p. 1).

As news of BYX’s actions surfaced, Vanderbilt announced it would be reviewing the constitutions of all student organizations to ensure their compliance with the university’s nondiscrimination policy. Citing the 2010 decision Christian

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Table 1. Timeline of Events. Date April 18, 2010

November 5, 2010 Late November and December 2010

September 27, 2011

January 31, 2012 April 9, 2012

May 2, 2012

Event Beta Upsilon Chi (BYX) leader questions member about his sexual orientation; BYX expels member 10 days later (Furlow, 2010). The Vanderbilt Hustler publishes its first story about the expulsion of a gay student from BYX (Furlow, 2010). Vanderbilt University announces receipt of official discrimination complaint and its intent to review nondiscrimination policies in student groups’ constitutions (Blaine, 2011b). Vanderbilt University officially places four student organizations on probation for not complying with the university’s nondiscrimination policy (Blaine, 2011b). Vanderbilt University holds town hall articulating its “allcomers policy” (Blaine, 2012d). Eleven student organizations announce they will not comply with university’s “all-comers” policy, leading to their departure from campus (Blaine, 2012b). Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam announces his veto of HB 3576/SB 3597, which would have penalized Vanderbilt University for its “all comers” policy (Hale, 2012).

Legal Society v. Martinez, in which the US Supreme Court ruled that universities could require Christian student organizations to be open to all students regardless of characteristics such as sexual orientation (Russo & Thro, 2011), Vanderbilt identified four Christian organizations that were in violation of the university’s policy (BYX, Christian Legal Society, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and Graduate Christian Fellowship) and placed them on provisional status, requiring that they alter their policies or else no longer be recognized as registered student organizations (Blaine, 2011b; Farmer, 2012). Noncompliance with university policies regarding sexual orientation was certainly one basis on which Vanderbilt placed organizations on probation. BYX, for example, pushed back strongly against the idea it could not hold members to the organization’s Code of Conduct, which prohibited homosexuality. Former president Brent Bonetti told CNN, “What really is on the line is the integrity of our organization” (Merica, 2012, para. 3). In addition, Vanderbilt found fault with requirements by the Christian Legal Society, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and Graduate Christian Fellowship that their leaders and/or members must be Christians (Alexandrou, 2012). The rationale for placing these Christian organizations under new scrutiny was twofold. First, requirements that students must be Christian could be a backdoor means for organizations to discriminate against potential LGBTQ members, since some organizations might consider same-sex relationships (for example) to go against Christian teachings. The university was keenly aware of events that were occurring at other universities, including the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, which

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allowed a Christian a capella group to expel a gay member on the basis of the organization’s stated religious beliefs (Blaine, 2011b). Second, even if such requirements that leaders be Christians were not intended to discriminate against sexual minority students, the school argued that such requirements still constituted discrimination on the basis of religion. Vanderbilt’s actions infuriated many Christian student organizations. For example, the faculty advisor to the Christian Legal Society, Carol Swain – a conservative African-American law professor who was a frequent commentator in right-wing media – told Fox News (2011, para. 11), “It seems reasonable to require that leaders share the beliefs of the organizations that they seek to lead…. I see it as part of a larger attack on religious freedom that’s taking place across the country – particularly when it comes to conservative groups.”

MOBILIZING FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AT VANDERBILT Following Vanderbilt’s decision to place four Christian organizations on probation, conservative Christian student groups played a key role in an emerging religious freedom movement at Vanderbilt, which was active from the fall of 2010 through the spring of 2012. If one evaluated only the ability of student groups to mobilize indigenous resources (in this case, resources from conservative Christian communities), as well as facilitate cognitive liberation on the part of their participants, one might come away with an optimistic view of the potential for the religious freedom movement to effect policy changes at Vanderbilt. One important task that conservative Christian student groups at Vanderbilt seemed to fulfill was convincing their fellow conservative Christian students that an important problem existed on campus and that it was necessary to mobilize to address that problem – i.e., they facilitated people’s cognitive liberation (McAdam, 1982). Specifically, when Vanderbilt’s decision to sanction BYX came to light, opponents utilized religious language and symbols to frame their central problem not as an opposition to gay rights but as a defense of religious freedom. Thus, in rapid fashion, the movement’s central demand shifted from allowing student organizations to discriminate against sexual minorities to protecting the ability of organizations to consider students’ religious affiliation in their membership and leadership decisions (even if such a demand would still provide organizations with a way to discriminate against sexual minorities). This religious freedom framing has been adopted by similar anti-LGBTQ religious movements in the United States (e.g., Kazyak et al., 2018) and other countries (e.g., Poulos, 2019); as Poulos (2019, p. 10) describes, the increasing use of the “religious freedom” in anti-LGBTQ movements marks a “shift from religious freedom being about the right to be free from discrimination because of one’s religion, to being about the ‘right’ to discriminate against others in the name of one’s religion” (emphases in original). Related to the strategic framing of this issue, religious language and symbols permeated the movement’s messaging and tactics. The movement called itself “Restore Religious Freedom at Vanderbilt”; the movement placed the image of a

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dove carrying an olive branch, a Christian symbol for peace, on yard signs found outside some buildings surrounding Vanderbilt’s campus; and movement supporters referenced their faith on signs they held up at protests (e.g., “My Faith 5 My Life”) (field notes). Groups also relied on the ritual of prayer in many of their actions. For example, Vanderbilt Catholic organized daily noon prayers in front of Vanderbilt’s administrative building in the fall of 2011 (Blaine, 2011b). Not all people accepted the religious freedom framing. For example, some supporters admitted that their opposition to Vanderbilt’s actions was because of their opposition to LGBTQ rights, with one letter to the editor of the Vanderbilt Hustler being titled “Christians Can’t Be Gay” (Poythress, 2009). In addition, Vanderbilt’s progressive newspaper Orbis ran a cover story for its February 2012 issue entitled “Is This What Religious Groups Are Afraid Of?” featuring the image of a person spray-painting a cross with rainbow colors. Nevertheless, the “religious freedom” frame circulated widely on campus. Conservative Christian groups also shaped the movement’s ability to emerge and sustain protest actions. Further applying McAdam’s (1982) political process model, it is clear that Christian groups provided a number of key resources for the movement, beginning with leaders. For example, at the town hall, Baptist and Presbyterian ministers associated with religious student organizations both stated that commitment to the Christian faith was a requirement for them to advise religious student organizations and that their organizations would not be able to abide by Vanderbilt’s stance (field notes). Chaplains also lent their voices to an aggressive media campaign; for example, Father John Sims Baker, Chaplain of Vanderbilt Catholic, told CNN: “I think this rule does touch on this much wider religious freedom debate going on in our country. I do think the religious groups at Vanderbilt are being singled out in a way that other groups are not” (Merica, 2012, para. 12). Even some national faith leaders weighed into the controversy in support of the religious freedom movement. In the most high-profile example, leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals, Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and United States Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote a letter to Vanderbilt, stating, “…Vanderbilt University has abandoned its longstanding tradition of religious tolerance. Compelling religious student groups to forfeit their ability to have leaders who share the groups’ religious beliefs is antithetical to religious liberty” (Anderson, Land, & Picarello, 2011, para. 1). It is also quite clear that the vast majority of student leaders and student foot soldiers mobilized by the movement were conservative Christians (Blaine, 2011a). Near the beginning of the town hall, a member of the Christian Legal Society asked all those who were opposed to Vanderbilt’s policy to stand. From my vantage point, it appeared that at least two-thirds of the people in the 203-seat room stood in opposition to the policy, and most of these people wore white shirts, a color that symbolizes holiness in Christianity (field notes). Of the 56 people who asked questions or posed comments at the town hall, only four expressed support for the policy, three of whom self-identified as gay men (field notes). About 52 people spoke in opposition or skepticism, including one faculty member who advised a student organization, two aforementioned chaplains who advised student organizations, one employee of Vanderbilt’s call center (who reported on the many

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calls he received from people opposed to Vanderbilt’s policy), three students who were not members of religious student organizations, and 11 students who did not clearly state whether they were members of religious student organizations (but may have been) (field notes). Otherwise, 34 speakers clearly stated that they were members of Christian student organizations, including Asian American Christian Fellowship, BYX, Baptist Collegiate Ministries, Christian Legal Society, Cru, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Graduate Christian Fellowship, Medical Christian Fellowship, and Navigators (field notes). In addition to providing leaders, supporters, and foot soldiers, conservative Christian groups provided money to the movement, funding television advertisements and a website. Specifically, the organization Americans United for Freedom, led by conservative Christian activist Alan Keyes (who has described homosexuality as “selfish hedonism” and has disowned his lesbian daughter [Savage, 2005, para. 3]), ran advertisements on the Fox network in Nashville, asking, “Why is Vanderbilt University forcing student groups to abandon their beliefs—calling bigoted those who want their leaders to subscribe to their principles?” and advising alumni not to donate “another dime until Vanderbilt respects religious freedom” (Blaine, 2012a, p. 2). Americans United for Freedom is listed as the chief funder of VanderbiltReligiousFreedom.com. The most stunning example of outside donors’ largesse is the most difficult to attribute to a Christian person or organization specifically. Specifically, a “concerned individual” who has remained anonymous donated $32,000 for the movement to purchase 4,000 MP3 players and headphones that were handed out to people on campus in April 2012 (Blaine, 2012c, p. 1). I was the recipient of one of these MP3 players. Specifically, walking by Vanderbilt’s central library one day, I spotted several students standing around boxes full of MP3 players. One of the students approached me and handed me an MP3 player without explanation. When I asked why he was giving me an MP3 player, the student explained that it was pre-loaded with a short (6-minute) video explaining the religious freedom cause and containing endorsements from students, professors, and alumni. I was told to take the MP3 player, watch the video, and then, if I wanted to, delete the video and load the MP3 player with my own music (field notes). The MP3 players seemed to represent an attempt to sway Vanderbilt student opinion toward the religious freedom movement’s side. Although the identity of the MP3 player donor remains unknown, it is difficult to imagine that donor is not religious, as movement donors who have been identified by media outlets have identified as Christians (Farmer, 2012). A final type of resource that Christian groups provided the religious freedom movement was meeting spaces. Groups such as Vanderbilt Catholic maintained buildings near the campus and used those spaces to strategize (Blaine, 2012b). In addition, on April 11, 2012, students from nearly one dozen organizations met in the chapel on Vanderbilt’s campus for a prayer service related to Vanderbilt’s nondiscrimination policy (Blaine, 2012b). According to The Vanderbilt Hustler, the event drew more than 100 students (Blaine, 2012b). Although I did not directly observe these internal events, it is plausible that these religious spaces, as autonomous spaces possessed by the religious community, further facilitated

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cognitive liberation, in that potential participants not only came to believe that injustices were occurring and gained a sense of their efficacy (McAdam, 1982). It should be noted that not all people of faith agreed with the religious freedom movement at Vanderbilt. The president of Vanderbilt’s Muslim Students Association, for example, told The Christian Post that the organization had “not had any issues with this policy” (Gryboski, 2012, para. 9). Furthermore, the organization Soulforce, which represents pro-LGBTQ people of faith, visited Vanderbilt on one of its Equality Rides (modeled after the civil rights-era Freedom Rides) in response to the religious freedom controversy in March 2012. However, this classroom event attracted relatively few Vanderbilt students and did not inspire pro-LGBTQ protests at Vanderbilt (field notes). The loudest voices in the campus debate were conservative Christians who supported the religious freedom movement.

OUTCOMES OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM MOBILIZATION AT VANDERBILT If one examines only the ability of the religious freedom movement to mobilize indigenous resources and facilitate cognitive liberation on the part of their participants, one might come away suspecting the religious freedom movement at Vanderbilt was in a strong position to bring about change. Yet, a further analysis of the religious freedom movement at Vanderbilt shows that religious resources were insufficient to lead the movement to victory; furthermore, many Christian groups were themselves negatively impacted by their involvement in the movement. In the end, the movement failed to achieve its stated goals. In the fall of 2011, the university indicated it may be willing to reverse course and allow religious organizations to enforce faith requirements for their leaders. Specifically, in a statement to The Vanderbilt Hustler, the Associate Dean of Students acknowledged, “People have come back to us and said ‘what do you mean? This is faith based. This is our values. If we change that, we are not who we are’ and what we’ve done is we’ve listened. We are looking at what all the issues are to make a decision” (Blaine, 2011b, p. 2). However, at a January 2012 town hall, Vanderbilt’s Provost Richard McCarty, a white man who was himself associated with Vanderbilt Catholic, announced that Vanderbilt would not back off its demands that religious organizations be welcoming to all students regardless of sexual orientation or religious beliefs, and he articulated a new understanding of Vanderbilt’s policy as an “all-comers policy”: All student groups at Vanderbilt who wish to become a registered student organization, or RSO, must complete an application process through the Office of the Dean of Students. To qualify for this status, the leader and the advisor of the group must certify each year that the group complies with the university’s nondiscrimination policy… We also require each group to submit its constitution or bylaws or both for annual review in order to stand for RSO status. The university’s policy… is an all-comers policy, or an open to all policy. Any university student in good standing must be eligible for membership in any RSO that he or she has a sincere interest in. Students may not be excluded from an RSO based on status—and we can include such issues as race, nationality, or sexual orientation—nor may they be excluded based on belief. When it comes to leadership, the same basic principle must apply… (Declarationist, 2012).

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Vanderbilt’s General Counsel David Williams, an African-American man, similarly emphasized the need for an all-comers policy and invoked Vanderbilt’s history of expelling civil rights activist James Lawson in 1960 as a cautionary tale of what can happen if such a policy is not followed. Students pushed back on the policy during the remainder of the town hall, including by pointing out a perceived double standard in allowing Greek organizations to continue operating even though they discriminate on the basis of sex. The most contentious moment came when Jordan Rodgers, a white student and prominent member of Vanderbilt’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) – a national organization that, like BYX, maintains a sexual purity statement barring leaders from engaging in “any homosexual act” (Jacobson, 2004, p. 249) – spoke against the policy. Rodgers would later catapult to nationwide fame when he won season 12 of ABC’s The Bachelorette, but even then he enjoyed celebrity status on campus as quarterback of Vanderbilt’s football team and as brother of Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. He stated: The fact is that FCA – as a national organization, its leaders need to affirm their belief in Jesus Christ as their savior, and this affirmation is so that they can teach others… We’re fine – we love when everyone comes, as we’ve said before, we have no discrimination for anybody who walk[s] through our doors – but … restricting who is able to be a leader completely undermines the mission and our vision and the direction of every single one of these organizations… (Declarationist, 2012, emphasis added).

Rodgers then engaged in a heated back-and-forth with Williams, calling the university’s policy a “façade” (field notes). Eventually Rodgers withdrew from the exchange and stormed out of the room. Another member of the audience stood up, pointed at Williams, and shouted “Shame on You!”, and he and roughly 1/3 of the audience exited the room behind Rodgers (field notes). That same spring, Vanderbilt revised its official nondiscrimination policy to outline its expectations for religious groups. The nondiscrimination policy now states that Vanderbilt expects that “religious groups on campus will conduct their affairs in such a manner that no one will be intimidated or coerced and that participants in any group may freely express their beliefs and values…” (Vanderbilt University, 2018a, ch. 1). Vanderbilt also added a nondiscrimination policy FAQ, where it acknowledged that the all-comers spirit of the nondiscrimination policy may have not been clear in the initial policy and stated that the nondiscrimination policy had not been “meant to be, and is not, limited to…enumerated grounds” (Vanderbilt University, 2018b, para. 1). After failing to convince Vanderbilt’s administrators to change their position – and suffering the blow of Vanderbilt’s position becoming codified in the student handbook – movement leaders then pushed members of the Tennessee state legislature to pass legislation that would require Vanderbilt to “exempt religious organizations from its all-comers policy,” as well as prohibit “public universities in the state from adopting the same ‘all-comers’ rules” (Weber, 2012, para. 4). Tennessee’s House of Representatives passed the bill (House Bill 3576) in a 61–22 vote, and Tennessee’s Senate similarly passed the bill in a 19–12 vote (Weber, 2012). However, Tennessee’s Republican Governor Bill Haslam vetoed the bill in his first

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veto since taking office, stating, “Although I disagree with Vanderbilt’s policy, as someone who strongly believes in limited government, I think it is inappropriate for government to mandate the policies of a private institution” (Hale, 2012, para. 3). Although only a simple majority vote by legislators is required to overturn vetoes in Tennessee, the legislative session had ended by the time Haslam vetoed the bill, so the veto stuck. At that point, the movement effectively died. Although the movement failed to achieve its stated goals, this is not to say that the religious freedom movement was without effects. In particular, many Christian groups would suffer negative consequences because of their involvement in the movement. One type of negative effect – negative not in any value-laden sense, but in light of the movement’s goals – was the revised nondiscrimination statement. After movement activists pushed Vanderbilt to allow religious student organizations to consider religious beliefs in their membership and leadership decisions, Vanderbilt administrators instead codified their initial ruling through the student handbook, at least in theory ensuring their interpretation of the nondiscrimination policy would continue even under later administrations. The failure of the religious freedom movement also resulted in new fractures and schisms within the Christian faith community at Vanderbilt. About 11 student organizations – “Asian American Christian Fellowship, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Cru, Medical Christian Fellowship, Navigators, Graduate Christian Fellowship, Bridges International, Lutheran Student Fellowship, Every Nation Ministries, Beta Upsilon Chi [BYX], and Christian Legal Society” (Blaine, 2012b, p. 1, para. 1) – decided to leave the campus altogether, a major fracturing of the Christian campus faith community. Those organizations that left the campus could no longer use Vanderbilt’s name, participate in new student orientation, hold events on campus (apart from the Divinity School’s chapel), or have access to school financial accounts (Smietana, 2012). Those Christian student organizations that (at least initially) remained on campus and thus complied with Vanderbilt’s policy came under fire from leaders of the organizations that left. For example, USA Today reported that “the divided response has prompted at least one public tongue-lashing. Vanderbilt professor Carol Swain… [alleged] that the Baptist Collegiate Ministry and the Reformed University Fellowship betrayed their faith by complying with the university” (Smietana, 2012, para. 5). The report quoted Swain seemingly questioning whether such organizations were actually Christian: “It was a great disappointment that these large groups did not stand with us. To be a Christian group, you have to affirm a belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savor” (Smietana, 2012, para. 7). Not only the organizations that left the campus but also the organizations that remained saw their reputations sullied through association with a seemingly anti-gay cause. Although some Christian organizations on campus had opposed Vanderbilt’s requirement that they accept sexual minorities, other religious organizations insisted they opposed only Vanderbilt’s requirement that they accept members regardless of belief, leading some organizations to lament they were being lumped in with the anti-gay cause (see, e.g., Smietana, 2012). Still, critics of the movement would question even these organizations’ motives until the end: as previously noted, the Orbis accused religious student organizations of anti-gay bias. Critics were also featured in national media reports, with one Vanderbilt

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student leader commenting to NPR, “…obviously they can’t openly say, ‘Oh yeah, the reason we’re so angry is because…we don’t want gay people in our organization… But you’ll hear [that] from other people like me” (Farmer, 2012, para. 11). Finally, involvement in the religious freedom movement had biographical consequences for its participants, damaging their reputations. Some of the damage seemed short-lived: for example, OutSports.com, a website covering LGBTQ issues in sports, published a story about Jordan Rodgers’ activism on this issue (Buzinski, 2012), directly accusing him of anti-gay animus. However, as Rodgers pursued an NFL career, he clarified to the media that he would not have an issue with a gay or bisexual teammate (Zeigler, 2013), and the issue did not seem to follow him as he later pursued his reality television career. For others, damage was longer lasting. In 2015, over 2,000 people signed a petition calling on Vanderbilt to suspend Carol Swain from the university; the petition cited her activism against and incendiary remarks toward LGBTQ and Muslim populations (Vanderbilt Students, 2015). In response, Vanderbilt’s Chancellor issued a statement stating that, at the same time as Vanderbilt strives to be welcoming toward all people, it is also committed to “freedom of speech and academic freedom” and thus would not take action against Swain (Zeppos, 2015, para. 3). Still, in 2017, Swain announced her early retirement from Vanderbilt, stating that although she will miss her students, “I will not miss what American universities have allowed themselves to become” (Tamburin, 2017, para. 8). The next year, Swain announced her candidacy for a special election race to select the new mayor of Nashville, but her past comments on issues such as LGBTQ rights (“If we must live side-by-side with gay couples in a culture with a strong crusading homosexual agenda, our only hope is to strengthen ourselves spiritually and intellectually for the battle that awaits us”) caused controversy early on (Garrison, 2018a, para. 28). She finished in 2nd place with 23% of the vote (Garrison, 2018b). In 2019, Swain once again ran to become mayor of Nashville, but that time she attracted a slightly lower percent (22%) of the overall vote and failed to make a run-off election (Jeong, 2019). Overall, then, the religious freedom movement not only failed but also had negative consequences for some organizations and participants.

EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES AND OUTCOMES OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM MOBILIZATION AT VANDERBILT The chapter has shown that the religious freedom movement at Vanderbilt ultimately failed to change campus policies, and faith communities themselves suffered negative consequences as a result of their participation. But why? In this section, I examine the characteristics of Vanderbilt University that contributed to the failure of the religious freedom movement; these insights, in turn, contribute to broader theory on the conditions under which social movements targeting colleges or universities are likely to meet with success or failure. As noted, McAdam (1982) has argued that social movements not only emerge but also can succeed when political (or other structural) opportunities exist,

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indigenous resources are available to challengers, and potential participants experience cognitive liberation. The evidence in this chapter suggests that the religious freedom movement was highly successful at mobilizing resources possessed by the Christian faith community and in convincing hundreds of students involved in Christian student organizations of the justice of their cause and of the need to participate in the movement. One could even argue that the religious freedom mobilized within a favorable political opportunity structure, given the conservative nature of Tennessee’s legislature and given Vanderbilt’s location in the Bible Belt. However, the religious freedom movement still met with failure, and I argue that this is because the educational opportunity structure at Vanderbilt was not conducive to the changes demanded by the religious freedom movement. Below, I consider four facets of Vanderbilt as an institution that might have blocked opportunities for change – Vanderbilt is simultaneously a(n) private, elite, wealthy, and secular institution – and I assess how these characteristics contributed to the movement’s failure. First, Vanderbilt is a private institution. As discussed, private institutions have more latitude than public institutions to constrain or censor speech and activities by groups with whom they disagree. Although it is true that, in this case, Tennessee legislators did pass a bill opposing the all-comers policy, Tennessee’s Governor specifically referenced Vanderbilt’s status as a private university in his decision to veto the bill (Hale, 2012). Status as a private institution can certainly not be considered sufficient for Vanderbilt’s rejection of the religious freedom movement’s demands: the existence of many private religious universities that do not allow openly gay students and thus certainly allow student organizations to discriminate against LGBTQ students (Coley, 2018b) would refute this possibility. However, it is possible that Vanderbilt’s status as a private university may have been necessary in conjunction with other characteristics to explain Vanderbilt’s all-comers policy. Second, Vanderbilt is a secular institution. Although, in general, one might expect secular universities to be more open environments for campus activists, in this case, the religious identity of the campus activists clearly clashed with Vanderbilt’s secular identity. Importantly, Vanderbilt’s lack of affiliation with a religious denomination likely shielded it from backlash by any affiliated religious groups who might otherwise have shifted the opinion of Vanderbilt’s leaders. Vanderbilt’s secular status cannot be considered sufficient for explaining the school’s rejection of the religious freedom movement’s demands, as other secular universities like UNCChapel Hill have carved out religious freedom exceptions to their nondiscrimination policies (Blaine, 2011b). However, it may have also been part of a broader set of necessary conditions to explain Vanderbilt’s all-comers policy. Third, Vanderbilt is an elite institution: specifically, US News ranked Vanderbilt as the 17th top national university at the time of the movement (Anderson, 2014). The literature on institutional isomorphism (e.g., DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Rojas, 2006) suggests that Vanderbilt would have been considering how other elite institutions were handling religious freedom issues at that time. Contemporaneous campus newspaper reports did discuss how other elite institutions were responding to religious freedom demands (e.g., Blaine, 2011b; Lindsay, 2012). For example, in February 2012, The Vanderbilt Hustler printed

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an Associated Press story about religious freedom controversies across US colleges and universities (Lindsay, 2012). The story noted that “In the past 18 months, at least 41 public and private schools have reviewed the practices of Christian ministries whose policies require their leaders to have the same faith” and specifically referenced an ongoing debate that had caused embarrassment for UNC-Chapel Hill (Lindsay, 2012, p. 2), which at the time was ranked #30 in the nation (Anderson, 2014). Another report in The Vanderbilt Hustler also highlighted Tufts University’s decision to ban an evangelical Christian group that had maintained faith requirements for its leaders (Bowling, 2012); at the time, Tufts was the #28 top national university (Anderson, 2014). In addition, in the January 2012 town hall, administrators referenced the fact that some peer institutions were setting similar all-comers policies. For example, administrators referenced the all-comers policy set by the University of California Hastings College of the Law, a policy that had been the subject of the 2010 US Supreme Court decision affirming the constitutionality of all-comers policies (Christian Legal Society v. Martinez). As with the newspaper reports, Vanderbilt’s Provost also referenced the embarrassment that UNC-Chapel Hill suffered because of a Christian a capella group expelling a gay member (field notes). Altogether, then, peer institutions represented an important influence on Vanderbilt administrators. Of course, a small number of highly ranked universities have shown less commitment to LGBTQ rights and/or have articulated religious freedom policies. For example, the University of Notre Dame, although tied with Vanderbilt in US News’ 2012 university rankings (Anderson, 2014), had neither an inclusive nondiscrimination policy nor an officially approved LGBTQ student group at the time of the religious freedom movement at Vanderbilt. Thus, status as an elite university should similarly not be considered sufficient for Vanderbilt’s rejection of the religious freedom movement’s demands. However, it is again possible that this characteristic could be necessary in combination with other factors for commitment to the all-comers policy. Finally, Vanderbilt is a wealthy institution. In 2011, when the movement was active, Vanderbilt maintained an endowment of over $3 billion, giving it the 22nd largest endowment in the United States and the largest endowment of any college or university in Tennessee (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). Because Vanderbilt possesses such wealth, it was able to weather some alumni donors’ threats to withhold financial contributions, threats that could otherwise change the opinion of those setting university policies. Furthermore, although media reports did not provide details of communications between Vanderbilt’s Chancellor and Tennessee’s Governor, it is possible that Vanderbilt’s status as an economic heavyweight in the region gave it some leverage in the state capitol. The Center for Responsive Politics (2012) has documented that the amount of money that Vanderbilt University spent on lobbying began to accelerate around this time; in 2011, the university employed three lobbyists and spent $80,000 on lobbying, and by 2012, the university employed four lobbyists and spent $250,000 on lobbying. Again, some other universities with similarly sized endowments (like UNC-Chapel Hill, ranked 30th in endowment, and the University of Notre Dame, ranked 10th in endowment) have been more accommodating to religious

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freedom claims (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). Thus, Vanderbilt’s wealth should similarly not be considered sufficient for rejection of the religious freedom movement’s demands, but it may have combined with other necessary factors to produce this policy stance. Overall, although none of the aforementioned characteristics – status as a private, elite, wealthy, or secular institution – could have on their own been sufficient to lead to Vanderbilt’s rejection of the religious freedom movement’s demands, it is likely that the combination of these four factors led to Vanderbilt’s commitment to this policy. Indeed, none of the prominent cases of institutions that have responded favorably to conservative Christian groups’ religious freedom claims exhibit all four characteristics (e.g., religious colleges and universities such as the University of Notre Dame are not secular and may sometimes lack others of these characteristics; UNC-Chapel Hill, despite being relatively elite, wealthy, and secular, is not a private university). Insofar as the failure of the religious freedom movement resulted in some of the negative unintended consequences identified here (e.g., codified policies that the movement opposes, resulting fractures and strains within faith communities, damaged reputations), Vanderbilt’s opportunity structure also provides an explanation for negative impacts on the conservative Christian groups that were involved in that movement. Future research benefiting from comparative research designs can formally assess such possibilities through methods such as qualitative comparative analysis, which can assess the sufficient or conjunctural necessary conditions that comprise one or more pathways to outcomes of interest (Ragin, 1987).

CONCLUSION Colleges and universities are common sites and targets of social movements (McCarthy & McPhail, 2006; Van Dyke, 1998), yet most scholarship on campusbased movements focuses on issues of mobilization rather than outcomes; furthermore, relatively few studies consider the specific characteristics of colleges and universities that affect the outcomes of campus-based movements (but see Lemonik Arthur, 2011). Under what conditions are campus-based movements targeting colleges or universities likely to meet with success or failure? In his political process theory, McAdam (1982) suggests that social movements targeting the state can succeed when political opportunities exist, indigenous resources are available to challengers, and potential participants experience cognitive liberation. I have argued that McAdam’s (1982) political process theory can be adapted to a campus context, particularly if scholars pay close attention to unique characteristics of what I have called educational opportunity structures, in addition to movements’ access to indigenous resources and capacity to bring about cognitive liberation. Although the religious freedom movement was highly successful at mobilizing resources possessed by Christian groups at Vanderbilt and in convincing hundreds of students involved in Christian student organizations of the justice of their cause and of the need to participate in the movement, specific characteristics comprising the educational opportunity structure at Vanderbilt – particularly, its combined status as a private,

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secular, elite, and wealthy university – likely explain why the religious freedom movement failed. Because Vanderbilt was under no legal or constitutional obligation to accommodate religious freedom claims (given its private status), had no religious affiliation that made it sympathetic to religious freedom claims (given its secular status), belonged to a tier of elite universities that mostly endorsed LGBTQ rights, and had a large enough endowment to allow it resist pro-religious freedom donor campaigns, it ultimately rejected the demands of the religious freedom movement. The chapter thus highlights the role of educational opportunity structures in shaping the prospects for campus activism. Future research might similarly consider the role of educational opportunity structures in campus activism and thus extend this study’s insights in several ways. First, future research might draw on comparative data to systematically test this chapter’s theory that educational opportunity structures affect the success of religious freedom movements at a wider range of colleges and universities. Second, future research could assess the role of educational opportunity structures in shaping outcomes of other types of campus movements beyond religious freedom movements. Third, future research might identify additional dimensions of educational opportunity structures that matter for outcomes of campus movements. Finally, subsequent research could employ the concept of educational opportunity structures to address other theoretical questions of interest to social movement scholars, such as questions about the emergence or form of campus activism. The chapter contributes to other literatures beyond campus activism, including literature on religion and social movements. Scholars of religion and social movements have certainly documented that religious groups have played key roles in many social movements in the United States (see, e.g., Braunstein, Fuist, & Williams, 2017), and this chapter confirms findings that religious groups can play key roles in movements for social change. However, the chapter innovates in this literature by also revealing the impacts of the religious freedom movement on the Christian groups that participated in it, a type of question rarely addressed in literature on religion and social movements (see also Fetner, 2008). In this case, Vanderbilt’s decision to formally revise its nondiscrimination policy after Christian organizations questioned Vanderbilt’s interpretation of it meant that a contested policy was now codified. Furthermore, the Christian faith community at Vanderbilt itself suffered fractures and strains, with eleven faith organizations leaving the campus and with many faith organizations newly angry at each other. Finally, many Christian organizations and leaders at Vanderbilt saw their reputations damaged because of association with a seemingly anti-gay cause. Future research might consider the degree to which religious communities are impacted by involvement in other types of movements. Finally, this study also speaks to the growing literature on “religious freedom” issues in the United States. Religious (and especially conservative Christian) groups are actively mobilizing alongside politically conservative groups in the United States to promote religious exemptions to nondiscrimination policies and laws. Yet, research on religious freedom issues tends to focus on public opinion (e.g., Kazyak et al., 2018), policy passage (e.g., Bentele, Sager, Soule, & Adler, 2014),

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monitoring by bureaucrats (e.g., Poulos, 2019), and legal disputes (e.g., Mayrl, 2018) rather than issues associated with social movement mobilization. In focusing on an exemplary case of religious freedom mobilization, and in illustrating the roles Christian groups played in that movement, the study provides insights into the strategies of Christian groups involved in the religious freedom movement and sheds light on challenges and risks that Christian groups may face as they mobilize in support of religious freedom.

NOTES 1. Some research outside of sociology, particularly within educational studies, also examines campus-based movements (see, e.g., Altbach, 1981; Barnhardt, 2014; Magolda & Gross, 2009; Rhoads, 1998). Because the focus of my chapter is engaging the sociological debates over campus-based movements, a full review of this literature remains outside the scope of this chapter. 2. Note, however, that private colleges and universities that discriminate on the basis of certain characteristics protected by state and federal laws, such as race, sex, or disability status, risk losing federal funding (Coley, 2018b).

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EPILOGUE: UPDATES TO RESEARCH IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, CONFLICTS, AND CHANGE Lisa Leitz

Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change has a distinguished history of publishing innovative research on international wars, peace efforts, protests, and other mechanisms for social change. I look forward to upholding this tradition as its third editor. RSMCC offers a unique academic bridge in which scholars in the nonviolence and social movement traditions converge and their scholarship merges with conflict analysis and peacebuilding research. By bringing together these interdisciplinary scholars, RSMCC incubates novel and rich theoretical insights. In an effort to expand the diverse pool of international scholars who read and contribute to the series as both authors and readers, and to continue the high quality of submissions while seeking to increase the number of volumes we produce per year, I have established an Editorial Board for RSMCC. Please join me in welcoming these scholars, and if you have an interest in contributing to this work, consider joining our team. The inaugural RSMCC Editorial Board members are: Lisa Leitz, PhD Editor-in-Chief Delp-Wilkinson Endowed Chair in Peace Studies, Chapman University Eitan Alimi, PhD Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Joel Busher, PhD Associate Professor, Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University Darren Kew, PhD Chair of the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance and Executive Director of the Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development, University of Massachusetts Boston 201

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C´ecile Mouly, PhD Professor and Coordinator of the Research Group in Peace and Conflict at FLACSO (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales) Ecuador Patrick Coy, PhD Editor Emeritus Professor, School of Peace and Conflict Studies, Kent State University I finish this volume amidst the coronavirus pandemic, which has closed borders and created social isolation, potentially deepening or creating international conflicts and increasing ethnonationalism. Those hardest hit by the effects of the virus are minority racial groups, the economically disadvantaged, and people with disabilities, highlighting the consequences of various inequalities in many societies. At the same time, large and diverse crowds, often with masked protestors, have taken to the streets around the globe to demand racial justice. These movements offer examples of innovative online protest tactics and demonstrate how dramatic social disruption provides opportunities for making positive social change to enduring injustices. Given the calls to recognize the effects of race on minority scholars, and the need for further research and theory on the impact of race on wars, peacebuilding, and activism, I commit RSMCC to being part of the solution. First, as stated in the Introduction, a section of Volume 46 is reserved for analyses of race and racial justice movements. Second, I commit the series to increasing the diversity of our authors, reviewers, and editorial board to ensure that Black and other minority scholars are part of both the decisionmaking and authorship of RSMCC’s future scholarship. Finally, like Greg Maney, to whom Volume 43 was dedicated, I have a deep commitment to examining how social movement scholarship can be better integrated with ongoing movements for social justice and democracy. The Editorial Board is considering proposals for broadening the series to achieve this work. Submissions to future Volumes and proposals for topically focused Special Issues can be sent to me at [email protected] or [email protected].

INDEX Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling (ASW), 152 Academia, 129–130 Actor status, 107 African National Congress (ANC), 125 Afrikaner anthropologists, 129–130 Afrikaner minority rule, 125–126 Alliance erosion, 130–132 “Alt. labor” strategies, 42–43 America’s Foundation, 176 American Federation of Labor (AFL), 40 Anti-whaling, 5, 153–155 Apartheid regime, 120 allies, survival, and effects of illegitimacy, 127–136 end of apartheid, 132–136 legitimacy, stability, and revolution, 121–123 methods, 123–124 rise and fall of, 124–127 Arab Spring, 11–15 aspect, 15–16 Arab Uprisings, 13, 17 Argentine dirty war, 99–105 Associational power, 3, 44–45, 47 Authoritarian regimes, 15 Authoritarianism, 24–25

theorizing educational opportunity structures and outcomes of, 179–182 Campus Crusade for Christ, 176 Campus-based movements, 176–177 Christianity, 187–188 Civil conflict scholars, 67 Civil society, 50–51 Civil war, 64–65 Coalitional power, 46 Code of Conduct, 185 Collective action frames, 27–28 Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA), 131, 133 Conflict, 64–65 Constitutional government in industry, 41 Constructive engagement, 132–133 Contract strike, 42 Conventional strikes, 37–38 Crisis of legitimacy, 120 Critical race theorists, 97–98 Cultural imperialism, 151–152 Democracy, 74 Democratic ideology, 74 Democratization, 74–75 Diagnostic framing, 27–28 Dignity reclamation of loved ones, 25–27 “Dirty war” in Argentina, 4 Discursive opportunity structures, 147–148 Dramatic outbursts in authoritarian regimes, 13–16 Dutch Reformed Church, 126, 129–130

Black Lives Matter (BLM), 1, 6 “Bombs, death, and ideology” approach, 100 British rule, 64 Brotherhood, 129–130 Bycatch, 158 Campus activism past research and theory on, 177–178

Ecological extinction, 153–154 Economic 203

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model, 40–41 strikes, 37–38 Educational opportunity structures, 5–6, 177, 179–180, 192–195 Egyptian protestors, 27 “Endangered community” frame, 160–161 Ethnic or religious movements, 71–73 Ethno-epistemic assemblage, 149 Exclusive economic zone (EEZ), 151–152 Exile missions, 130 Exploitation, 44 Extinction frames, 153–154 Fast Food, 51–55 Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), 190 Feminist social constructionist theory of power, 97 Field theory, 93–94 “Fight for $15” campaign, 38, 51 Financialization of economy, 49–50 Frame(s), 147–148 amplification, 154 bridging, 154 extension, 154 transformation, 154 of whaling and anti-whaling, 153–155 Framing, 3, 16, 147–149 Gaddafi’s rule, 24–25 Gallery of Repressors, 103–104 Gender-inclusive ideology, 68–69 Goraeya torawa, 161 Greenpeace, 149, 163 Grounded theory, 18–19 Heritage, 158 “Heritage” frame, 155 Higher education, 176 Historical legacies, 96

INDEX

process tracing method, 98–99 Homosexual behavior, 181–182 Ideology, 67 Illegitimacy, 120 and alliance erosion, 130–132 allies, survival, and effects of, 127–136 effects of, 121 operationalizing, 124 Industrial relations (IR), 38 Institutional incorporation, 50 power, 46 theory, 96–97 Institutionalist critique, 42 Institutionalization, 42 Integrative prevention, 42 Integrity of governance from corrupt tyrants, 21–23 Intercollegiate Studies, 176 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), 151–152 International relations, 127 International Whaling Commission (IWC), 146, 151–153 Jangsaengpo Defenders, 164 Judicial repression, 39–40, 42 Justice for Janitors strategy (JfJ strategy), 45–46 Korea, 149–150 Korean Federation of Environmental Movements (KFEM), 150 Korean whaling revival, 146–147, 150, 155–160 Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), 70 Labor mobilization, 44 movement, 38–39 scholars, 38

Index

Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, 99–100 Leadership Institute, 176 League of Human Rights, 100–101 Legitimacy. See also Illegitimacy, 121–123 leverage, 46 relationality of legitimacy, 122–123 LGBTQ rights, 181 student groups, 180 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of Sri Lanka, 76–77 Linnean extinction, 153–154 Logistical power, 46 Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), 53 Los Angeles County Federation of Labor (LACFL), 53 Marginalization, 95–99 Marginalized actors, 95 Marginalized mothers, 99–105 Marxism, 67 Marxist movements, 71–72 Marxist New People’s Army, 64 Mass mobilization, 11–12 Master frame, 12, 17 dramatic outbursts in authoritarian regimes, 13–16 meanings, 16–17 of reclamation, 12, 16–17 visual analysis, 17–21 Mobilization, 40, 44, 65, 95–99 lines of, 71 mobilization of discontent model, 67 Modern agency, 107 Moratorium on commercial whaling, 151 Moro Islamic Liberation Front, 64 Mothers of the Plaza Mayo, 98–100, 105, 107 Motivational framing, 27–28

205

Movement-specific frames, 154 Movements to expel foreign occupation, 71, 73 Multi-institutional analyses of political process, 98 Multilevel modeling process, 78 Multisclice imagining, 18–19 Nation reclamation, 24–25 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 40, 50 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), 41, 50 National Party (NP), 5, 120, 123 rise and fall of, 124–127 “Neo” institutional theories, 96–97 New Deal reformers, 41 New People’s Army, 64 Non-governmental organization (NGO), 98–99 Nonviolence, 64–65, 70–71, 92–93 robustness checks, 83–85 Nonviolent action, 68 Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO), 71, 75–76, 78 Nonviolent resistance, 68–69 power in, 92–95 Open coding, 21 Orbis, 191–192 Packwood-Magnuson Amendment, 151–152 People power, 6 campaign, 64 studies, 93 Period analysis, 106 Photographs, 13, 17–18, 26–27 limitations, 20–21 periodization and geographic location of, 19 Political invisibility, 101

206

Political opportunity structure, 146–147 Political process, 93–94 theory, 179 Political strikes, 131–132 Political violence, 67 Politics of memory, 103–104 Positional power, 44–45 Post-strike theory, 42–44 Power, 1 examining, 6 of institutions and tradition, 4–6 power-over approach, 100–102 resources, 3, 47 Power in Movement, 1 Power in nonviolent resistance, 92–95 Power resources approach (PRA), 38, 44–51 Pre-Gaddafi flag, 24–25 Prestige, 181 Private schools, 180 Private sector unions, 50 Pro-democracy campaigns, 3–4, 65–66 Prodemocracy movements, 71–72 Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), 42 Professional photographers, 19–20 Prognostic framing, 27–28 Protest, 64 Protestors, 25 Public schools, 180 Qualitative methods, 195 Rainbow Warrior, 161 Reagan administration, 132–133 Rebel groups, 66 Reclamation, 12 master frame, 17, 21–28 Recognition strikes, 42 Regime violence, 78 Relationality of legitimacy, 122–123

INDEX

Religious colleges and universities, 180–181 Religious freedom, 176–177 controversy at Vanderbilt, 184–186 data and methodological approach, 182–184 educational opportunity structures and outcomes, 192–195 mobilizing for religious freedom at Vanderbilt, 186–189 outcomes, 189–192 past research and theory on campus activism, 177–178 theorizing educational opportunity structures and outcomes of campus activism, 179–182 Repression, 101, 106–107 Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, 6 Resistance campaigns, 68, 75–76 Revolution, 120–123 Rooted cosmopolitans, 149 Rootedness, 152 “Save the Whales” campaigns, 154 SeaTac initiative, 53 Service Employees International Union (SEIU), 45–46, 54 Sharpian nonviolence theory, 98 Social change, 1 Social constructionist framework, 105–108 actor status, 107 repression, 106–107 stages of conflict, 106 strategies and tactics, 108 Social movement organizations (SMOs), 43 Social movements, 1, 16, 176 analysis, 42–44 Social protest, 14–15 South Africa, 120 South African business, 128

Index

South African Communist Party (SACP), 127 South Korean government, 146 Soweto uprising, 125 Spatial-ontological study of assemblages, 149 Stability, 121–123 Statistical models, 66 Stellenbosch University, 129 Strategic capacity, 43 Strengths of professional photographs, 20 Strikes, 37–38 in context, 39–44 PRA, 44–51 in United States, 51–55 Structural power, 45 Sustainability, 153 Symbolic power, 45 Taft-Hartley amendments, 42 Tamil Tigers. See Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of Sri Lanka Theorizing movement power, 2–4 TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund, 54–55 Ulsan, 145–146 UN Security Council, 131 Union G´en´erale des Travailleurs Tunisiens (UGTT), 14 Unions, 38

207

Vanderbilt, 182, 183 Vanderbilt Hustler, 189 Verstehen, 16 Violence, 65 theory, 70–75 Violent conflict, 66–68 Visual analysis, 17–21 Volkekunde, 129 Voluntarism, 40–41 Wealth, 181–182 Whale Culture Preservation Association (WCPA), 158–159 Whale Culture Zone (WCZ), 146 Whale embassy occupation in 2005, 160–165 Whale food culture, 159 Whale Occupation Embassy, 150 Whale-watching tourism, 165 Whaling, 145–146 frames of whaling and anti-whaling, 153–155 IWC and whaling conflict, 151–153 nations, 151 revival of Ulsan, 146 whale embassy occupation in 2005, 160–165 White minority rule, 125 Workplace bargaining power, 45 World-polity approach, 149

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