Theories of Political Protest and Social Movements: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Critique, and Synthesis
by Opp; Karl-dieterEdition: 1st
Format: Nonspecific Binding
Pub. Date: 2009-05-08
Publisher(s): Routledge
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Summary
How can political protest and social movements be explained? The book provides an introduction to each of the existing theories by restating and clarifying them. This is the basis for a detailed assessment of their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, a single theoretical paradigm is proposed that shows how the theories can be integrated.
Author Biography
Karl-Dieter Opp is Professor at the University of Leipzig, Germany, and Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle. His areas of interest include collective action and political protest, rational choice theory, philosophy of the social sciences and the emergence and effects of norms and institutions. He is the author of The Rationality of Political Protest (1989), coauthor of The Origins of a Spontaneous Revolution: East Germany, 1989 (1995) and editor (with M. Hechter) of Social Norms (2001).
Table of Contents
| List of figures | p. x |
| List of tables | p. xii |
| Preface | p. xiii |
| Acknowledgments | p. xvii |
| What kind of theory do we need and what is a good theory? | p. 1 |
| General social psychological theories for social movement research | p. 2 |
| The application of theories: a first look at how to explain macro events by micro theories | p. 9 |
| Advantages of applying a general theory of action | p. 14 |
| The importance of a microfoundation of macro explanations | p. 16 |
| Factor explanations as a synthesis of social movement perspectives: an alternative to applying theories? | p. 21 |
| Three features of a good theory | p. 23 |
| Basics of concept formation | p. 27 |
| Summary and conclusions | p. 31 |
| Protest, social movements, and collective action: conceptual clarifications and the subject of the book | p. 33 |
| Examples: What is a "protest" and a "social movement"? | p. 33 |
| Definitions from the literature | p. 34 |
| Suggestions for defining "protest" and "social movement" | p. 37 |
| What do social movement theories explain? | p. 42 |
| Summary and conclusions | p. 43 |
| Group size, selective incentives, and collective action | p. 45 |
| Mancur Olson's Logic of Collective Action | p. 45 |
| Critique of the theory | p. 56 |
| Production functions, critical mass, thresholds, and the free rider problem: new contributions to the theory of collective action | p. 72 |
| Summary and conclusions | p. 88 |
| Protest and social movements as collective action | p. 91 |
| Protest and collective action | p. 92 |
| How to apply collective action theory: a case study about the mobilization of a mining village in Spain | p. 93 |
| Is collective action theory not appropriate for social movement explanations? A note on Fireman and Gamson and other critics | p. 104 |
| A micro model of protest behavior | p. 108 |
| Guidelines for explaining macro events and macro relationships: the two-step procedure | p. 118 |
| What can we learn from the theory of collective action for the explanation of social movement phenomena? | p. 123 |
| Summary and conclusions | p. 124 |
| The resource mobilization perspective | p. 127 |
| Resources, grievances, and strategic actors: J.D. McCarthy and M.N. Zald's theory | p. 127 |
| The causal structure of McCarthy and Zald's approach: a critique and extension | p. 135 |
| Conceptual problems: the meaning of "resources" and "mobilization" | p. 138 |
| What kind of resources bring about what kind of movements and strategies? Problems of the explanatory power of the perspective | p. 140 |
| The implicit background theory | p. 141 |
| The structure of the perspective: the implied and missing micro-macro model | p. 142 |
| How is the free rider problem solved? | p. 144 |
| Are there falsifications of the resource mobilization perspective? | p. 145 |
| Recent developments | p. 150 |
| Theoretical suggestions | p. 153 |
| Resource mobilization and collective action theory | p. 158 |
| What can we learn from the resource mobilization perspective for the explanation of social movement phenomena? | p. 159 |
| Summary and conclusions | p. 159 |
| Political opportunity structures, protest, and social movements | p. 161 |
| The political environment and the chances of success: P. Eisinger's theory | p. 161 |
| Conceptual problems: What are political opportunity structures? | p. 167 |
| What form of political action can be explained? | p. 178 |
| The missing micro-macro model and the implicit background theory | p. 179 |
| Other factors: the incomplete macro model | p. 180 |
| How is the free rider problem solved? | p. 181 |
| When is the theory wrong? | p. 181 |
| Recent developments and lingering problems: an illustration with two versions of the theory | p. 190 |
| Political opportunities and collective action: a synthesis | p. 198 |
| What can we learn from the political opportunity structure perspective for the explanation of social movement phenomena? | p. 200 |
| Summary and conclusions | p. 201 |
| Collective identity and social movement activity | p. 204 |
| Constructing collective identity and protest: A. Melucci's theory | p. 205 |
| Conceptual problems: What is a "collective identity"? | p. 215 |
| Identity theory: recent developments | p. 217 |
| Empirical evidence | p. 220 |
| Synthesizing collective identity theory and the theory of collective action | p. 221 |
| Problems of the extended theory of collective identity | p. 228 |
| What can we learn from the identity approach for the explanation of social movement phenomena? | p. 231 |
| Summary and conclusions | p. 231 |
| How framing influences mobilization and protest | p. 234 |
| Frame alignment processes: D. Snow, B. Rochford, St. Burke, and R. Benford's contribution | p. 235 |
| Conceptual problems | p. 241 |
| The structure of the theory: the implicit micro-macro model | p. 247 |
| Why do people change and use frames? The implicit background theory | p. 249 |
| Is frame alignment a necessary condition for social movement participation? | p. 251 |
| How is the free rider problem solved? | p. 254 |
| Framing and the form of political action: an unanswered question | p. 255 |
| When does frame alignment succeed? | p. 255 |
| Recent developments | p. 256 |
| The validity of the framing approach | p. 265 |
| Synthesizing the framing approach and other perspectives | p. 272 |
| What can we learn from the framing perspective for the explanation of social movement phenomena? | p. 272 |
| Summary and conclusions | p. 273 |
| Identity, framing, and cognitive balance: toward a new theory of identity and framing | p. 275 |
| A very short introduction to Fritz Heider's balance theory | p. 276 |
| When movement identification changes frames | p. 283 |
| Movement identification and the change of social networks | p. 285 |
| Conflicting frames and strong ties to movement and friends: a case where imbalance remains | p. 286 |
| Friendship networks, conflicting frames, and movement identification | p. 286 |
| Block alignment of frames, frame completion, and frame resonance | p. 289 |
| Cultural resources and framing | p. 292 |
| Collective action and balance theory | p. 294 |
| Mechanisms of cognitive reorganization | p. 296 |
| A change of perspective: the movement as reference actor | p. 299 |
| What can we learn from balance theory for the explanation of social movement phenomena? | p. 299 |
| Summary and conclusions | p. 301 |
| The dynamics of contention approach-retreat to history? | p. 304 |
| The dynamics of contentious politics: D. McAdam, S. Tarrow, and Ch. Tilly's new agenda | p. 304 |
| Critique of the approach | p. 309 |
| The free rider problem and the missing micro-macro modeling | p. 322 |
| What is a "mechanism"? | p. 323 |
| What can we learn from the dynamics of contention approach for the explanation of social movement phenomena? | p. 324 |
| Summary and conclusions | p. 325 |
| The structural-cognitive model: a synthesis of collective action, resource mobilization, political opportunity, identity, and framing perspectives | p. 327 |
| The idea of a synthesis: the structural-cognitive model | p. 327 |
| The missing link: framing and the structural-cognitive model | p. 331 |
| How existing social movement theory fits into the structural-cognitive model | p. 335 |
| The structural-cognitive model applied: some illustrations | p. 335 |
| Summary and conclusions | p. 349 |
| General discussion, conclusion, and an agenda for future research | p. 351 |
| The major strengths and weaknesses of extant theories of social movements and political protest | p. 351 |
| The alternative: the structural-cognitive model as a theory-based micro-macro explanation | p. 353 |
| An illustration: Is something missing in the explanation of collective mobilization in Llano del Beal? | p. 354 |
| An agenda for future theory and research | p. 356 |
| Summary and conclusions | p. 361 |
| Notes | p. 363 |
| Bibliography | p. 375 |
| Index | p. 396 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
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