Social Movements


I. Introduction: Abortion and the Women's Movement

The modern women's movement burst on the political scene in the late 1960s. Establishing a woman's right to an abortion was among its most important objectives. This objective seemed to have been realized when the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade (1973) that a woman's right to an abortion (in the first two trimesters of pregnancy) was constitutionally protected.

With the right to abortion seemingly won by Roe, the women's movement turned its attention to other issues, allowing the
initiative on abortion to shift to pro-life forces. The pro-life movement eventually became an important part of the conservative Republican resurgence that resulted in the election of Ronald Reagan. The movement helped shape public policy during the Reagan-Bush years, and abortion became an important litmus test for judicial appointments.

The Supreme Court weakened Roe in the case of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989) by allowing states to
enact restrictions on abortion. Because Webster seemed to threaten the fundamental gains that pro-choice forces had won
in the Roe decision, it galvanized the women's movement and refocused attention on the abortion issue.

Webster triggered demonstrations in scores of cities and communities. It sparked women's groups to redouble their lobbying efforts in Congress and state legislatures where pro-life forces had had a virtual free hand for years. Voting registration increased among pro-choice women in the months after Webster, as did contributions to and membership in women's organizations such as NOW and NARAL.

The revitalized women's movement had an impact on the political arena. Candidates for public office were given close scrutiny for their stand on abortion by members of the women's movement and abortion became a major political issues in state-level elections across the country. Congress signaled its understanding of the new political equation by passing a bill, later vetoed by President Bush, that would allow the federal government to pay for abortions for poor women whose pregnancies resulted from rape or incest.

It remains to be seen how the abortion issue will eventually play out in American politics. Public policy on abortion will depend a great deal on the relative Influence and staying power of the pro-choice and pro-life movements. It is clear, however, that the contemporary women's movement and the pro-life movement have had an enormous impact on the agenda of the American political system and will surely continue to do so.

This example shows how social movements can play a major part in the American political process. Although social movements receive less attention by political scientists than elections, parties, and interest groups, they are no less important. Many social movements besides the women's and pro-life movements have influenced what government does. 

Such movements often use unconventional and disruptive tactics to provide a way for those without a voice in American politics to be heard and taken seriously. They often protect and sustain fundamental rights and encourage public awareness and participation in public affairs. For all of these reasons, social movements are an integral part of the story of the struggle for democracy.


II. What Are Social Movements?

Social movements are mass, grass roots phenomena. Social movements tend to happen when a significant number of people come to define their own troubles and problems not in personal terms but in more general social terms (believing that there is a common cause for all of their troubles), and when they think that the government can be moved to action on their behalf. This is a rare combination of circumstances, thus social movements are difficult to organize and sustain.

Many social movements have left their mark on American political life and have influenced the actions of government. Each movement has tried to achieve social change by acting outside the normal channels of government and politics, using what sociologists call collective action. Generally, social movements are the political instruments of excluded groups or political outsiders.

Movements often help those who are outside the mainstream to gain a hearing from the public and political decision makers.
Insiders don't need social movements because they can rely instead on interest groups, PACs, lobbyists, and campaign
contributions. Because outsiders and excluded groups are generally without the financial and political resources of insiders, they must take advantage of what they have: numbers, energy, and commitment. In order to gain the attention of the public and official decision makers, social movements often use unconventional tactics, such as demonstrations and sit-ins.


III. Social Movements and Democracy

At first glance, social movements do not seem to fit very well in a democracy. Social movements usually start out as minority phenomena, whereas democracy requires majority rule. Moreover, social movements often use disruptive tactics when it seems that many channels already exist for people to express their grievances, such as voting, petitioning government, writing to policymakers, and writing letters to the editor. However, there are ways in which social movements can help make American politics more democratic.

A. Increase the Level of Popular Involvement and Interest in Politics

Social movements are the instruments of outsiders. For example, the civil rights movement encouraged the involvement of black Americans in the South who had long been barred from the political life of their communities. Social movements also promote popular participation by using unconventional and often disruptive actions to bring a range of issues to public attention that may have been ignored or dealt with behind closed doors. Social movements, then, broaden the scope of conflict and stimulate popular involvement.

B. Allow Those Without Substantial Resources to Enter the Game of Politics

Most social movements are composed of people who are outsiders; they do not have access to the money, time, contacts, or organizational resources that fuel normal politics. Although some social movements do not fit this picture, most have served as a vehicle for less well-off Americans. The collective-action aspects of social movements and the disruptive tactics associated with such mass mobilizations can serve as a substitute for missing political resources. As such, social movements can help increase political equality.

C. Convince the Majority that New Policies Are Needed

Social movements are the province of minorities. In a democracy, minorities can rightly have their way only if they can  convince enough of their fellow citizens that what they want is reasonable. Sometimes it takes the energy of a social movement to overcome the anti-majoritarian aspects of our constitutional system and to get anything done at all. 

It is important to note that many of the social reforms of which Americans are most proud--the right of women to vote, citizenship rights for blacks, Social Security, collective bargaining, and environmental protection--were less the result of normal politics than of social movements started by minorities.


IV. The Rise of Social Movements

A certain combination of factors, mainly structural in nature, is apparently necessary for a social movement to develop.

A. Social Distress

Those who are safe and prosperous have no need of social movements. In contrast, those whose lives are made difficult and unsafe or whose way of life is threatened by economic and social change often find that social movements are an attractive instrument to call attention to their plight and to press for change. Social distress caused by economic and social change helped to create the conditions for the rise of most of the major social movements in American history. 

The populist, labor, civil rights, fundamentalist, and women's movements are all examples of movements spurred on by
some type of social stress.

B. Resources for Mobilization

Social strain and distress are almost always present in society, but social movements only occur when the aggrieved group has the resources (including skilled leaders) to organize. The populist movement, for example, was built on a previously existing set of social networks and organizations, particularly the National Grange. Similarly, the Fundamentalist movement was established on a base of skilled clergy (such as Jerry Falwell), an expanding fundamentalist church membership, religious television and radio networks, and highly developed fund-raising technologies.

C. Supportive Environment

The rise of social movements requires more than the existence of resources for mobilization among aggrieved groups. The
times must also be right, in the sense that a degree of support and tolerance must exist for the movement among the public and society's leaders.

The Labor movement's upsurge during the 1930s, for instance, coincided with the electoral needs of the Democratic party and a growing sense among some corporate leaders that collective bargaining was essential to economic growth and stability.

The women's movement surged at a time when public opinion was  becoming increasingly favorable toward women's equality. By the early 1970s few Americans believed it was acceptable to pay women less than men for the same job, a commonly held
notion in the 1930s and 1940s. 

D. Sense of Efficacy

Some scholars believe that those who are on the outside looking in must come to believe that action on their part will make a difference before they take the initiative to develop a movement. People who are in aggrieved groups must believe that their actions will have an impact on decision makers. Otherwise, grievances might explode into brief demonstrations or riots but would not turn into a long-term movement requiring time, commitment, and risk.

The decentralized and fragmented character of our political system may help to sustain a sense of efficacy, since movements can often find places in the system where they can be heard by officials.

E. Catalyst

Social movements seem to require some precipitating event or events to set them in motion. One can identify several catalysts for the Civil Rights movement, but none was more compelling than Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus in Alabama and her subsequent arrest helped start a movement.

For over a year, 42,000 black men, women, and children walked and car pooled to jobs and schools rather than ride 
segregated buses. By the time the Supreme Court ruled that Montgomery buses must be integrated, the local black community had demonstrated its capacity to conduct mass actions in the face of terror and intimidation.


V. What Do Social Movements Do?

Social movements make their points through collective-action and nonconventional tactics, featuring dramatic and sometimes
disruptive gestures. The Women's suffrage movement used the mass demonstration and the hunger strike to great effect. The Labor movement invented the sit-down strike and plant takeover as its most effective weapons in the 1930s. The most effective tool of the civil rights movement was nonviolent civil disobedience. Sit-ins at whites-only lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960 and a series of protests led by Dr. Martin Luther, Jr. in Montgomery, Alabama to demand the integration of public accommodations and schools helped capture the attention of the nation. 

Social movements are rarely unified on issues of strategy and tactics. They are generally made up of a core of activists, a wider circle of people from the aggrieved group who are occasionally active, and a larger audience made up of the general population and political leaders. To be successful, social movements must be able to play to all three audiences. They must maintain the enthusiasm of activists, attract more activists and support from the aggrieved group, gain sympathy from the general public, and force a positive response from public officials.

The problem for social movements is that satisfying one group may work against satisfying the others. Activists in social
movements tend to be attracted by expressions of strong principle and defiant and courageous action. Both work against the probability of winning the sympathy of the public and the compliance of public officials. This situation often leads to a division of labor within social movements in which one branch engages in militant action, while another is more moderate in its behavior and more accommodating with the powers that be. This is also one of the main reasons that social movements have a tendency to splinter into factions.


VI. The Decline of Social Movements

Social movements are difficult to maintain. The historical record shows that they either disappear after a time or become transformed into interest groups. The success of social movements can undermine a social movement as surely as failure. Unless it can find other issues around which to organize, a social movement will discover that achieving its central goal destroys its reason for being.

For example, the Abolitionist movement became irrelevant with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery.
Passage of major civil rights bills in 1964 and 1965 that met the main goals of the civil rights movement caused a significant decline in grass roots activity among the black population and in the political influence civil rights organizations had with national political leaders.

Social movements also tend to fragment into warring factions. Because social movements try to address different audiences-- 
activists, the general public, and political decision makers- -they tend to divide over the most appropriate tactics and
strategies.

These divisions can become quite heated because movements attract people who feel passionately about some problem, have
risked a great deal to get involved, and are attempting to change an entrenched status quo. In such a context, it is difficult to keep disputes at a low temperature. For example, the civil rights movement was fragmented by the radicalization of portions of the black community and the rise of black power as the reigning ideology among many blacks, especially the young.

Frustrated by the lack of progress on many fronts, and taking pride in black identity, many blacks in the movement rejected 
the gradualist and integrationist orientation for a radical and separatist approach. The commitment to nonviolence, while retained by the Reverend King's SCLC and the NAACP, was renounced by SNCC, the Black Muslims led by Malcolm X, and 
the new Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The movement never recovered from this split.

There are several other general reasons why social movements decline. One is that popular support for their goals begins
to erode. This can happen because the public may perceive that enough has been done already to meet the grievances of
the members of the movement or that the movement has gone too far, asking too much of other Americans. Moreover, the
public may simply get bored and move on to other issues. Another reason movements fade is that activists may become
weary of the struggle.

Because social movements ask so much of their adherents in terms of time, financial sacrifice, and risk (of injury, job loss, jail, etc.), and because they depend on nonmaterial inducements to encourage participation (ideology, an attractive goal, a sense of solidarity, etc.), it is difficult to sustain high levels of active involvement for very long. Finally, successful social movements almost always spark a reaction from groups that oppose their gains. These groups are often more powerful than the protest
movement itself. 

Successful social movements in the United States eventually become organized, bureaucratic interest groups. The grass roots labor insurgency of the 1930s, for instance, eventually gave rise to large bureaucratic labor unions. The women's movement eventually spawned organizations such as the National Organization for Women (NOW).

These bureaucratic organizations tend to be conservative and cautious, whereas social movements tend to be radical, dramatic, and disruptive. The former are concerned with fund-raising and access to the powerful. The latter want to
mobilize the grass roots. Consequently, the transition from social movement to interest group tends to dampen and tame
the wild and unpredictable energies of the grass roots, and decrease the pressure on the powerful.


VII. The Impact of Social Movements

Social movements have had a significant impact on American politics and on what government does, but not all social movements are equally successful. What makes some more successful than others seems to be the proximity of the
movement's goals to American values, the movement's capacity to win public attention and support, and its ability to
affect the political fortunes of elected leaders.

A. Social Movements with Little Impact

When a social movement has few followers and activists, and little support among the general public, it will be unable to
disrupt everyday life significantly, or to affect the electoral prospects of politicians. A social movement is also less likely to have an impact on policy when it stimulates the formation of a powerful countermovement. The rational politician may find it prudent to take no action at all when he or she has difficulty calculating the relative weight of the two sides in a dispute between movements.

B. Social Movements That Have Been Repressed

Social movements committed to radical changes in society and the economy tend to threaten widely shared values and the
interests of powerful individuals, groups, and institutions. As a result, they rarely gain widespread popular support and
almost always gain the hostility of national leaders. Such movements often face repression of one kind or another.

C. Social Movements That Have Partially Achieved Their Goals

Some social movements have enough power and public support to generate a favorable response from public officials but not
enough to force major change. Government may respond in a partial or half-hearted way.

For example, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded to the social movements pressing for strong antipoverty measures during the
Great Depression by proposing passage of the Social Security Act, which fell far short of movement expectations. Recently, the pro-life movement discovered that President Reagan was willing to use movement rhetoric and to appoint sympathetic judges but was unwilling to submit antiabortion legislation to Congress.

D. Social Movements That Have Achieved Their Main Goals

Those social movements that have many supporters and wide public sympathy, that do not challenge the basics of the economic and social order, and that wield some clout in the electoral arena are likely to achieve a substantial number of their goals.

The Civil Rights movement is an example of such a movement. Its efforts led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This legislation helped unravel the Jim Crow system of racial segregation and ensure black voting rights in the South. As a result, white elected officials began to court the black vote.

Legislation and constitutional amendments are not the only indicators that a social movement has made a major impact on
politics and policy. Other measures of success include increased respect for members of the movement, changes in the fundamental underlying values of society, and increased representation of group members in decision-making bodies.

E. A Caveat on the Success of Social Movements

No social movement can be entirely successful. Though some movements partially or fully achieve their initial goals, few
have been able to alter the fundamental structural conditions that caused distress and gave rise to grievances in the first
place.

This is apparent when we look at the civil rights movement. Despite the important gains of civil rights laws, the movement has not enjoyed much success in changing forms of racial discrimination based on social practices rather than law. Housing segregation remains very much a part of the American landscape, for instance. Moreover, a recent National Research Council report shows that blacks are significantly behind whites in access to quality health care and education. The civil rights movement has had little mpact on the economic situation of the black population.


VIII. Social Movements in American Politics

Though no social movement is ever entirely successful, movements represent an important benefit for democracy in the
United States. Without them, our politics would be dominated by a form of electoral politics in which the less advantaged
play a smaller role than other Americans. Social movements are one of the most effective means by which outsiders enter
the game of American politics and make the playing field a little more level.