POL328 Lecture 15—Social movements and civil society
• Movements related to identity issues and also lower caste movements and more recent types of
“middle class movements”
Pakistan: The Lawyer’s movement: 2007-2009
• policy gains may not achieve demands they’re set out to
• in March 2007, the president then “Musharraf” dismissed the chief justice of the supreme court
• protest started by the BBC and often these are very spontaneous events
• in November 2007, Musharraf imposed the state of emergency
• and a variety of other NGOs was almost jailed overnight
• by the end of 2007, this movement gather enough stem that Musharraf became the army chief
and called for elections
• power of politics from below, in this context where military strong reflects the strength of
contention from below
India: The Anti-corruption movement: 2010-2011
• democratic context
• in 2010, scandal that emerged was a massive tele communication scandal which resulted in a
loss of 38 million dollars
• in 2010, movement called “India against corruption”, a veteran headed this movement that
paralyzed the national capital for several months in 2010-2011
o organized and demonstrate against corruption through variety of marches and non-
violent protest
o key demand was for the Indian government to pass a law, and set up anti-corruption
• political parties and Congress at that time was against this anti-corruption position
• From movement to political party: AAP
o the leader and his supporters launched a political party called the “common man’s
party”
o single largest party in the legislative assembly in 2013 but no support of other parties
o it spent 49 days in office and relied on protest methods, but lack of political support
o weakened overtime but the party had a second win though it didn’t perform very well
o protest movement against corruption for political party that finally came into power
• General Concepts
o Contentious politics
▪ occurs when ordinary people, often in league with more influential citizens, join
forces in confrontations with elites, authorities and opponents” (Tarrow 1998)
▪ contentious politics can be violent of non-violent
▪ the realm of contention includes violence
▪ contentious politics includes social movements, protests and revolutions among
other forms ▪ small scale protest that tends to be on the other side of contentious politics
▪ Link is contentious collective action
• collective action can be brief of sustained, institutionalized or less
structured, violent or non-violent
• used by people who typically lack of access to institutions, who act in
regard to new or unaccepted claims and behave in ways that challenge
authorities or others
• no political or economic power or to get a certain amount of justice in
public institutions
• not always the case that only marginalized groups that use social
movements, but it is those who lack other types of social access
o Social movements as a sub-category
• What are social movements?
▪ “Collective challenges, based on common purposes and social solidarities, in
sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities” (Tarrow 1998: 4)
▪ it is a grass root movement that is used for political change
o Collective challenge
▪ influence lobbying and policy challenges and in that sense, where or how of how
they protest tends to be very wide
o common purpose
o social solidarity
▪ particular leader, symbol or discourse that actively used to sustain solidarity
o sustained interaction
▪ against authorities in power
• Features of social movements
o political opportunities and constraints
▪ shifting nature of opportunities
▪ leads to another feature associated with social movements social movements
occur in cycles
▪ they often remain in the background but sometimes come back to life
o cycles of contention
▪ repertories of contention
▪ modes of activity in social movement can change overtime
o consensus mobilization and identities
▪ role of social networks and institutions
• NGOs
• not only are modes of protest varies, so does modes of mobilization
▪ outcomes
• may or may not have a policy outcome
• often mobilized in terms of achieving a policy outcome • but we tend to measure this success of failure even beyond these
changes
• social movements have not achieved policy changes but however they
might influence political discourse
• Some Cross-national trends
o Recurr
More
Less
