Fuel for Institutional Change: The Diffusion of Local Anti-Fracking Ordinances in New York State, 2010-2013

• In Event: 482 - Section on Political Sociology Paper Session. The New Politics of Firms and Industries

Abstract

This article examines the emergence and spread of the local anti-fracking movement in New York State. Challenging conventional images of “Not in My Backyard” community mobilization, I conceptualize instances of community resistance to industrial projects as battles within broader episodes of political contention. In this conceptualization, challengers choose their battlegrounds strategically, focusing early efforts on communities where incumbents are weak. Such communities serve as incubators of dissent and can help induce episodes of institutional change. Results from event history models suggest that anti-fracking ordinances passed primarily in towns that faced little to no risk of gas development, but that could frame the risk with some credibility as a result of being proximate to the targeted shale region. Local social context, not objective level of risk, enabled collective attribution of threat in some towns and inhibited it in others. Anti-fracking laws diffused locally, including across ideological divides. However, the rapid political categorization of attitudes toward fracking (liberal opposition to the technology and conservative support for it) influenced the adoption trajectory in the later half of the episode. Generally, findings support the idea that for many social movements, participants’ grievances are not inherent but constructed in specific social contexts. The study also contributes to our understanding of dynamic social processes that enable the emergence and determine the trajectory of social movements.

Author

• Fedor Dokshin, Cornell University