The Costs of Cooperation: The Impacts of Social Movement-state Cooperation on LGBT Organizing

• In Event: 463 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 19. Social Movements Working With and Challenging Institutions

Abstract

Studies on how social movements relate to and interact with states have often focused on the ways in which social movements have been able to influence or change states despite state opposition to social movement goals. This study maps relations between social movement actors and state actors in a context of shared, rather than oppositional, goals in order to examine the ways in which social movement organizations are affected when arms of the government cooperate with social movement organizations to change society.

In this paper a case study is presented of a particular phase in gay and lesbian social movement history in the Netherlands, namely from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, in which the national government and the largest gay and lesbian social movement organization, the COC, shared the common goal of altering society to be more tolerant of homosexuality.

An interactionist approach is utilized to examine how social movement actors and state actors cooperated to transform society and with what effects. While working together toward the shared goal of social transformation, the COC was subjected to a number of processes that affected its organizational structure and, to a certain extent, its identity.

Authors

• Robert J. Davidson, University of Amsterdam

• Jan Willem Duyvendak, Universiteit van Amsterdam