Cohesion and Continuity in Social Movements: Issue-changing SMOs as Integrators, Preservers, and Generational Brokers

• In Event: 20861 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10: Organizations, Tactics, and Strategies

Abstract

Social movement theory argues that social movement organizations contribute to cohesion and continuity in social movements. Empirically, however, social movement organizations have short lifespans. To resolve this contradiction, I argue that issue-changing social movement organizations are well-poised to contribute to social movements' cohesion and continuity as long-lived, skilled coalition-builders. To test these arguments, I use data from the Dynamics of Collective Action project to trace the cohesion and continuity of 15 social movements and issue changes of 4,442 social movement organizations in the United States between 1995. Counterfactual network simulations show that issue-changing social movement organizations contribute to the cohesion of social movements as integrators of new social movement organizations. Regression analyses reveal they also contribute to the continuity of social movements as preservers of social movement culture and generational brokers between social movement organizations of different generations. These results demonstrate the importance of issue changes for the cohesion and continuity of social movements.

Author

• Marcel Kappes, University of Mannheim