Civil society elites as targets of contentious action? Tactics and claim-making style of civil society elites’ challengers in the UK

• In Event: The elites of civil society – status, influence and contestation

Abstract

In the aftermath of the MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, there has been an increased pressure on civil society organizations to re-examine gender, racial, and class power relations, giving a renewed momentum for debates on leadership diversity (see Adamson et al. 2021; Lee 2019; Fulton et al. 2019). Lack of diversity has been particularly problematized in regards to resource rich and influential CSOs (public interest groups), whose leaders are expected to mirror the characteristics of their constituencies and the broader public (Guo and Musso 2007).
The resource inequality within civil societies in Europe, manifested through concentration of political and economic resources in a narrow group of organizations and their leaders, hereby referred as civil society elites (Johnasson and Uhlin 2020), has led to increased grassroot demands for re-examining the power relations within such organizations. Grassroot actors challenging the civil society elites’ composition have emerged in the UK in the form of online campaigns such as the #CharitySoWhite campaign which aims to tackle institutional racism within the charity sector (Ivanovska Hadjievska 2022).
This study aims to theorize and empirically investigate the tactics and claim making style of grassroot challengers of civil society elites through three in-depth case studies: #CharitySoStreight, #CharitySoWhite and #NonGraduatesWelcome. To do so, the study draws on theoretical approaches which suggest that the targets of contention influence the type of tactics and claim making style that claimants adopt (Van Dyke et al 2005; Walker et al. 2008). While much of the literature on civil society, social movements and interest groups have focused on actors which aim to influence the state (political elites) and more recently corporations (business elites) (Snow 2004), there are lack of studies theorizing the tactics and claim making style of groups which target civil society elites. Empirically, the study draws on interviews with activists behind the three campaigns, and social media communication by these groups. The findings of this study are the first step in unpacking how civil society elites as targets of contention shape the tactics and claim making style of grassroots challengers, and how potentially this differs from other targets of contention i.e., political and business elites.

Post doc, Dr. Milka Ivanovska Hadjievska, Lund University, Political Science
milka.ivanovska_hadjievska@svet.lu.se


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Author

• Milka Ivanovska Hadjievska, Copenhagen Business School