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The creation of social movement organizations is considered one indicator of the development of a social movement. In the case of the U.S. women?s movement, new formal and informal organizations became the basis for a burgeoning activism on the national and local level focusing both on policy change and altering societal norms. Traditional social movement theory views social movement activism and the creation of social movement organizations as occurring outside of the formal boundaries of government. In this paper I argue that such a view is incomplete. Feminists within the state played an important role in the initial mobilization and organization of the movement that far exceeded their numbers within the growing movement. Moreover, their mobilizing activism was not limited to organizations within the state, professional organizations that focused only on their occupational interests or bureaucratic organizations (that is, formal organizations with division of labor, hierarchies and professional staff). Rather, feminist activists who worked within government bureaucracies emphasized the importance of organizing outside of government and some encouraged collectivist, nonhierarchical organizational structures focused on a wide range of feminist issues. The paper relies on interview and archival data to examine the role played by feminist bureaucrats in creating feminist organizations during the first phase of the women?s movement (1964-1975). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper counters American exceptionalist arguments about the weakness of the labor movement in the United States based on cultural and economic explanations and instead argues that American political institutions have constrained labor’s political power. Political institutions that protect political minorities such as the Senate which over-represents rural populations and under-represents urban populations, the Senate filibuster which requires a super-majority to pass controversial legislation, the presidential veto which also requires a super-majority for Congress to override, and rules and procedures in the House favoring conservative interests have historically restricted the ability of organized labor to pass its legislative agenda to expand the size and protections of the welfare state. Although American labor has shared the social democratic agenda of many European labor movements in the post-WWII period, the fragmentation and institutional bias towards the status quo in the American political system have limited organized labor’s legislative successes to incremental change. As union density has declined, many scholars have argued that labor has become increasingly irrelevant in the public policy process. Yet the same institutional protections for political minorities that once benefited labor’s political opponents now benefit organized labor. In addition labor had benefited from institutional changes it pushed for such as the enfranchisement of African-Americans and congressional reforms that reduced the power of conservative, Southern Democrats in the policy-making process over the last two decades. As a result organized labor continues to exercise a level of political influence very similar to that exercised in the forties when organized labor represented a much larger percentage of the workforce. Labor has been able to protect the legislative gains it made in the past and continues to put initiatives for incremental expansion of the welfare and regulatory state on the political agenda. The paper focuses particularly on the areas of employment policy, labor law, and health care reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the Tea Party is the latest in a long line of populist social movements - of both right and left - that emerge periodically in American politics - and particularly in times of economic hardship. These movements tend to be ephemeral but they frequently leave a lasting impact on American politics and public policy. The paper discusses the rise of the Tea Party, the nature of the movement, its popular base of support, its tense relationship with the "Republican Establishment", its impact on the 2010 midterm election campaign, its future prospects, and how closely its development to date fits the historical pattern of American populist social and political movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements and other ‘exogenous’ interests play an important yet insufficiently understood role in presidential politics. With this paper I will explore the various theoretical understandings of exogenous interests and the presidency, and then examine the case of President Reagan and regulatory politics. I explain that Reagan built new regulatory structures that survive today, and thus created a new regulatory politics according to his obligations to exogenous interests. I argue that presidential policymaking is compelled by the imperatives of responding to exogenous political forces like social movements, organized interest groups, and key voting blocs. I find evidence that three exogenous interest groups, the business sector, right-wing social movements, and the Democrats, were forces that compelled Reagan’s policymaking decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of this paper involves transnational coalitions of anti-racist social movement actors and organizations within the African Diaspora. Specifically, I will explore the mechanisms and effects of what social movement theorists define as ?cross-national diffusion? between various African independence and anti-apartheid movements and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the United States between 1957 and 1974. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are strong theoretical reasons for expecting interest groups and social movement organizations to have a substantial impact on public policy, but it has been quite difficult to find convincing evidence of such a relationship. This paper begins with an argument that one reason for this disparity is a particular gap between theory and research: theory suggests that elected officials should be strongly influenced by information provided to them by interest groups and SMOs, but there have been no systematic studies of the impact of such information. We examine what is arguably a particularly important source of information for members of the U.S. Congress-testimony at committee hearings-to ascertain whether it influences congressional action on policy proposals on a sample of issues. The analysis focuses on information about the importance of the problem being addressed, the likely effectiveness of proposed legislation, possible electoral consequences of congressional action, and the possible reframing of issues. There is little evidence that information has the hypothesized effect. Possible reasons for this are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prominent theories stress domestic human rights activism as a major factor in achieving improvement in human rights conditions. Most cross-national studies examine such activism by examining the number of human rights organizations (HROs) within a country. In this paper, I argue that this is a questionable practice and I report original data on actual human rights activism-the presence of contentious challenges, especially protests, that focus on human rights. I collected data on such challenges as part of a broader study of contentious politics in seven Latin American countries from 1981 to 1995. I find that human rights activism was actually greater where there were fewer HROs. Human rights contentious challenges are most prevalent where human rights abuses are worse and authoritarianism is present and in countries that are more urbanized. I also find two different types of human rights activism. Human rights contentious challenges in both Argentina and Guatemala mostly involved HROs and made general demands. I describe these cases as national human rights movements. The other countries in the sample (Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) experienced human rights challenges that focused more on specific grievances and demands (such as protesting the arrest or demanding the release of a specific group of people) and only a small percentage involved HROs. I refer to these as cases of ancillary human rights activism, in which human rights challenges are part of a more general wave of opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the important but elusive relationship between the modern presidency and social movements. Although the presidency-social movement nexus is fraught with tension, collaboration between the White House and social activists was indispensable to the important changes that occurred during the second half of the twentieth century. Focusing especially on Lyndon Johnson's uneasy but critical relationship to the Civil Rights movement and Ronald Reagan's enlistment of the Christian Right into the Republican Party, we trace the emergence of a novel form of politics since the 1960s that joins executive prerogative, grass roots insurgency, and party polarization. Johnson1s efforts to leverage presidential power to advance Civil Rights played a critical role in recasting the relationship between national administration and social movements, one that paved the way for a national conservative offensive. The relationship forged between Johnson and the Civil Rights movement has echoes in the similar joining of the Reagan presidency and the Christian right, an executive-insurgency alliance that instigated the transformation of the Republican Party and spurred the development a new presidency-centered party system by the end of the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a commonly cited model of contemporary US politics as more 'polarized' than before, especially in terms of a 'Culture War' between Left and Right over moral and religious issues. Yet within the growing movement of American home-schooling there are combined the two polar opposite forces of the 'Culture War' - the New Left and Religious Right. This meeting of the poles presents a puzzle for the theory that contemporary US politics is polarized. By looking at the history of how these different political movements came to home-school, this paper argues that homeschooling began as a response to the failure of the New Left and Religious Right's respective transformative politics. Members of the New Left and Religious Right encountered failure in their attempts to transform America politically. Given these failures, they became unorthodox minorities in America and so withdrew their children from public schools to ensure that their own minority political or moral values would be passed on to their children when they could not trust mainstream society or government to do so via the public schools. Home-schooling, therefore, provides a hopefully interesting case of two polar opposites of modern American 'polarized politics' finding common ground in disengagement from mainstream society and the state - specifically disengagement from the institution of public education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the inclusion of feminist movements -- and by implication all social movements -- inside the State. It makes two major arguments. First, that exclusion from the State is a continuous variable with many social movement actors having penetrated the State to some degree. We then argue that social movements' inclusion is a function of characteristics of the State, particularly the partisan control of the bureaucracy and mechanisms for building the civil service, and characteristics of movements, particularly ideology and their partisan allies. We examine these arguments by examining three cases of feminist activism inside the State: the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The U.S. and Germany have similar bureaucratic characteristics in terms of recruitment and partisan control but differ dramatically in the nature of the feminist movement. The women's movements of Germany and the United Kingdom share many characteristics but the pathways into the bureaucracy differ dramatically. We find that feminist insider participation through women's policy agencies is affected by partisan control and the organization of the bureaucracy (e.g. location of the women's policy agency). The participation of individual feminist insiders also appears affected by norms of partisan control and by the ideology of the women's movement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protest has become a staple of contemporary American politics, particularly for groups that lack either institutional access or extensive political resources. By assessing protest by immigrant groups, we can get a picture of ethnic political incorporation. By tracing the development of ethnic-sponsored protest in terms of issues, sponsors, constituencies, and tactics, we can get a clearer picture of the relative incorporation of the sponsoring group. Vietnamese Americans provide a particularly interesting case of recent immigrants, one more likely to associate with conservative causes and more likely to employ protest. Using newspaper-generated events data, we form an inventory all reported protest sponsored by Vietnamese Americans in the United States from 1975 to 2001. These data are augmented by in-depth interviews with Vietnamese American political organizers in Southern California. Our findings provide a complicated picture of political incorporation. First, Vietnamese American protest is overwhelming based in ethnic enclaves, most notably Southern California. Second, the lion’s share of the protest events are directed against the government of Vietnam, or against the United States institutionalizing normal relations with Vietnam. Events focused on these issues are also most likely to generate significant turnouts and public attention. We find little evidence of protests concerned with contemporary American politics, nor any evidence of protest representing a pan-ethnic Asian American identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a study of how social movements are sustained and transformed over time. Taking the case of American creationism, it considers the development of the movement from the late 1920s--following the famous Scopes "Monkey" trial--to today, examining it through several periods of abeyance and regeneration. Defining institutions broadly and examining them as part of a continuing political process, it applies concepts from social movement theory to describe how activists constructed organizations, established frames of meaning, seized political opportunities, and utilized repertoires of protest to respond to changing legal and political climates over this seventy-five-year period. The essay follows the transformation of the movement though the development of creation science in the 1960s, the alliance with the New Christian Right in the 1980s, and the adoption of ideas of intelligent design during the last decade. By describing how early protests provided precedents for later ones, and by detailing how activists adapted them to changing circumstances, the study shows how institutions have served to constrain and inspire innovation, suggesting that political movements can be fully understood only by examining their historical roots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the role of organized groups in fostering deliberation about the Constitution in the U.S. Congress. Illustrations of how groups might mobilize to foster constitutional deliberation in Congress; Types of analysis that groups use to convey information to lawmakers; Effects that the use and abuse of political symbols can have on the basic terms of debate in public life.

A comparative survey of activist mobilizing to secure recognition of gay and lesbian relationships in Canada and the United States, and of the extent to which public policy, law, and institutional policy among private employers has moved in directions sought by such activism. Such movement as has occurred depends on developments at national, regional, and local levels of government, as well as in the courts. Shifts toward equity have come faster and more uniformly in Canada than in the U.S.. A few American states and several localities have seen marked progress, but are hampered by the relative absence of change at the federal level. Variation in outcome depends on constitutional, legal, and institutional context, on party configerations, on labour union support, and to some extent on public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unions are currently under challenge, and labor solidarity is experiencing stress. In the United States and in many other advanced industrial democracies, union density is considerably down from what it was in the 1950s and 1960s. The era of Big Business, Big Government, Big Labor has given way to Giant Corporations, Reduced Government, and Weak Labor. The economic and political context for unions has changed, and so have the occupational and demographic characteristics of the labor force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To dialogically engage more promising democratic practices is, I think, a fruitful way to explore possibilities of transfiguring democratic vision that might contribute to forging paths beyond otherwise rather bleak theoretical and practical impasses. In this essay, I engage one mode of promising democratic organizing in cities and states across the U.S., namely those associated with the Industrial Areas Foundation. They have been, in recent decades, among the organizations most successful at empowering a number of historically marginalized groups by facilitating deep grassroots democratic coalitions. And they have drawn and continue to draw thousands of people who did not understand themselves as insurgent democrats into radical democratic practices. One obfuscates much that is most important and original about these efforts if one readily assimilates them to a kind of civic republicanism - as is commonly done. While these organizing practices draw many traditional types of association (churches, community groups, neighborhood associations, unions, PTA's) into political action that in part involves pressuring and working with traditional governmental institutions (city councils, school boards, state legislatures) in traditional fashion, they engage them in bridging relationships across lines of difficult difference and forge new political configurations that greatly exceed the (also very important) traditional elements of their work. Indeed it is their negotiation of the edge between the traditional and the emergent that is, I think, the most promising aspect of their practice. To appreciate and understand their vision and strategic success at requires, I think, that we both rework the lenses through which many theorists often interpret politics and transfigure the ethos that governs many visions of democratic engagement. Lodged in these practices are richer and more generous visions of democracy than many realize - richer and more generous, indeed, than many of the prominent visions in democratic theory today. Central concepts explored: listening, receptivity, world travelling, judgment, and tabling as a metaphor for democratic theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the role of the neoliberal order in American political development as of October 2014. Topics discussed include of the American political economy and its implications for the country's citizens, impact of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2008 on the U.S. politics, and use of neoliberalism in policy prescriptions and institutional designs.

The article focuses on the relationship between social movements and power in the U.S. to codetermined the development of American left and capitalism. It further discusses reasons for the decline in alterglobalization movement, process of recuperation and critique of neoanarchism that transformed both the left and contemporary capitalism

The article focuses on women's movement change in the U.S. It proposes a method for comparing change in women's movements over time using the concept of women's movement strength which is based on the work of the Research Network on Gender Politics and the State (RNGS). It also discusses the conceptualization of women's movement strength including its definition, dimensions and tools for empirical observation.

The article offers information on the welfare rights movement in the U.S. It explores that movement to stage a political dispute over the definition of who counts as part of the common definition of the community, and focuses on policy goals of the movement. It also discusses efforts to establish welfare, or a minimum standard of living.

In this article, we use these distinctions to challenge two scholarly claims: (1) that the American labor movement has, until relatively recently, held a uniformly and consistently restrictionist position; and (2) that the labor movement only gains ground during periods of restrictionism. In place of these claims, we will demonstrate that a more accurate historical portrait of immigration and American labor is that of a movement wrestling, one that often has struggled mightily both within and between labor federations to define its response to new immigration. In contrast to claims (e.g. Briggs, 2001:170-172) that membership in unions has historically increased when the foreign born as a percentage of the population decreased, and vice versa, we will show that when other factors are taken into account, immigration has had no significant effect on union density over time in the United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how social movements negotiate both the satisfaction of core supporters and the facilitation of coalitional relationships. Analyzing in-depth interviews with organized lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement staffers, the author finds that those navigating the terrain between group maintenance and coalition building display a wide range of orientations toward agenda setting. By subsequently examining the employment histories of LGBT group leaders, the author demonstrates that such a large set of agenda setting orientations may in part be the product of unique professional experiences and relationships built through the steady shift of staffers within an exceptionally diverse field of community- and rights-oriented employers. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movement networks and coalitions are closely related phenomena. Networks are critical to forming and sustaining coalitions, while coalitions are contexts within which to strengthen or weaken network ties. This research examines the consequences of coalition dissolution on the mobilization and structure of social movement networks. We examine the collapsed coalition between United for Peace and Justice and the ANSWER Coalition in the contemporary American antiwar movement to illuminate the dynamic relationship between networks and coalitions. First, we find that coalition dissolution affects mesomobilization by making movement actors less able to mobilize the constituencies of their former coalition partners because of variation in information channels, political attitudes, and organizational contacts. Second, we find that the underlying structure of movement networks is robust in the wake of significant coalition rifts. Nonetheless, coalition dissolution weakens the ties surrounding the previous coalition partners and creates opportunities for actors uninvolved in the split to reaffirm and improve their opportunities for brokerage in the network. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Familes are at the center of a number of important,contentious public debates in the United States. The ideas that a significant link exists between the state of families and the state of the natian, and that strong, healthy families undergird a strong nation, are animating a number of social movements as well as governmental efforts to strengthen families. A common premise of all these efforts is that the weakening of families both reflects and leads to moral and civic decline and imposes significant costs on' society. Diagnoses of America's moral and civic health warn that, although families historically have played a prominent role as "seedbeds of civic virtue" and generators of "social capital," their current condition hampers them in doing so. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformation and current status of the US women's rights movement is discussed within the context of general theories of the life cycle of social movements. The focus here is upon the inclusion of international issues on the movement's agenda. International coverage in three feminist electronic newsletters during 2005 is examined in terms of quantity, topic, region, and positive or negative frame. The quantity and topics of international coverage in Ms. provide a measure of the emergence of a global agenda over the history of the publication, 1972-2005. All of these groups and institutions have a global agenda that includes electoral politics, the international women's movement, and policy issues. The international focus of movement publications is currently on Islamic women in the Middle East. However, women in all parts of the world receive some coverage. Furthermore, there is a balance of positive and negative stories. Women outside the United States are not always portrayed as victims that need to be saved by the US women's rights movement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article trace the origin and development of the Social Security Act of 1935 in the U.S. Once the question of the constitutionality of the Social Security program was decided in Helvering v. Davis in 1937, the program was promoted as an insurance program. The article explores the efforts of the Fraternal Order of Eagles (FOE) in developing a pension program in the country.

The article argues that social movements play a significant role in political party activity in the U.S. It introduces the concept of party in the street, a system of social movements which aims to influence the platform, leadership and electoral success of a political party. It describes the components of multi-part political parties in the country and theorizes about their relationship to one another. It then reflects on how Democratic Party in the street may influence the evolution of the Democratic Party.

The article examines the dynamics of the environmental justice movement, which the author defines as a collection of particularized and local movements located primarily in urban centers throughout the U.S. Environmental justice movements are led primarily by women of color, and seek policy redress for unjust distribution of toxic waste site and industries with toxic emissions.

The article presents the results of a study that examined the correlation between increased political homogeneity of U.S. House districts over the 1962-2002 period and the rise of political extremism over the same period. The authors attempt to disprove the mainstream belief that increased district homogeneity led to fewer centralist candidates by reducing district competitiveness. They argue that in the case of Republicans, there was no correlation between district competition and ideological extremism.

The article discusses the public and political development of public policy for children over the last century, working with the electronic archives of both the "New York Times" newspaper and the "Congressional Information Service," in the U.S. It asserts the importance of the organizations and networks that constitute the mobilization structures for social movements for children. It examines the five dimensions of children's policy: child health, child nutrition, child care, child labor, and child abuse and abandonment.

This article is driven by two interrelated questions. First, is the Internet enabling organizational change among traditional interest groups and political parties, such that they are starting to resemble the looser network forms characteristic of social movements? Second, what role is the Internet playing in new, conceptually intriguing citizen organizations such as MoveOn, the U.S.-based but internationally oriented entity? I develop the concept of repertoires to argue that the Internet encourages "organizational hybridity." This captures two trends. First, established interest groups and parties are experiencing processes of hybridization based on the selective transplantation and adaptation of digital network repertoires previously considered typical of social movements. Second, new organizational forms are emerging that exist only in hybrid form and that could not function in the ways that they do without the Internet and the complex spatial and temporal interactions it facilitates. These "hybrid mobilization movements" (including MoveOn, the example considered here) blend repertoires typically associated with all three organizational types—parties, interest groups, and social movements. Moreover, I suggest that fast "repertoire switches," spatially—between online and offline realms, and temporally—within and between campaigns, are emerging characteristics of contemporary political mobilization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]