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This study provides empirical evidence of major debates in collective action theory concerning resource and member heterogeneity by conducting a survey on 63 randomly selected water-user associations promoted by the West Bengal state government of India. The functioning and governance of these institutions were evaluated by efficiency in resource mobilization (collection of membership fees), members' perception of transparency and democratic decision-making, and dependency on third-party involvement in the future. The study finds that a larger command area, larger proportion of smaller farmers, optimum membership fee, frequent general body meetings, certain documentation, and power structure improve the functioning and governance indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philanthropic endeavors are a form of institutionalized collective action that enhances a community's capacity to address community needs and interests. Despite studies investigating the complex relationships between local economies, social capital, and local philanthropy, much remains unknown concerning the interaction between diverse local economic structures, social capital, and local philanthropy. Therefore, we explore whether local economies and social capital affect a community's capacity to mobilize collective resources for two distinct forms of local philanthropy: elite and social welfare-oriented. Using a quantitative analysis, we empirically examine these relationships using a dataset covering three specified years spanning 3,036 US counties. Findings suggest that the diversity of local economic structures play a moderating role in facilitating the effect of social capital on local philanthropic activities aimed at satisfying local community demands and interests. The results illustrate important policy implications concerning the diversification of economic resources for local policymakers and community leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assess the conditions under which forest-dependent groups in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest may overcome inequalities in the legal access to forest resources. Through the development of contrasting case studies, we address attempts made by two community-based associations that represent those groups to legalize their timber production. We explore the dominance and mobilization of resources and draw on the Strategic Action Fields perspective to organize and systematically compare the case studies. Results reveal that to overcome existing barriers to legalization, communities need to create a social movement dynamic to seize opportunities caused by the exogenous interferences in local social orders. Skilled social actors need to mobilize powerful supporters to accumulate resource endowments necessary to put forward the legalization process. These results are particularly important considering the enormous environmental importance of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest, the increase in deforestation rates, and the precarious socio-economic situation of forest-dependent peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines collective action and the alliances between social movement organizations engaged in the work of solidarity with disabled people within and across borders during austerity. Building upon social movement theory, specifically political opportunities and resource mobilisation, we focus our analysis on data from in-depth interviews with thirty-five organizations at the UK and European levels, where we examine both how solidarity is operationalized by such organizations and the everyday cooperation and alliances they build with others in a UK policy context that has been hostile to disabled people and a European context which disabled people's solidarity organizations have sought to seize as political opportunities. Our study therefore adopts a multi-level approach by analysing the building of alliances between organizations at the local, national and transnational levels and it reveals the impact of the political context and organisational pressures which can diminish resources and generate competition, thus placing strains on solidarity between disabled people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing and managing sustainable agro-ecosystems remains a significant challenge for society. This is largely because their expected functions and values are multiple, and diverse networks of actors and institutions control common pool resources at different scales. Networks are expected to play an important role in facilitating collective innovation in agro-ecosystems, through enabling knowledge acquisition and transfer, resource mobilization for effective governance, and cooperation. However, in order to realize their potential benefit networks require effective management. Drawing on case studies located in the peri-urban agro-ecosystems surrounding Montreal (Quebec, Canada) and Paris (France), we analyze four collective innovation initiatives aiming to reduce the negative impacts of agriculture on the environment. For each case, we assess the contribution of network managers to the core tasks of: “Connecting” (initiating and facilitating interaction processes between actors), “Framing” (guiding interactions through process agreement), “Knowledge brokering” (facilitating knowledge transfer and capitalization) and “Exploring” (searching for goal congruency by creating new content). We then pay particular attention to the activities associated with Exploring across our cases and consider the implications for more collective approaches to designing innovation in agricultural landscapes. Our results suggest that, despite heterogeneity in the activities of network managers in each context, network managers devoted efforts across each of the four tasks. Yet, building a shared vision and engaging diverse stakeholders in a common goal over time were reported as challenging. We identify that the network managers tended to set objectives at the outset, and that design processes were often confined to a limited subgroup of actors. While these strategies were viewed as being efficient in the short term, they likely limited the success of the collective enterprise in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ideological Structure of action (ISA) is a concept developed by Russell Dalton, to explain the role of ideology in the causes that encourage collective action. This paper proposes its application to the analysis of the links between sinarquista movement and cultural-regional basis of which he was a political expression, this approach builds on the experience of an actor, come to activist sinarquista in the second constitutive process of the Partido Demócrata Mexicano (PDM) in 1975. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to propose practical and theoretical mechanisms for the understanding of collective actions, the purpose of which is to accomplish an agroecological transition. The theoretical framework is based on the main theories of collective action and social mobilization in the context of the Western world. The proposal materializes in guidelines that serve as answers to the following questions: what kind of society engages in collective action and what does agroecology mean? What motivations are there that can be used to participate in the agroecological transition and in the collective action that promotes it? What are the strategies for achieving the agroecological transition? And what is the political context and how does it affect collective action and the agroecological transition of the territory? The answers to these questions allow the analysis of the disposition of the actors to exchange traditional productive practices for agro-ecological ones, and also to examine the capacity for change and social transformation which collective action has in a given territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research on online activism has shown that the Internet enhances social mobilisation by lowering the costs of information, mobilisation, and participation. The Internet thus facilitates the rise of citizen self-mobilisation (CSM) – organisation of and mobilisation for collective actions by ordinary citizens unaffiliated with social and political groups. However, the rise of CSM does not render social movement organisations (SMOs) irrelevant to protest movements. Rather, many collective action campaigns in contemporary societies are constituted by the dynamic combination of CSM efforts and SMO-based mobilisation processes. This study conceptualises the complementary relationship between CSM and SMO from a resource mobilisation perspective. It then illustrates, through two environmental collective actions in Hong Kong, how Internet-based CSM and SMO-based processes may interact with each other to drive the evolution of collective action campaigns, and adds to current understanding of the impact of emerging online mobilisation phenomena on existing movement organisations and industries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since 2009, the Collective Apostasy Campaign in Argentina has mobilized some people who are opposed to the political interference of the Catholic Church through the formal act of apostatizing. The politicization of sexual and reproductive rights, and, especially, the fight for the legalization of abortion, led to the campaign that acquired great public repercussions between 2018 and 2020. This paper analyzes 13 self-narratives of apostasy publicly available since 2009, digging into its plot, motives to apostatize, and motivation for its publicizing. Through a thematic analysis, the diverse self-narratives show similar motivations (to promote social debate on political secularization in the country), although they differ in the centrality of their personal, sociopolitical, and procedural motives to apostatize. The stories that apostates tell are resources for social mobilization as they seek an increasingly broad audience and serve the pedagogical function of sharing arguments against the political role of the Catholic Church and in favor of personal ideological coherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are various assessments, occasion-related and partial analyses, and even empirical evaluations of the recent collective protest of Croatian students, but there is hardly any attempt of a theoretical clarification and comprehension thereof. Having in mind the largely disparate definitions of social movement, the author is of the opinion that, from the standpoint of theory, the demands of rebelled students, the blockade of the faculty, the plenum decision-making and other forms of collective student activity can best be perceived as a form of student movement. For this reason, he first presents various theories of social movements: the classic American theory of collective behaviour (i.e. its two versions -- the breakdown theory and the theory of relative deprivation), the theory of resource mobilization, the theory of new social movements (especially Touraine's model of understanding new social movements), the theory of networks, the theory of solidarity, and the political-process analysis. Second, the author attempts to apply each of the enumerated conceptual perspectives to the Croatian student movement for charge-free education. Although the presented theories of social movements are critical of one another, this article points out their complementarity. It goes on to show that not all of them are equally adequate for clarification and comprehension of the central issue. In the author's judgement, one of the key reasons why a multi-perspective approach is necessary is the exceptional, hybrid character of the Croatian student movement, as a mixture of old and new social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We analyze traditional community initiatives in building and managing temporary check-dams across seasonal streams in Kumbadaje panchayat in the state of Kerala in India. This is a fairly successful system, functioning for decades in the study area. Check-dams overcome water scarcity faced by farmers during the summer irrigation season and thereby play a crucial role in farming. We identify issues in the management of check-dams, noting how this traditional water harvesting and conservation system suits the local geographic conditions and needs to be sustained and promoted. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

While seven years have passed since 2000, the target set for the eradication of polio, success remains elusive. In 2006, despite coordinated international efforts, there was no major breakthrough in containing the polio virus, which persists in a few pockets in the four countries in which it is endemic. The polio eradication programme faces new hurdles such as importation, reemergence and failure of political and community mobilization. The decreasing morale of health workers and volunteers, doubts about the efficacy of oral polio vaccine and ever-increasing programme costs and funding challenges are other issues to be addressed. This paper describes the ongoing conventional strategy adopted for polio eradication, then analyses existing challenges and some possible solutions. The author suggests that major modifications and additions to the ongoing conventional strategy are required in order to create a multi-pronged, area-specific strategy that can finish the job of polio eradication. This should include an area-specific approach, community dialogue, enhanced political advocacy and compulsory vaccination, as well as the use of inactivated polio vaccine in endemic countries even before the transmission of wild polio virus has been halted. This appears to be the best way to achieve eradication at the earliest opportunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of an industrial reconversion site in Montreal brings the authors to look at the question of local economic development from a new perspective, issued from social movements, resource mobilization and collective action theories. In Montreal, in districts devitalized by industrial relocation, social movements have integrated the struggle for the sustainability of local communities into their repertoire of collective actions. Social movements have been the initiators of strategic choices that aim to preserve existing assets, in terms of jobs and services, of local communities. In such a context, local development appears to be a process launched by local actors who mobilize resources of various kinds and from various sources to ensure that these strategies are implemented through concrete economic investment projects. The Angus case study demonstrates that the capacity of social movements to maintain a strong leadership and be a part of the implementation process is crucial in order to keep in line with the original strategic objectives. This case study shows the characteristics ofa new type of community initiative which combines endogenous and community development with business oriented projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent proliferation of scholarship on collective action frames and framing processes in relation to social movements indicates that framing processes have come to be regarded, alongside resource mobilization and political opportunity processes, as a central dynamic in understanding the character and course of social movements. This review examines the analytic utility of the framing literature for understanding social movement dynamics. We first review how collective action frames have been conceptualized, including their characteristic and variable features. We then examine the literature related to framing dynamics and processes. Next we review the literature regarding various contextual factors that constrain and facilitate framing processes. We conclude with an elaboration of the consequences of framing processes for other movement processes and outcomes. We seek throughout to provide clarification of the linkages between framing concepts/processes and other conceptual and theoretical formulations relevant to social movements, such as schemas and ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the concerns related to the issue of framing perspective and the increasing popularity it has gained among social movement researchers and theorists. In general the framing perspective has made significant contributions to the social movements field. It has infused new enthusiasm for the analysis of ideational, interpretive, constructivist, and cultural dimensions of collective action. It has moved the field beyond the structural determinism of resource mobilization and political opportunity models and away from the dubious psychology of rational choice approaches. Whether its impact will continue, and to what extent, remains to be seen. The prospect that the framing approach will produce an enduring legacy could be enhanced by addressing several noteworthy shortcomings prevalent in the current literature. One or more of these weaknesses characterize most social movement analyses. But these foibles seem particularly acute in the case of the framing perspective. Underlying the descriptive bias in the movement framing literature is the tendency to focus on frames as "things" rather than on the dynamic processes associated with their social construction, negotiation, contestation, and transformation. Movement scholars have been more inclined to attend to frames rather than to framing.

Over the last two decades, "resource mobilization" (RM) analysts have emphasized the importance of institutional continuities between conventional social life and collective protest. It is a corrective to some of the malintegration (MI) literature in which movements are portrayed as mindless eruptions lacking either coherence or continuity with organized social life. Nevertheless, it is argued that RM analysts commit a reverse error. An exposition of the similarities between the structure of everyday life and the structure of protest is not an explanation of why people sometimes live their everyday lives and other times join in collective defiance. And it is, of course, precisely this theoretical problem that is central to the MI analyses. Protest is often treated by RM analysts as more organized than it is, as if conventional modes of formal organization also typify the organizational forms taken by protest. And some RM analysts normalize the political impact of collective protest, as if the processes of influence set in motion by collective protest are no different than those set in motion by conventional political activities. This article discusses these criticisms, which do not detract from the generalization that institutional arrangements pattern both conventional and unconventional collective action. Ongoing struggles for power continually stimulate efforts by contenders to promulgate and enforce rules which either proscribe the use of specific political resources by their antagonists, or define conditions limiting their use. Thus conceived, rule-making is a strategy of power.

Theoretical investigation of a mathematical model of organizing for interdependent collective action com- pares the advantages of emphasizing reach, i.e. the sheer numbers recruited, to the advantages of emphasizing selectivity, i.e. the mean resources or interests of those recruited. The context is an accelerating production function in which each additional contribution has an increasing effect on the total payoff; this context is most likely at the beginning of an organizing drive. Both reach and selectivity arc found to have thresholds which must be achieved before increases have any effect; these thresholds depend on the given levels of other parameters, and depending on conditions may be either discontinuous jumps or regions of steep but decelerating effects. Once the threshold region is surpassed, increasing either the reach or the selectivity for resources of recruitment has a constant positive effect, while the effect increasing the selectivity for interest becomes zero. The implications for real-life recruitment strategies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the case of the Northern League in Italy, I provide a framework for systematically relating insights from two major currents of recent research on collective action: framing processes and political opportunity structures. Cross-classifying two variables — the stability of political alignments and the opportunities for autonomous action within the polity — yields four types of political structures; each is particularly conducive to different "master frames" (antisystem, inclusion, revitalization, and realignment). This approach also improves specification of the role of organizational resources. These resources become substantially more effective if the strategies they are supposed to support are framed in a way consistent with the master frame and the opportunity structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]