Collective Protest: A Critique of Resource Mobilization Theory.

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.