Bureaucrats' Tacit Understandings and Social Movement Policy Implementation: Unpacking the Deviation of Agency Environmental Justice Programs from EJ Movement Priorities.

Scholarship at the intersection of social movement and organizational theories has illuminated intra-organizational factors that shape agencies' efforts to implement policies social movements have fought for, emphasizing the roles of agency leaders' ideological commitments to movement policy, organizational capacity, and sanctions to ensure compliance. I argue that social movement policy implementation is also shaped by bureaucrats' tacit understandings of key movement concepts, albeit conditioned by how able they feel to implement those interpretations in light of political contexts. I make this argument through the case of government agency environmental justice (EJ) grant programs, analyzing program documents, funding patterns, and confidential interviews with agency representatives to explain why most EJ grant programs deviate from longstanding EJ movement priorities while one program coheres with them. I show that these outcomes stem from the fact that many staff--even while avowing support for EJ policy--hold tacit understandings of key movement concepts that differ from those of advocates. Social movement policy implementation can align with movement principles when institutional logics consistent with the movement are held, promoted, and defended by agency representatives who feel that their institutional environment permits them to implement those ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]