Social Movements, Policy Initiatives and Political Outcomes at the U.S. State Level.

The last forty years has witnessed a remarkable resurgence in the populist phenomenon known as social movements as well as the launching of powerful counter-movements. Alongside this rise in movement growth, there have been vast policy changes. Understudied in the literature is a connection between these two phenomena. When do social movements decide to pressure governmental institutions for change? Under what conditions are social movements able to successful in their efforts? In this paper, it is argued that a rational, strategic interaction framework should be used to study the policy outcomes of social movement-government interaction. Hypotheses are then developed for strategic interaction variables for explaining social movement-legislative outcomes. Further, social movement life-cycle theories (resource mobilization and political process) are reconsidered from a strategic interaction framework to derive additional hypotheses of outcomes of social movement-legislative interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]