The Limits of Networks in Organizational Mobilization.

For years, scholars have studied the ways that social ties affect mobilization and participation in social movements. At the same time, there is a small but growing number of studies of disconnected individuals becoming involved in politics and civics. Research has yet to assess the role that social networks play in conjunction with other mobilizing forces. This paper, accordingly, analyzes the role that social ties and individual motivations play in mobilizing activists to work for one social movement organization. We disaggregate two specific ways that social ties mobilize activists: for direct recruitment and to legitimate activism. Our data show that both social ties and individualism play a role in mobilizing participants of social movements at almost equal levels. Contrary to what one might expect, however, we find that those activists who were mobilized through their personal connections to become activists were less likely to be working for the organization a year later versus those who came to the organization as strangers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]