Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change

Patrick G. Coy

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781787568969
• eBook ISBN: 9781787568976
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change has now published continuously for over 40 years, and this volume continues its tradition of delivering data-driven and multi-method research by scholars who constantly push theory forward. 

Covering a compelling range of subjects, this important collection begins by addressing the critically important dimensions of the relationships that social movements, their activists, and their organizations have with the state and other institutions. It then moves on to examine three movements linked by frame and discourse analysis, before concluding with a survey of the biographical trajectory of activism. The contributions focus on a number of topical and crucially important issues, including, among others: environmental activism in China, the Black Lives Matter movement, the 2011 uprising in Tunisia, and Russian opposition movements.  

With a strong contributor team and a confident style, this volume is a significant addition to the RSMCC series and will be of great interest to those working and researching within the social movement field.

SECTION I
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THEIR
INSTITUTIONAL RELATIONS

ALLIES IN ACTION: INSTITUTIONAL ACTORS AND GRASSROOTS ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM IN CHINA

Yang Zhang

ABSTRACT

Institutional actors are critical allies for grassroots movements, but few studies have examined their effects and variations within the non-democratic context. This chapter argues that while institutional allies are heavily constrained and unlikely to give open endorsement to grassroot activists, some institutional activists indirectly facilitate movement mobilization and favorable outcomes in the process of advancing their own political agendas. Drawing upon in-depth interviews conducted in 2008 and 2012, I illustrate this argument by examining the Anti-PX Movement – a landmark grassroots environmental movement against a chemical plant – in Xiamen, China. I find that the environmental institutional actors were constrained and divided, yet some still fostered opportunities for movement mobilization and in turn exploited the opportunity created by the protesters to pursue their policy interests, thus facilitating positive movement outcomes. As long as the claims are not politically subversive to the authoritarian rule, this type of tacit and tactical interaction between institutional activists within the state and grassroot activists on the street is conducive to promoting progressive policy changes.

Keywords: Environmental movements; grassroots protests; elite allies; institutional activism; political opportunities; movement outcomes

INTRODUCTION

Institutional actors are valuable allies for movement activists, because they provide political opportunities and mediate the relationship between the protest and movement outcomes (Amenta, 2006; Meyer & Minkoff, 2004). While their values in democracies have been clearly identified (e.g., Gamson, 1990; McAdam, 1996; Stearns & Almeida, 2004; Tarrow, 1994), their roles within stable authoritarian contexts are less obvious and understudied. Furthermore, little is known about variations among institutional allies within such societies. Given the limits on their political action, do these actors matter for facilitating movement mobilization and desirable outcomes? If they do, why is this so and how do they provide assistance? In this chapter, I take “allies in action” as my central concern and explore whether and how institutional actors support grassroots activism.

This chapter uses the case of the Anti-PX¹ Movement in the city of Xiamen, China, to illustrate the limits and effects of institutional allies in facilitating grassroots mobilization and favorable outcomes under strong authoritarian regimes. Notably, China’s deteriorating environment has now become a central target of citizen activism and has triggered vibrant social protests. Of these, the Xiamen Anti-PX Movement is regarded as the most influential environmental protest of the past decade. On June 1 and 2, 2007, approximately 20,000 citizens marched along Xiamen’s main streets and demonstrated in the Municipal Hall to convey their grievances with the construction of the PX plant. In contrast to previous environmental movements, which often lacked street confrontations (e.g., Tong, 2005; Xie, 2009), the Anti-PX Movement in Xiamen marked a milestone in China’s environmental activism. This was due to its high-level citizen participation, unusual protest size, and favorable outcomes – including, but not limited to, the relocation of the PX plant.² The movement had significant modular effects: it was followed by a series of subsequent Anti-PX Movements in several cities between 2008 and 2015, although their achievements were much smaller than the initial movement’s.

Based upon two rounds of fieldwork in China, this chapter provides the most detailed account of this movement to date. Rather than presenting a comprehensive survey of factors contributing to the movement, such as internet activism, it focuses on the relationship between grassroots activism and its (potential) institutional allies, including: officials in the national environmental agency, officials in the local environmental agency, environmental NGOs (ENGOs), and sympathetic scientists and journalists. Through in-depth interviews with key actors in this campaign, I find that these institutional actors were politically restricted and divided, providing little open endorsement of grassroots activism. Yet, even the limited presence of elite allies facilitated grassroots mobilization and outcomes as the unintended results of promoting their self-interested agendas. The mediating effects of elite allies are further illustrated by comparison with those subsequent and less successful Anti-PX Movements during 2008–2015, in which the institutional activists were almost inactive.

This research contributes to the social movement literature in three ways. Above all, it examines the practice of elite allies in the movement under strong authoritarian regimes – something that has not been given enough consideration in previous studies (but see Chen, 2012; O’Brien & Li, 2006; Schock, 2005). Second, my research advances the long debate over the relationship between institutional resources and disruptive tactics (Almeida & Stearns, 1998; Gamson, 1990; McAdam, 1982; Piven & Cloward, 1977) by revealing an interactive effect between grassroots and institutional activism: certain kinds of transgressive, but not necessarily violent, contention can open an opportunity window for elite allies to realize favorable outcomes (O’Brien, 2003). Third, echoing a recent call to employ the intersection and interaction approach (e.g., Banaszak, 2005; Böhm, 2015; Fligstein & McAdam, 2011; Meyer, 2005), my research highlights a reciprocal relationship between institutional and grassroot activists and their iterative interplay in driving progressive policy changes.

The chapter proceeds as follows: the section “Institutional Allies in Social Movements” offers a theoretical discussion of elite allies in social movements, underscoring their limitations and effects in authoritarian contexts. Next, I describe the data and method, and provide background for the Xiamen Anti-PX Movement. After introducing the major institutional actors involved in China’s environmental governance, I examine how these players were restricted, but also able to play a critical role in the movement. I then compare this case with the subsequent Anti-PX Movements to demonstrate that the absence of institutional activists resulted in different outcomes. The chapter’s conclusion extends my findings to popular protests in China and addresses general issues in social movement literature.

INSTITUTIONAL ALLIES IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Social movement scholars have long noticed that elite allies are valuable resources for movement actors, because they provide political opportunities for mobilization (McAdam, 1996, p. 27; Meyer & Minkoff, 2004; Tarrow, 1994, p. 76; Tilly, 1978) and mediate the relationship between the protest and movement outcomes (Amenta, 2006; Amenta, Caren, Chiarello, & Su, 2010; Cress & Snow, 2000; Gamson, 1990, pp. 64–66; Stearns & Almeida, 2004). Like other sociological concepts, institutional or elite allies are defined in a variety of ways (e.g., Banaszak, 2005; McAdam, 1996; Pettinicchio, 2012; Santoro & McGuire, 1997; Tarrow, 1994).³ Such “allies” can refer to a narrowly delimited group of institutional actors with stronger ideological sympathies who directly participate in social movements (Santoro & McGuire, 1997, p. 503). “Allies” can also be defined more broadly to include “individuals who affect change (from changing organizational norms to policy reform) from within organizations and institutions” (Pettinicchio, 2012, p. 501). In this chapter, I take the latter approach. Generally speaking, institutional actors have greater access to political, organizational, and media resources and can exert larger influence over policy making than grassroot activists.

Elite allies include both state and non-state actors in terms of their institutional status (Amenta, 2006; Banaszak, 2005; Stearns & Almeida, 2004). Composed of fragmentary administrative units and geographically nested governments, the modern state is replete with cross-cutting political splits, and thus contains many allies critical for movement activists (Santoro & McGuire, 1997; Stearns & Almeida, 2004; Suh, 2011). For example, state-movement allies have been found to be vital for realizing desirable outcomes in Japan’s environmental movements (Almeida & Stearns, 1998; Stearns & Almeida, 2004). Non-state institutional actors, including labor unions, NGOs, scientists, and media, can also be important allies for grassroot activists.

Beyond their institutional variations, this chapter focuses on elite allies’ involvement in practice from the angle of “allies in action.” For taking elite allies as an overall favorable factor obscures their possible variations: they may be tied to the same movement in varying degrees, and support certain kinds of contentions but not others. Furthermore, their support may come from ideological sympathy without the push from outsiders, or from opportunistic reasons or external rewards (Pettinicchio, 2012, p. 502). Furthermore, this motivational difference is further blurred in practice: activists who have a certain ideological sympathy for environmentalism may still behave in strategic ways as a means to protect themselves and/or advance their own policy agenda when an opportunity is present. These often understudied behavioral variations become salient in social movements under authoritarian regimes, where elite allies turn out to be more precious resources while being more politically restricted. Therefore, their support for oppositional movements varies to a greater degree. It is true that elite allies often play critical roles in the democratization process in transitional regimes when elites themselves begin to split (Brockett, 1991; Schock, 2005; Tong, 2005), but this is less evident for strong authoritarian regimes with a robust repressive capacity.

In authoritarian regimes, not only are social movement actors controlled and suppressed, but institutional actors’ participation in movements is also restricted (Osa & Corduneanu-Huci, 2003; Tarrow, 1994, pp. 79–80). Unlike cases under transitional regimes, political elites in stable authoritarian states have not yet become overtly rebellious or politically split. Accordingly, few elites openly support oppositional movements or challenge the legitimacy of the ruling order. Furthermore, oppositional parties, the courts, and labor unions, which often serve as important movement alliances in democracies (Amenta, 2006; Böhm, 2015; Burstein & Linton, 2002; Kriesi, Koopmans, Duyvendak, & Giugni, 1995; Stearns & Almeida, 2004), play smaller roles in non-democratic societies, because they are either absent or function poorly due to tight authoritarian control (Schock, 2005). Overall, in a closed system, institutional activists are fewer in number and have less political space to ally themselves with protesters.

In addition to restrictions placed by the regime as a monolithic totality, elite allies are further constrained by their institutional opponents, given that the authoritarian states are as fragmentary as, if not more so than, democratic states (Migdal, 2001). Even in democracies, institutional activists are often weaker administrative agencies or less powerful societal forces than their opponents, who own more political and economic resources (Amenta, 2006; Stearns & Almeida, 2004; Tarrow, 1994). In Japan’s environmental campaign, for example, institutional obstacles to environmental governance included the entrenched party, industrial corporations, and powerful economic agencies, especially the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) (Stearns & Almeida, 2004, p. 479). Cases in authoritarian regimes are similar. In China, environmental activists’ primary institutional opponents are: (1) economic agencies, especially the powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) – the counterpart to Japan’s MITI, (2) business establishments, including both state-owned enterprises and resourceful private enterprises, and (3) provincial and municipal governments, which often put economic development ahead of environmental protection in China’s decentralized, developmental state (Economy, 2010; Xie, 2009). It is well recognized that these groups possess far greater power than environmental protection agencies or other environmental institutions.

Given these limitations, I argue that the presence of elite allies in grassroots movements is restricted and internally divided under stable authoritarian regimes. Most institutional allies are conformist and cautious, and thus are more willing to involve themselves in modest rather than transgressive movements. When facing confrontations, many potential elite allies become passive, divided, and even antagonistic to these contentious movements. Even those actual allies who do side with the movement seldom overtly support a confrontational protest so as to protect themselves – unless they see support as an opportunity to further their own agendas. They are opportunistic in choosing whether and when to step in, as the goals of institutional and grassroot activists are merely overlapping, but not congruent. In short, many factors hinder the potential for elite support of grassroots movements.

On the other hand, it is precisely because of their weak institutional status that some reformist allies have (even greater) incentives to seek alliances with social movement sectors as a means to advance their ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction
• Section I Social Movements and their Institutional Relations
• Section II Frames and Discourses in Conflicts and Social Movements
• Section III Activist Start-Up and Withdrawal
• Index