Social Movements and the New State

The Fate of Pro-Democracy Organizations When Democracy Is Won

Brian K. Grodsky

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780804783668
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The world's democracies cheered as the social movements of the Arab Spring ended the reigns of longstanding dictators and ushered in the possibility of democracy. Yet these unique transitions also fit into a broader pattern of democratic breakthroughs around the globe, where political leaders emerge from the pro-democracy movement that helped affect change. In Social Movements and the New State, Brian Grodsky examines the relationships between new political elites and the civil society organizations that brought them to power in three culturally and geographically disparate countries—Poland, South Africa, and Georgia.This book argues that the identities and personal networks developed during the struggle provide "movement activists" with opportunities to influence minor issues, but that new and differing institutional pressures create schisms on broader policy that can turn prior bonds into a liability rather than an asset. Drawing on media analyses and more than 150 elite interviews, Grodsky offers a rare empirical assessment of the degree to which social movement organizations shape activists' beliefs and actions over the long term.

1

Introduction

How Many Lives Does a Social Movement Have?

It was a show of epic proportions: Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians in early 2011 took to the streets of Cairo, demanding an end to strongman Hosni Mubarak’s thirty-year grip on power. They followed the newest pro-democracy, social-movement script almost to the letter: Motivated by their own mix of economic and political grievances and inspired by events next door, the mostly youthful protesters turned their grumbling into action that attracted the participation of longtime regime opponents, who sometimes adopted the lead role. The sparks of the Arab Spring were struck in Tunisia, but its fires roared through Egypt before singeing other countries in the region. From the news satellites orbiting overhead, the characteristic order of the Middle East gave way to immense and chaotic billows of smoke. In both Tunisia and Egypt the resolution occurred shockingly fast; the movements were victorious.

But on the ground, in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, the picture was anything but clear. In the immediate aftermath of victory some activists decided it was time to take to the newly opened political stage in order to institutionalize all that the movement had stood for. “We made the Republic of Tahrir,” said one youth leader who had quit his job on the stock exchange to enter the political arena. “Now let us make Egypt” (Worth 2011). Others lingered on the square, wondering whether it was really time to throw away the signs they had hastily crafted when the movement got under way just weeks before. Again, the Egyptians were on cue, their movement splitting into those who would move on to power and those who would remain behind. For the latter, promised changes could not come fast enough, and, as disappointment quickly spread, activists returned to the square and employed their now familiar, contentious methods against the new state.

For the casual observer, the plight of these activists was a function of a quirk in the Egyptian democratization story: Unlike in most episodes of revolutionary democratic breakthrough, where new elites transition into the state en masse, in Egypt a military caretaker government linked to Mubarak had temporarily assumed power. Those movement activists who turned political, from this perspective, never even reached positions of power as the movement mobilized for another round of the fight. In fact, this Egyptian aberration merely shortened the time it took for tensions to boil over between activists and those who left for the political arena. Just across the border in Tunisia, young protesters had predictably turned against their own government, angry that their economic grievances remained unaddressed. As the fates of social movements from northern Europe to southern Africa indicate, the split was practically inevitable. And, as this book demonstrates, it was systematic.

Movement activists, who are typically jolted from the wilderness of dissidence and exclusion into the frenzy of mass-based action and then the euphoria of victory, rarely have time for soul searching in the early period after democratic breakthrough. From the activists’ perspective, those organization leaders who then depart for the state are invariably an asset. What better way to influence the new regime and secure the revolutionary transition than to inject into the state’s highest echelons those who blazed the path to democratic breakthrough in the first place? These organization leaders, on the one hand, personify the ideals of the movement and, on the other hand, will be tied by personal bonds to those remaining behind. The combination of identity and peer pressure, it seems, will be enough for those activists who remain in the organization to keep their old friends, who are now at the policy helm, true to the movement’s agenda.

Yet within two years of regime change, activists in the three culturally and geographically disparate cases analyzed in this book—Poland, South Africa, and Georgia—all felt profoundly disempowered and bitterly cheated by their ex-comrades, who were now running the postbreak-through show. Identity became a contested stage on which actors on each side of the state divide accused those on the other of betrayal. Moreover, personal networks built up during the years of struggle mutated from what some thought would be ties of influence into something more reminiscent of a noose. Activists in all three states were left reeling by the shocking answer to the critical question of how social-movement leaders behave when they move into positions of power.

From Social Movements to the State

This is a study of social movements, broadly understood as challenges to “existing arrangements of power and distribution by people with common purposes and solidarity, in sustained interaction with elites, opponents, and authorities” (Meyer and Tarrow 1998, 4). These movements, ranging from massive grassroots organizations to small “principled” groups (Sikkink 1993, 411) acting “on behalf of largely silent constituencies” (Ottaway and Chung 1999, 107), are all bound by the contentious activities they pursue to achieve a common, collective good. Regardless of their most immediate demands, these movements invariably necessitate extensive political changes as the lynchpin of their success.

They are also bound in their postmovement trajectory. It is the rule rather than the exception that upon victory some leaders of social-movement organizations take to the state. They are by nature embedded in the political process, linked by mission (and sometimes personnel) to opposition political parties. In fact, oftentimes these organizations would not exist but for the political dissidents who create them as, in Bratton’s words, “the refuge of last resort for partisan opposition groupings” (Bratton 1994, 64). During the struggle, actors on both sides of the political/civil line frequently converge for strategy deliberations or protests and thus develop a symbiotic relationship as any previously existing boundaries fade.

It is of little surprise that the pro-democracy cases explored in the following chapters are therefore only the tip of the iceberg; the postdemocratic breakthrough migration from this most vocal sector of civil society to the state has occurred in many places around the world, from Africa (including Kenya, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Asia (the Philippines) to Europe (Serbia, Czechoslovakia) and Latin America (Chile, Brazil).¹ The same phenomenon has proven true for activists in other social-movement spheres that demanded greater levels of inclusion, from feminists and civil-rights leaders to environmentalist and leftist organizers. It is these new political elites, buoyant after their hard-earned victory and confident as a result of the societal enthusiasm that catapulted them to power, who are the focus of this study. What happens to those “principled” organizations that participate in a pro-democracy movement when their members are subsequently drawn into the new, democratic government? In what ways do they benefit or suffer from the new relationship?

These questions have enormous import not only for citizens in post-breakthrough states but also for U.S. policymakers engaged in overseas assistance. In 2009 the United States spent $2.7 billion on democratization around the world, including $482 million on civil-society promotion alone; the State Department’s 2011 bud get request was for $3.3 billion. According to USAID’s mission statement, the purpose of this assistance was to “help transform non-democratic countries” in the short term and “represent citizens’ concerns and ensure transparency and good governance” in the long term (USAID 2010). External assistance, including monetary and diplomatic support, for key elements of civil society has helped fuel movements credited with ending illiberal regimes around the world. However, we have significantly less understanding of how these pro-democracy, social-movement organizations, envisioned by external backers as both the vanguard and then guardian of democracy, actually function as their leaders take to the state.

The fact is, those who observe their movement-era colleagues depart for the state tend to feel assured of the advantage their departure will bring. Apart from their enormous level of faith based on personal and interpersonal arguments mentioned earlier, there is another important reason these movement leaders are at times surprised when their statebound colleagues act inconsistently with their expectations. While scholars and policymakers have accumulated a wealth of information on the rise and maintenance of social movements, the “what next?” question has been largely pushed to the side. Predictably, foreign-policy officials involved in these processes have neither the time nor the occupational incentive to stop and take a closer look at the “what next?” (Grodsky 2009). As one democracy specialist at USAID conceded, “People in the field are so busy they just don’t have the time to look at lessons learned” (USAID 2007). Academics, focused primarily on the important issue of mobilization, have also been largely uninterested in this topic. As a result, activists (and everyone else for that matter) have very little empirical evidence to point them in the right direction.

There are a few important exceptions, including McAdam’s (1988) fascinating study of the civil-rights generation more than a decade after the struggle concluded; Banaszak’s (2009) intriguing work on the inclusion of feminist-movement activists in various branches of the U.S. government; and Mische’s (2008) analysis of student-activist networks in Brazil. However, although these studies alternatively demonstrate the long-term impact of social-movement identities and personal networks or the policy impact of activists in their new institutional shells, they do not explicitly look at the role of friendships and identities in creating state–movement bridges.

The approach to this study is therefore rather unusual. Rather than analyzing existing theories (which are generally absent, given the relative dearth of research on this subject), I create arguments that extend out of the rich, multidisciplinary literature on the rise and maintenance of social movements, as well as the nascent demobilization and postmovement literature. I focus on key elements of mobilization and organization activities that seem likely to have a long-term impact and emphasize the role of movement identities, social networks, and institutional structures. It is important to stress that these arguments are not mutually exclusive. In fact, as I explain in the next chapter, they frequently overlap and may as a collective enhance our understanding of the processes that occur in newly democratizing states.

The first argument to emerge from this literature, the group-identity argument, projects the empowerment of organizations whose members have taken state positions, based on the notion that former activists remain attached to the principles and demands they long advocated and govern in accordance with these ideas. Group identities form around a “cognitive, moral, and emotional connection with a broader community, category, practice, or institution” (Polletta and Jasper 2001, 285). They involve strong norms of behavior that organizations both create and serve to enforce through positive and negative incentives. Institutions that develop around or within these networks, including formal rituals and everyday interactions, reinforce and further transform group understandings and solidify belief systems. The output should be principled organization activists with a heightened sense of purpose and belonging. As Polletta and Jasper note, “participation usually transforms activists’ subsequent biographies, marking their personal identities even after the movement ends” (Polletta and Jasper 2001, 296). Evidence from the scant postmovement literature suggests that ideologies formed during movement years are indeed durable.

The second social-network argument similarly suggests that activists who have left their organizations for the state remain bound by social ties to those presiding over their former organizations, empowering these associations through mechanisms such as access and peer pressure. This argument is grounded in part in the numerous analyses of how preexisting social networks (friends, colleagues, kin, etc.) can contribute to the rise of social movements. Others have found that the very process of mobilization creates new ties. Over the course of the movement, activists become emotionally fused with their organizations, which become “a goal in themselves” (Melucci, Keane, and Mier 1989, 60). The emerging networks elicit strong emotions such as loyalty and obligation that serve to further strengthen groups and might be expected to survive after the struggle ends. Whereas the identity argument is based on the strength of ideas to hold former and ongoing activists together in the postbreak-through period, the network argument focuses more on a human aversion to ostracism.

The third institutional argument that I put forward holds that although previously established identities and social networks can create new opportunities, they can also be undermined by institutional constraints and the new walls built between former colleagues and friends. This argument emerges from the political-science institutional perspective, which emphasizes the influence of organizational structures and responsibilities in determining actors’ preferences. It also builds on social-movement work that explains how activists struggle to integrate various expectations and pressures emanating from the diverse structures in which they are immersed (from formal organizations and institutions to family). Where institutionally structured preferences yield somewhat similar policy priorities among groups, previous ties should prove an asset. However, where these preferences diverge, particularly in broad policy areas, personal aspects will create more intense conflict than if no personal ties had existed beforehand. Incorporation can be either a blessing (by providing new opportunities to long-excluded social-movement organizations) or a curse (by setting the stage for tension, animosity, and personal vitriol).

The institutional argument accounts for an array of internal and external pressures that are overlooked in identity and network arguments. Internally, old friends may be watching new state leaders, but so are millions of voters who are eager to see their long-standing grievances addressed. These individuals tend to see liberty not as a goal but as a means to prosperity. As the Greek playwright Aeschylus said nearly 2,500 years before these most recent revolutions, “Only when man’s life comes to its end in prosperity can one call that man happy.” For state leaders, movement demands may no longer be their most pressing concerns. Externally, these actors face constraints generated by neoliberal global pressures, meaning that the dominant sources of outside assistance, which are often critical to bringing citizens the economic uplift they demand, are bound in policy chains. New political elites discover in the process of rebuilding their economy that everything from advising to enticing new foreign investment and trade relations involves bending to the dominant and, at least in the short term, domestically painful, neoliberal rules of the game.

This losing scenario can be the one that prompts despair and demobilization of the broader movement after “victory.” This prospect is all the more likely given that most movements are, beneath their most basic tenets, quite heterogeneous, which sets the stage for a fragmentation of such coalitions over time.

Yet some movement leaders clearly find it in their interest, whether out of political strategy or in the pursuit of both tangible and intangible rewards, to maintain their organizations despite apparent victory. These leaders frequently adapt to the new environment by transforming their organizations into bureaucratic and formalized units more capable of everyday interaction with new state institutions and external donors. Since engaging in conventional politics normally means being more pragmatic and less idealistic, the result can be alienation or a backlash further down in the organization and, in turn, pressure on more senior leaders to stand their ground on long-held principles and policies. Just as ex-movement leaders in the state face significant institutional constraints, so do those who remain behind. One of the main lessons that Egyptian, Tunisian, and other activists should learn from this new line of research is that contradicting institutional pressures work to sever long-held bonds and make them toxic.

Organization of This Book

In the next chapter I explain how, based on the social-movement literature, rational and emotionally driven social-movement activists in all of these cases might rightly have expected their colleagues’ moves to the state to be an organizational advantage. I then detail my institutional theory, according to which previous bonds play only a limited role in the new relationship. Throughout this chapter I introduce each of my cases and explain how these various arguments relate to them.

My first country study, Poland, focuses on the fate of Solidarność (herein referred to as Solidarity), the umbrella union organization turned social movement that forced the first transition of a communist state. In this chapter (3) I analyze the relationship between Solidarity and the state at two stages: first, in the early 1990s, when leaders of the broad Solidarity social movement took positions in the state, and second, in the late 1990s, when leaders of Solidarity, which had already become a more typical labor union, made a similar transition. I find that in both cases organization leaders and their political colleagues soon became profoundly estranged despite their continued cooperation on low-level issues.

While the Poland chapter describes how different movement cohorts face the same basic dilemma over time, the South Africa chapter (4) demonstrates how two quite different organizations can face the same fate. In this chapter I analyze the evolving relationship between former and ongoing leaders of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African National Civic Organization (SANCO, a federation of neighborhood organizations) since they began a series of transitions to the state after 1994. I find that, although there is some variation based on organization type, in both instances organization leaders and their former colleagues fell into a highly contentious relationship.

Georgia’s Rose Revolution (2003), the first of three recent “color revolutions” in the post-Soviet space, differs in many ways from the previous two cases, especially in the prominent role played by small, elite nongovernmental organizations. In Chapter 5 I look at how the relationships between these various organizations and their ex-colleagues differ and find that this depends in part on the degree to which organizations moderated their agendas and tactics. Organization leaders who made demands of their state-bound ex-colleagues that were similar to those they had made during the previous regime found that personal relationships became a burden. This was not the case for those who had no former colleagues in the state.

Finally, in the concluding chapter I present a cross-state analysis that identifies patterns and divergences, and I explore the policy implications of this study.

Summary

Scholars and policymakers who focus on democratization have accumulated a wealth of information on how social movements arise. The question of “what next?” has, however, been largely pushed to the side. If activists and policymakers are intent on avoiding the “morning after” (McAdam 1988, 200) stories that emerge from unfulfilled promises and expectations, this oversight must be addressed. This is particularly important in the context of democratization, where the stakes are so high. In the pages that follow I move from a detailed theoretical analysis of this issue to a practical and qualitatively compelling examination of the dilemmas these individuals face.

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From Mobilization to Victory

Democratization and the Fate of Social-Movement Organizations

When the dominoes of communism began to fall with Poland’s first semifree elections in 1989, something peculiar happened: Solidarity leaders who had long fought against the state suddenly joined it. Some went into parliament, some took cabinet posts, and others took seats in the highest courts. The puzzle was not so much that these leaders initiated what would be just the first of several migratory waves from social movement to the state; social-movement activists, after all, are naturally inclined to participate in the political process. The oddity was that members of Solidarity, facing what was in effect a form of decapitation, actually supported their colleagues’ exodus. They were not, of course, suicidal. Rather, they had c...