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This paper examines whether affiliation strategies used by social movement organizations to establish institutional linkages assure survival. Several streams within both social movement and organization theories suggest contrasting expectations. Two core research questions are proposed: how does strategic affiliation, as well as increasing legitimation, alter social movement organizations’ longevity, and how does the evolution of the movement condition these dynamics? Our answer focuses on the self-help/mutual-aid movement and the institutionalization of national self-help/mutual-aid organizations. Analyses comparing economic, political and symbolic means of survival at the population-of-organizations level and organizational level, and across the history of the movement, show that professional and political alliances and legitimation impact the longevity of self-help/mutual-aid organizations in unexpected ways. For instance, as the number of political alliances at the population level increases, the likelihood of organizational survival declines, although political alliances at the individual organizational level are beneficial for an organization. These relationships change dramatically as the movement matures. Implications for integrating social movement and organizations theories are discussed.

In recent decades, it is possible to point to a new and evolving debate among analysts of sexuality, political economy, and culture, focused on the implications of feminism’s changing relations to institutions of state power and law in the United States. According to these analysts, to whom we refer as the critics of feminism in power, the alliances formed between some feminists and neoliberal and conservative elites, coupled with the installation of feminist ideas in law and state institutions problematize the once commonly held assumption, shared by second-wave feminists, that all women, regardless of differences in social location, face certain kinds of exclusions. With women entering formal positions of power from states to NGOs to corporations, this assumption cannot stand. Critical analysts of feminists in power insist that we consider the implications of advancing a feminist politics not from the margins of society but from within the precincts of power. They shine a light on a change in feminism’s relation to institutions of state power and law as reflected in new political alliances forming between feminists and neoliberal and conservative elites, and the political and discursive uses to which feminist ideas and ideals have been put. Building on work on inequalities and hierarchies among women, these critics take up specifically political questions concerning the kind of feminist politics to be promoted in today’s changed gendered landscape. Perhaps most notably, they make explicit a concern shared by radical political movements more generally: what does it mean when the ideas of those who were once considered political outsiders become institutionalized within core sites of state power and law? At the same time, the very broad-brush narratives concerning the cooptation of feminism by neoliberalism put forth by some of these analysts could be complemented with historical and empirical research on specific instances of feminism’s reciprocal, though still unequal, relationship with neoliberalism and state power.

Realizing the value of social capital to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in developing economies, where relationship networks play a big role in filling the gaps that are left by dysfunctional institutions, the purpose of this paper is to gain an empirical understanding of various forms of social capital in relation to the innovation of SMEs in Zimbabwe.

Primary data is collected from SMEs across several regions in Harare, where instrument validity is checked with confirmatory factor analysis, and hypotheses are tested using moderated regression analyses.

A positive influence is observed for both alliance capital and reputational capital on innovation, while non-significant moderating effects in terms of environmental hostility and dynamism are noted for these relationships

On a practical level, to increase levels of innovation, SME owner-managers need to secure stronger investments into their social infrastructure by developing (both physical and digital) alliance and reputational capitals

By segregating various forms of social capital, an original understanding is attained in terms of how entrepreneurs actively leverage alliance and reputational forms of social capitals to increase their levels of innovation. The theoretical and empirical understanding of the social capital-innovation link is enhanced, and the study constructs now have broader application as their psychometric properties have been established in an under-researched African market context.

The growth of the middle class has become a subject of growing fascination for scholars as of late, not just because the numbers are so astonishing but also because the patterns suggest a shift in both global demographics and the regional geographies of development. Recent estimates from the World Bank indicate that the world's middle class is expected “to grow from 430 million in 2000 to 1.15 billion in 2030”;¹ and that the greatest growth will occur in the developing world. While in 2000, only 56% of the world's middle classes lived in the developing world, this figure is expected to reach 93% by the year 2030 – with China and India alone expected to account for two-thirds of all this expansion.² What may be most striking about the middle classes are not merely their mind-boggling numbers, or their location in the developing world, or the fact that these particular class actors have been ignored for years in studies of late industrializers, or even the fact that the newfound interest in the middle classes comes on the heels of a controversy about the relevance of class in the contemporary era more generally (see Portes, 2000). Indeed, what may be most noteworthy is the set of adjectives that come attached to the study of middle classes, as well as the fact that these qualifiers are different than those employed in prior periods.

This paper aims to shed light on the previous ideological stands of the newly established Islamist parties in terms of the idea of party formation, and different models of their relations with the social movements from which they emanated through focusing on some case studies, namely, Egypt and Tunisia, with an attempt to study their impact on the parties’ paths by concentrating on two dimensions: the decision-making process and alliances’ building.

The paper is written according to the comparative case studies approach and Huntington’s new institutionalism.

The research findings proved that, in the light of the two case studies, there are two different models of relations exist between the Islamist political parties and the social movements they emanated from, and despite that both parties had come out from social movements or took the form of a movement in their beginnings and were established within the same context, they showed different perspectives in dealing later on with the new institutional and political context and their rising challenges. These perspectives affected the parties’ decision-making process and alliances’ building, as well as their institutional legitimacy and determined their political future.

In the end, this paper attempts to deal with the degree of institutionalization these parties enjoyed, based on how the movements they emanated from had dealt with the dilemma of party building and the party-movement relations.

To present an analytical framework for conducting critical dialogic accounting and accountability-based participatory action research to further democratisation, social change and empowering marginalised groups, and to reflect on its application in a Bangladeshi nongovernmental organisation's microfinance program.

The framework, synthesising prior CDAA theorising and agonistic-inspired action research, is described, followed by a discussion of the methodological challenges when applying this during a ten-year, ongoing intervention seeking greater voice for poor, female borrowers.

Six methodological issues emerged: investigating contested issues rather than organisation-centric research; identifying and engaging divergent discourses; engaging marginalised groups, activists and/or dominant powerholders; addressing power and power relations; building alliances for change; and evaluating and disseminating results. The authors discuss these issues and how the participatory action research methods and analytical tools used evolved in response to emergent challenges, and key lessons learned in a study of microfinance and women's empowerment.

The paper addresses calls within and beyond accounting to develop critical, engaged and change-oriented scholarship adopting an agonistic research methodology. It uses a novel critical dialogic accounting and accountability-based participatory action research approach. The reflexive examination of its application engaging NGOs, social activists, and poor women to challenge dominant discourses and practices, and build alliances for change, explores issues encountered. The paper concludes with reflective questions to aid researchers interested in undertaking similar studies in other contentious, power-laden areas concerning marginalised groups.

Democratic renewal in Sri Lanka as well as a cross the Global South depends on strengthening democratic social movements within varieties of patrimonial capitalism. Patrimonial capitalism, emphasising patron–client relations, coincide with weakening democratic institutional cultures and practices. The dominant corruption/anti-corruption narrative is bracketed with elite class strategies aimed at negotiating a ‘managed corruption’. The realm of representative politics creating consent for patrimonial capitalism is shaped by: ethnic and class relations; the weakening of working-class parties; patriarchal cultures within parties; links with criminal networks; opaque finances and the integration of mainstream media with party patronage.

Democratising the realm of representative politics points towards democratic social movements. The internal dynamics of social movements, their relationships with political parties and collective learning are significant factors that shapes the strategic orientation of social movements. State repression of social movements highlights the need for demilitarisation and the abolition of prisons. The global sense of this local struggle relates to transforming financial markets and platform economies towards notions of financial and digital commons. The integration of different realms of politics, such as representative, movement, life and emancipatory politics, is vital for reinforcing solidarity as the basis for counter-hegemonic struggles.

Urban transport plays a key role in reducing climate gas emissions. However, public policies are developed and implemented in an increasingly complex, fragmented, and multilevelled society. This chapter focuses on how interactive political leadership can address challenges related to spatial justice, network cooperation, and communication to increase legitimate and robust policies. Through in-depth case studies of the Norwegian urban regions of Trondheim and Nord-Jaeren, the importance of ensuring broad political alliances, handling spatial complexity, strong political leadership, as well as engaging in dialogue and communication with the public is shown. This may be more challenging to achieve in a complex institutional structure. We argue that governance structures reflect dynamics of the urban regions in which they are implemented. Related to our two empirical cases, the urban structure of Nord-Jaeren is more complex, compared to that of Trondheim, and likewise is their governance network. Linking the conditions of interactive political leadership to the three interconnected urban governance challenges, we see that contextual characteristics are important to explain differences in political leadership and public engagement.