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The inadequate consideration of how forms of the state variously structure politics is identified as a significant flaw in political opportunity theory. This deficiency leads to conceptual “stretching” and frustrating contradictions between research findings in the social movement literature. For political opportunities to be correctly specified, differences in the mobilization contexts across democracies and non-democracies must be explicitly addressed. This article suggests how the institutional differences between democracies and non-democracies influence the prospect, form, and impact of social mobilization against the state. It also suggests the crucial role of social networks for mobilization in non-democracies. A reformulation of the research problem and a set of sensitizing propositions based on the theoretical reconceptualization are offered.

This chapter examines the potential corelation between technologically led changes in media ecologies and changes in mediated mobilisation compared to the traditional forms of citizen mobilisation, namely political protest mobilisation. Based on previous empirical research on the Aganaktismenoi movement (Zestanaki, 2019), I investigate the effect this new form of mass mobilisation has on participants' political sophistication with an emphasis on the measurable indication or political efficacy, a recognised political communication tool. I argue that mobilising large crowds within an ideological void enabled by the heavily mediatised current environment is becoming a challenging democratic endeavour. This approach opens new possibilities for a multiparadigm, more advanced research on media sociology and political communication, from a critical intellectual perspective.

This paper examines the conditions under which states include sexual orientation as a protected status in hate crime policy over the course of 25 years. Previous research in this area has generally focused on the passage of either general hate crime statutes longitudinally or the inclusion of sexual orientation in hate crime legislation via cross-sectional analysis. Moreover, previous work in this area tends to concentrate on two types of factors affecting policy passage: (1) structural factors such as social disorganization and economic vitality, and (2) political characteristics including governor’s political party and the makeup of the state legislature. We argue that a strong LGBT social movement organizational presence may also influence LGBT hate crime policy passage. Using an event history analysis, we test how state-level social movement organizational mobilization, as well as the state-level political context, affect policy passage from 1983 to 2008. Our findings indicate that political opportunities, including political instability and government ideology, matter for the passage of anti-gay hate crime policy. We also find evidence to support political mediation, as the interaction between social movement organizational presence and Democrats in the state legislature affect policy passage.

“Guantánamo lawyers” are a variegated group of lawyers from diverse practice settings, backgrounds, and beliefs. Drawing from interview and archival data, this chapter explores why these lawyers have mobilized to work on Guantánamo matters. What processes engender “heterogeneous mobilization” (i.e., mobilization from different practice settings, and diverse professional, as well as political backgrounds, and beliefs) of lawyers? What are the impacts of such mobilization on the work of lawyers? Adopting a social movement lens and a contemporary historical perspective, this chapter identifies lawyers’ perceptions of their role vis-à-vis the “rule of law” as the most significant cross-cutting motivation for participation. The overlap in human rights orientation of legal nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the legal academy, and the corporate pro bono practice at top law firms, facilitates collaborative lawyering between lawyers. Despite some potential limitations of such collaborations, heterogeneous mobilization appears to contribute, at least in the case of Guantánamo, to a greater likelihood of resistance by lawyers to the retreat from individual rights in the name of national security.

In a context of increasing globalization and neoliberal restructuring and with labor's power diminishing vis-à-vis employers, American workers have turned in recent years to community-based campaigns targeting local government. These mobilizations have received considerable attention from scholars who see this emerging community orientation as a significant strategic innovation. This study, alternatively, focuses on the subjective and ideological consequences of such mobilizations for those engaged in protest. In particular, it seeks to extend social movement theory regarding the transformative impact of collective action by asking: how do distinct forms of collective action bring about particular kinds of consciousness and identity among participants?

Scholars rooted in a variety of traditions – from theorists of “post-industrial” society and “new” social movements to state theorists and geographers – have suggested that identities fostered at the local level are characterized by a “defensive,” “introverted,” or “retrospective” quality. This study examines a local mobilization, the case of a living wage campaign in Chicago, which deviates from these expectations. Through an analysis of interviews with participants, I find that instead of spurring defensiveness the campaign engendered a citizenship identity that was both active and inclusive. In explaining why my findings diverge from existing theories of identity formation, my analysis highlights three conceptual deficiencies in the literature with respect to (1) the distinction between local versus transnational collective action, (2) the relationship between social movement goals/tactics and outcomes, and (3) the prioritization of “new” social movements over the labor movement. Examining the citizenship identities that developed during Chicago's living wage campaign is instructive, finally, for understanding the sources of counter-hegemonic subjectivity within a broader context of eroding citizenship rights and a dominant market fundamentalist ideology. More generally, this analysis paves the way for a more productive engagement among theories of social movements, citizenship, labor, and globalization.

Netroots organizations are re-defining political struggle by providing the resources and environment necessary for political mobilizing, and are affecting the ways that parties and traditional groups now campaign, recruit, and fundraise. While there is no clear consensus in the social movement literature regarding information communication technology's (ICT's) influence on participation on political participation, campaigns, and parties, or on social movement participation more broadly, there is substantial agreement that the Net has increased information available for citizens and has changed the capacity for mobilization. The key question is if (and if so how) the increasing availability of information and more efficient mobilizing tactics enabled by the Internet translates into motivation, interest, and participation. As an electronic social movement organization (SMO), MoveOn has become one of the most successful advocacy operations in the digital era. This paper examines ways in which MoveOn has used the Internet and alternative forms of grassroots mobilization to fuse contentious politics with institutional means of reform via the electoral process. A case study of MoveOn is relevant to broader arguments regarding how the Internet is re-defining our understanding of mobilization and participatory politics, and demonstrates a shift in contentious politics and protest. The findings support the arguments in the literature that information sharing electronically can lead to a more informed citizenry, yet goes beyond previous research by suggesting that this refers not only to those that are initially politically aware, but also to otherwise uninformed or disengaged citizens (who have access to the Internet). This analysis also challenges previous research that asserts that there is little or no relationship between Internet use to obtain political information and political participation.

Scholars have long argued that churches play a critical role in mobilizing communities marginal to the political process, primarily by pooling resources, disseminating information, and providing opportunities for members to develop community networks, leadership, and civic skills. However, recent research suggests that churches only serve as effective mobilizing institutions when they engage in direct political discussion and recruitment. Even so, churches may face economic, legal, and institutional barriers to entering the political sphere, and explicit political speech and action remain rare. Through an analysis of two years of ethnographic fieldwork following faith-based community organizers attempting to recruit Spanish speakers throughout a Catholic Archdiocese into a campaign for immigrant rights, this paper explores the institutional constraints on church political mobilization, and how these are overcome to mobilize one of the most politically marginal groups in the United States today: Hispanic undocumented immigrants and their allies. I argue that scholars of political engagement must look beyond the structural features of organizations to consider the effects of their institutionalized domains and practices. While churches do face institutional barriers to political mobilization, activists who specialize their recruitment strategy to match the institutional practices of the organizations they target can effectively overcome these barriers to mobilize politically alienated populations.

This chapter deals with the progressive political mobilisation of peasantry in Poland, its institutionalisation, mainly in inter-war period, and its political appropriation by the Communist regime after 1945, when State socialism needed to ground itself in Polish national history and political traditions. These various mobilisations could be labelled as ‘populist’ because of their peasantist components and ideological trends, but the chapter considers them rather as a political form of representation, which political uses by actors fluctuate according historical contexts. The first part analyses the emergence of peasant movement and the success of peasant political parties in pre-1939 Poland. The second part shows how formers activists of these parties tried to produce themselves as the only historical heirs of the peasant movement, in opposition to the new, Leninist, peasant party of the Communist Poland. In the third and last part, the chapter analyses how the Communist official peasant party, the ZSL, invented new political traditions, mainly by historicising strategies, in the aim to encapsulate the peasant form of representation in its identity.