In person icon Interest Groups and Social Movements

Abstract

In the last few decades, the social movement sector has become substantially institutionalised in several national and international contexts. Movement organizations increasingly coordinates efforts with a growing array of public-interest organisations, voluntary associations, advocacy groups and non-governmental organisations. Processes of institutionalization increasingly force movement activists to acquire coalition-forming, legal, negotiating and technical skills not often found in the social movement sector but typical of interest groups. At the same time, a broadening of forms of political participation is occurring whereby action repertoires typical of social movements are becoming acceptable to conventional political actors and civil society actors. Mass rallies, petitions, contentious campaigns and marches are forms of action no longer only utilized by social movement groups. Hybrid formations then emerge that span the divide between interest groups and social movements. This panel will explore the role, functions and policy impact of these formations. Particular attention is devoted to the specificities of the European context. Institutionalized social movements are performing some of the roles of political parties and the state, channelling policy advice, policy analysis and advocacy in a variety of political arenas, which are often Europeanized, such as environmental policy. As different territorial levels of political authority become nested in the EU system, the European level is becoming a significant target of the advocacy coalitions inspired by institutionalized movements and linked by governance structures to subordinate and superordinate levels of government. However, at the same time, non-institutionalized social movements are also emerging and are often related to the negative impact of the financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermaths. The relation between interest groups and social movement can then be not one of cooptation and accommodation but one of sustained tensions, competition on policy framing and occasionally incompatible policy visions. This panel will also consider these conflicts and their consequences.

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