Interest Groups and Social Movement Theories: 'Organisations' vs 'Organising'?

This paper argues that a major obstacle to more fruitful exchanges between analysts of “interest groups” and “social movements” lies in an inadequate specification of the processes the respective theories are supposed to explore. This problem is particularly blatant for analysts of the latter: the set of propositions conventionally identified as “social movement theories” actually theorizes about a range of processes, from the structural sources of (new) conflicts (e.g. NSM theories) to the relationship between action and its environment (e.g. POS theories) or between cultural representations and action (e.g., framing theories). The question of what analytically constitutes a social movement is usually dismissed under an “everything goes” approach (see e.g. Snow, Kriesi, and McCammon. 2018. «Mapping and Opening Up the Terrain». In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, edited by David A. Snow, Sarah Soule, Hanspeter Kriesi, e Holly McCammon, 1–16. Oxford: Blackwell). On the other hand, while students of interest groups have a clearer focus for their theorizing, they have often failed to recognize that social movements cannot be reduced to “interest organizations” (see e.g. Burstein 1998. «Interest Organizations, Political Parties, and the Study of Democratic Politics». In Social Movements and American Political Institutions, a cura di Anne Costain e Andrew McFarland, 39–56. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield) as they reflect different and broader problems of coordination. As I have repeatedly argued (Diani 1992. «The Concept of Social Movement». Sociological Review 40 (1): 1–25; 2012. «Interest organizations in social movements: An empirical exploration». Interest Groups & Advocacy 1 (1): 26–47; 2015. The Cement of Civil Society: Studying Networks in Localities. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press), in order to develop fruitful conversations we need to recognize that social movements are not organizations of a different kind but reflect a different, network-based model of organizing, in which interest groups (and indeed political parties) may or may not be involved depending on specific conditions.