Breaking Down the State
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PROTEST AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 55 PROTEST AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS Duyvendak (eds) & Jasper Breaking Down the State: Protestors Engaged continues the new effort to analyze politics as the interplay of various players within structured arenas that its companion volume, Players and Arenas: The Interactive Dynamics of Protest, started. It breaks down the state into the players that really matter, and which really make decisions and pursue coherent strategies, moving beyond the tendency to lump various agencies together as ‘the state’. Breaking Down the State brings together world-famous experts on the interactions between political protestors and the many parts of the state, including courts, political parties, legislators, police, armies, and intelligence services. Jan Willem Duyvendak is a sociologist at the University of Amsterdam. James M. Jasper is a sociologist at the CUNY Graduate Center, New York. They both have written a number of books on recent social movements, and are the co-editors of AUP’s book series Protest and Social Movements. State the Down Breaking Edited by Jan Willem Duyvendak and James M. Jasper Breaking Down the State Protestors Engaged ISBN: 978-90-8964-759-7 AUP.nl 9 7 8 9 0 8 9 6 4 7 5 9 7 Breaking Down the State Protest and Social Movements Recent years have seen an explosion of protest movements around the world, and academic theories are racing to catch up with them. This series aims to further our understanding of the origins, dealings, decisions, and outcomes of social movements by fostering dialogue among many traditions of thought, across European nations and across continents. All theoretical perspectives are welcome. Books in the series typically combine theory with empirical research, dealing with various types of mobilization, from neighborhood groups to revolutions. We especially welcome work that synthesizes or compares different approaches to social movements, such as cultural and structural traditions, micro- and macro-social, economic and ideal, or qualitative and quantitative. Books in the series will be published in English. One goal is to encourage non- native speakers to introduce their work to Anglophone audiences. Another is to maximize accessibility: all books will be available in open access within a year after printed publication. Series editors Jan Willem Duyvendak is professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. James M. Jasper teaches at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Breaking Down the State Protestors Engaged Edited by Jan Willem Duyvendak and James M. Jasper Amsterdam University Press Cover illustration: Parliament building in Ukraine with flag Photo: ANP / AFP Photo / Genya Savilov Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Typesetting: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 90 8964 759 7 e-isbn 978 90 4852 538 6 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789089647597 nur 756 © Jan Willem Duyvendak and James M. Jasper / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amster- dam 2015 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. For Edward Snowden, and thousands more whistleblowers like him The State … does not exist in the phenomenal world; it is a fiction of the philosophers. What does exist is an organization, i.e., a collection of indi- vidual human beings connected by a complex system of relations. Within that organization different individuals have different roles, and some are in possession of special power or authority, as chiefs or elders capable of giving commands which will be obeyed, as legislators or judges, and so on. There is no such thing as the power of the State; there are only, in reality, powers of individuals – kings, prime ministers, magistrates, policemen, party bosses, and voters. – A.R. Radcliffe-Brown Contents Introduction 9 Players and Arenas Formerly Known as the State James M. Jasper Part 1 The Rules of Law 1 The Courts 27 Criminal Trials as Strategic Arenas Brian Doherty and Graeme Hayes 2 Political Parties and Legislators 53 A Latin American Perspective Hélène Combes 3 Political Parties and Legislators 75 An American Perspective Katherine Krimmel 4 Contentious Governance 95 Local Governmental Players as Social Movement Actors Imrat Verhoeven and Christian Bröer Part 2 The Forces of Order 5 The Police 113 Donatella della Porta and Kıvanç Atak 6 The Military 133 The Mutual Determination of Strategy in Ireland, 1912-1921 Ian Roxborough 7 Infiltrators 157 David Cunningham and Roberto Soto-Carrión 8 Liberal Violence 179 Strategies of Repression in Transitional Regimes Vince Boudreau Part 3 International Arenas 9 The United Nations 205 Gay versus Anti-Gay Players in Transnational Contention Clifford Bob Conclusion 225 Simplicity vs. Complexity in the Analysis of Social Movements Jack A. Goldstone Contributors 239 Index 243 List of Figures and Tables Figure 3.1 Percentage of Bills Introduced in the US House Reported from Committee and Passed 84 Figure C1 Tilly’s Polity Model, Static Version 226 Figure C2 A More Complex View of Fields of Action for Social Movements 234 Table 2.1 The Non-Partisan Engagements of National, Regional, and Local Leaders of the PRD between 1968 and 1997 65 Table 2.2 Arenas and the Resource Transfers of Multi-Positioned Players 70 Table 5.1 Styles of Policing, or “Interaction” 121 Table 5.2 Protest Policing Strategies 124 Table 8.1 Domination vs. Contestation 195 Introduction Players and Arenas Formerly Known as the State James M. Jasper Those who study protest and social movements recently emerged from a period of paradigm wars (Goodwin and Jasper, 2004). Structuralists began to incorporate culture and to develop more dynamic models (McAdam et al., 2001; Tilly, 2008). Culturalists began to add emotions to the frames, identities, and narratives that were their major tools (Gould, 2009). Both historical (Marxist and Tourainian) theories and rational-choice theories faded from the landscapes in both the United States and Europe (Accornero and Fillieule, 2015). This should open the way to theoretical synthesis, but instead there has been more of a retreat from theory altogether (Rucht, 2015). Yet from the rubble a new synthesis has recently begun to emerge. It is more micro than macro, but more cultural than the traditional micro approaches of rational-choice and game theories (Jasper, 2010; 2012a). Its focus is on strategic interactions, in which players emerge and engage one another in structured arenas. Although it revives elements of the Chicago School of Robert Park and Erving Goffman, the new paradigm – if we can apply such a grand label to a collection of middle-range theories – is not directly related to any of the grand paradigms of the past (Cefaï, 2006). It can incorporate emotions, leaders, and creativity – concepts neglected in many older theories – without abandoning structures, culture, and other traditional concepts. It also acknowledges the decisions at the heart of rational-choice theory and the expectations from game theory. Breaking Down the State aims to elaborate on this strategic perspective, also developed in the companion book Players and Arenas. That volume examined other major players: internal factions, foundations, corporations, professions, unions, intellectuals, scientists, the media, religious groups, and bystanders. This book looks at official state arenas plus the United Nations. Both volumes are concerned with the interactions between protestors and these other prominent players. Here are some components of this strategic interactionist view, developed more thoroughly in the introduction to Play- ers and Arenas (also Jasper, 2004; 2006). – Models should include both simple players (individuals) and compound players (teams). 10 JAMES M. JASPER – Individuals can influence events and understandings both as direct de- cision makers and as symbols representing groups and moral positions. – Every player (even simple players) can also be viewed as an arena in which decisions are made. – Players grapple with a number of strategic goals, trade-offs, dilemmas, and choices. – Players are audiences for each other’s actions, and so must be treated through an interpretive, cultural lens, including acknowledgement of their emotions. – Players deploy three basic means: they try to persuade others, to coerce them physically, or to pay them to do what they want; they also occupy positions in arenas that allow them to do these three things. – Boundaries of both players and arenas are porous, to varying degrees; players especially are constantly shifting and re-forming. – Arenas are governed by a range of formal and informal rules, even though the rules are forever being broken, bent, ignored, and reinterpreted. – Players often shift arenas in the search for new advantages. – What appears as “contingency” in more structural models can often be explained in strategic models through patterns of choices and interactions. Among other things, the new strategic view both builds on and challenges one of the mainstays of structural theory: for several decades, the study of social movements centered on the relationship between movements and the state. In this view “the state” is both opponent and judge for protestors, who are generally demanding admission to the polity – many scholars have even defined social movements as efforts by the oppressed to become full citizens (McAdam, 1982: 25). During the same long period, in political sociology and political science, many burning questions about the state revolved around its relationship to Society: How autonomous is the state from society? Is there a ruling class? What are the social origins of state officials? In some cases, the same scholars, such as Charles Tilly or Theda Skocpol, studied both states and their challengers. For a long time, the States-and-Movements paradigm generated exciting research on politics.