Borrowing from the Women's Movement "for Reasons of Public Security": A Study of Social Movement Outcomes and Judicial Activism in the European Union

Abstract

Can an elite-sponsored outcome be a social movement outcome? In Kreil v. Germany, the European Court of Justice issued a judgment hailed as a feminist victory, censuring Germany's exclusion of women from the military. But the women's movement did not sponsor the case; it was an organizational achievement for the nascent court that extended its jurisdiction to public security while preserving its legitimacy among potentially non-cooperative member states. With this case, I reassess movement-elite relations in the context of past protests that forged discursive resources. The women's movement did play an important role in this case: the court relied on discursive resources from past feminist activism to legitimize its decision and frame it as a matter of women's rights, drawing attention away from its uncertain jurisdiction. I present a model of "borrowing" from movements, a relationship distinct from alliances and cooptation, to show how elite-sponsored outcomes can still be movement outcomes.