External Legitimacy, Goal Congruence and Collective Resistance

Abstract

This paper examines two cases of collective resistance involving partnerships between local grassroots organisations and external environmental NGOs against government-sanctioned land use policies in South Korea. In both cases, the partnerships used apparently similar strategies of resistance in response to similar institutional pressures in similar physical circumstances, but the outcomes of the two collective movements differed. In the case of Daeji, the resistance movement succeeded by transforming its local cause into a broader environmental one, appealing to stakeholders in the larger society. Reinforced by goal congruence between the partnering organisations, the movement was able to gain regulative legitimacy through co-optation and influence strategies for normative and cognitive legitimacy from the larger society. In the case of Won-Dong, plagued by a lack of goal congruence between partnering organisations, the resistance movement failed to secure the necessary regulative legitimacy in the absence of normative and cognitive legitimacy.