Making an Opportunity

Abstract

The debate over “political opportunity structure” has been a central issue in the contemporary social movement study. This article seeks to move beyond the structure/agency dispute by looking at how social movements make an opportunity by transforming an initially unfavorable political structure. I analyze Taiwan’s environmentalism, particularly the anti-Kuokuang Petrochemical Park movement (2005–2011) and the post-Fukushima antinuclear movement (2011–2014), to understand the process in which hostile or indifferent political elites were converted into a pro-environmental stand. I use the term strategic bipartisanship to identify the effort to build the nexus to mainstream parties while maintaining the façade of neutrality, which was made possible because of the dissolution of the previously tight movement-party nexus that allowed activists to leverage party competition to their own advantage.