Multiple Networks and Mobilization in the Paris Commune, 1871

Abstract

Although sociologists increasingly recognize the importance of networks in social movement mobilization, efforts to understand networkfactors have been hampered by the operationalization of factors as individual-level variables. I argue that disaggregating relational data into individual-level counts of social ties obscures the crucial issues of structure and multiplexity. I analyze data on insurgency in the Paris Commune of 1871 and show that organizational networks and pre-existing informal networks interacted in the mobilization process, even in thefinal moments of the insurrection. autocorrelation models reveal that enlistment patterns in the Paris National Guard created organizational linkages among residential areas that contributed to solidarity in the insurgent effort, but the efficacy of these linkages depended on the presence of informal social ties rooted in Parisian neighborhoods. Thus the role of networkfactors can only be understood by studying the joint influence offormal and informal social structures on the mobilization process. A decade ago, Snow, Zurcher, and EklandOlson (1980) pointed to the importance of social networks for understanding the mobilization of social movements, but the state of research in this area is still best described as inchoate. Despite widespread acceptance of the idea that network or factors play a role in mobilization or recruitment, only a handful of studies have made genuine progress toward understanding the significance of these factors. A principal reason for this state of affairs is that - often because of data considerations researchers have typically used purely scalar variables to measure networks of social relations. Network effects are examined by simply counting social ties and using these counts as interval variables in regression equations, so that the process by which social ties influence mobilization is analyzed as though it operates exclusively on the individual level. This in turn means that two key issues - structure and multiplexity - have received insufficient consideration in theory and research. My goal is to demonstrate that the effect of social relations on the mobilization of collective action depends on the way in which these relations are structured and, more precisely, on the correspondence between organizational and informal networks. I use data on patterns of insurgency during the Paris Commune of 1871 to show that successful mobilization depended not on the sheer number of ties, but on the interplay between social ties created by insurgent organizations and pre-existing social networks rooted in Parisian neighborhoods. Organizational networks maintained solidarity because they were structured along neighborhood lines. Paradoxically, neighborhood ties even determined the importance of organizational links that cut across neighborhoods. Previous studies have rarely demonstrated that structural properties of relational systems are important for social movements, and there is no discussion in the literature of the ways in which formal and informal networks interact in the mobilization process. In the conclusion, I argue that these issues are best addressed through data collection procedures and analytic strategies that respect the structure of networks rather than reducing networks to individual-level counts of social ties.