Social Movement Campaigns: Mobilization and Outcomes in the Montreal Women's Movement Community

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Social movement campaigns help create the networks and collective identities needed to build social movement communities, which in turn support subsequent collective campaigns. This article examines the interactions between movement communities and campaigns using the case of the 2000 World March of Women in Montreal. We find that movement community resources and networks, mobilized by leaders in stable movement organizations and institutions, support campaigns. Centralization, diversity, and size of movement communities affect campaign mobilization. Movement campaigns alter movement communities by creating bonds that form the basis for subsequent campaigns and by keeping movement communities politicized. Prior campaigns generate public consciousness, put issues on the public agenda, create new frames and discourse, forge connections to new constituents, and leave behind new networks, coalition organizations, leaders, and activists. Our research contributes to an understanding of the connections between the submerged networks of social movement communities and the contentious politics of movement campaigns.