Social Movement Sector

Abstract

Many social movements at varying stages of mobilization may exist in a nation's society at any time, or there may be very few struggling to exist. Understanding that variation in social movement mobilization across national societies remains a relatively unexplored arena of social science research. Social movements in most nations are importantly defined by the social movement organizations (SMOs) that identify with their goals, even though much collective action by social movement actors is not directly associated with SMOs. Nations differ dramatically in the extent to which they encourage and facilitate or discourage and repress SMOs. All the SMOs in a nation with roughly comparable goals, issue orientations, or ideological congruity constitute its social movement industry (SMI). All the SMIs in a nation constitute its social movement sector (SMS). The size and orientation of a nation's SMS is a function of the amount of resources devoted to social change (whatever its substantive focus across the ideological spectrum), the associational supports provided by the larger society, the democratic or authoritarian orientation of its state, and the relationship of the movement sector to the political party space. The size and shape, or configuration, of the SMS varies between nation‐states and over time within them.