Social Movements and Social Policy: New Research Horizons

Armine Ishkanian

doi:10.1017/s0047279421001008

Abstract

AbstractAcross the globe, movements are confronting states and elites, challenging inequalities and mobilising for greater justice, a stronger voice, and progressive policy changes. In this article, I bridge the divide between Social Policy and the interdisciplinary field of Social Movement Studies. I examine how and why social movements, as actors in policy fields and social movement theories, matter for social policy. I argue that research on social movements as actors and engagement with social movement theories can open new horizons in Social Policy research by advancing our understanding of the politics of policy from a global perspective and strengthening our analytical and explanatory frameworks of agency, ideas, and power in the study of continuity and change of policy.

Highlights

In the 1970s, class-based labour movements were seen as having played an important role in the emergence of welfare states (Korpi, 1978, Esping-Andersen, 1990)
In the 1990s, Social Policy scholarship began to engage with new social movement (NSM) theories asking how New Social Welfare Movements (Croft and Beresford, 1992) were mobilising around questions of social policy
Research on SMs and their relationship to social policy emerged in an era of welfare state retrenchment, restructuring and transition in the industrialised West (Hobson and Lindholm, 1997) as scholars analysed movements’ struggles for the legitimisation and recognition of new welfare identities (Barnes, 1999, Williams, 1999), how movements’ cultural and symbolic challenges intersected with policy (Martin, 2001: 362), and the ways in which NSMs staked claims for welfare and “put on the agenda needs to do with personhood and wellbeing” that expanded the “meanings of redistribution, equality, universalism, and justice” (Williams, 1999: 668)

Summary

Introduction

In the 1970s, class-based labour movements were seen as having played an important role in the emergence of welfare states (Korpi, 1978, Esping-Andersen, 1990). SM scholars examine a range of questions around how and why movements emerge (Tilly and Tarrow, 2007), the relationship between contentious collective action and transformation (Jenkins, 1983, Tarrow, 2011, Della Porta, 2015) as well as the agency of movement actors (Melucci, 1980, Touraine, 1984, Pleyers, 2011, Jasper, 2010) and the significance of collective identity formation (Polletta and Jasper, 2001).

Results

Conclusion