Abstract
What determines the success or failure of far-right organisations? This article uses new qualitative data to explain the sudden rise and subsequent decline of the English Defence League, an anti-Islamic, street protest organisation established in the UK in 2009. We explain the rise and fall of the English Defence League through the lens of the theory of collective action to show that the English Defence League initially motivated activism by supplying selective incentives that were enhanced by the participation of others. The pursuit of ‘participatory crowding’ led to indiscriminate recruitment into the organisation that enabled numbers to expand into the thousands, but ultimately caused the English Defence League’s downfall because it resulted in the presence of large numbers of ‘marginal members’ with low levels of commitment whose subsequent exit was decisively destructive. Self-governance mechanisms to ensure greater loyalty from members could have prevented the English Defence League’s decline but would also have limited its initial success.
Highlights
What determines the success or failure of far-right organisations? This article uses new qualitative data to explain the sudden rise and subsequent decline of the English Defence League, an antiIslamic, street protest organisation established in the UK in 2009
We explain the rise and fall of the English Defence League (EDL) through the lens of the theory of collective action (Olson, 1965; Ostrom, 1998; Tullock, 1971) to show that the EDL initially motivated activism by supplying selective incentives that were enhanced by the participation of others – what Iannaccone (1992) termed ‘participatory crowding’
This article has used the theory of collective action to understand the rise and subsequent decline of the EDL using new data that open the ‘black box’ of a far-right organisation
Summary
Our data were principally collected from ethnographic fieldwork and formal and informal interviews. Activists often lacked knowledge about the issues that they were purportedly trying to raise awareness of and rarely thought their participation would effect change, we believe mass mobilisation was important to the EDL because the effects of participatory crowding enhanced the three key benefits supplied to its members: access to violence, increased self-worth and group solidarity. Because the organisation measured its success by the numbers in attendance at its events, the decline in participation convinced members that the group was failing and this led to internal recriminations that further undermined the supply of self-worth and solidarity. When these negative consequences are placed in the context of the endowment effect noted above, the transformation of the EDL from what members believed was a non-racist mass movement to a small and fractious group riddled with racists would have had a devastating effect on people’s willingness to participate and the group’s fortunes
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