The State and Social Movements: Autonomy and Its Pitfalls

Abstract

The aim of this article is to make critical sense of the pro-autonomy argument in discussions on state–social movement relations in the new social movement (NSM) literature. The argument is framed by a dichotomy between autonomy and power that portrays the NSMs as ‘anti-state’ or ‘non-statist’ movements. The generalized assumption implicit in the NSM literature is that the new movements operate at a distance from the state, as state politics is inherently undemocratic and despotic, and, in addition, that their collectivities prefer independent political activism to state politics. This article advances two arguments in order to offer a more complex picture of the autonomy question than what it is made out to be in this generalized assumption. First, the infatuation with autonomy in NSM scholarship could unwittingly legitimate the depredations of neoliberal capitalism. Second, the relationship between state practices and the praxis of the NSMs is dialectical and fluid; thus, the struggles of the new movements take place across institutional and non-institutional spaces regardless of the political opportunity structure in which they operate. Hence, autonomy can only be partially achieved, and since the new movements are heterogeneous, the extent to which they operate autonomously from the state will differ from movement to movement.