In this article, we use comparative historical analysis to explain agenda-setting and the timing ... more In this article, we use comparative historical analysis to explain agenda-setting and the timing of policy outcomes on same-sex marriage in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Unlike the United States and Canada, Australia does not have a bill of rights, making litigation to obtain rights not enumerated in existing legislation unavailable to activists. Extending the literatures on the development of public policy and on political and historical institutionalism, we argue that in the absence of domestic opportunities for legal change, international law becomes more important to activists in wealthy democracies, but it is contingent on states’ specific institutional and cultural features. Even when international law is “domesticated” into national political structures, it is still secondary to internal conditions in countries with extensive rights-based polities. International law may set a political agenda, but once introduced, policies move according to internal conditions related to party discipline, the centralization of courts, and policy legacies within those countries.
This article examines how community gun violence (CGV) activists reenvision policing in order to ... more This article examines how community gun violence (CGV) activists reenvision policing in order to reduce both CGV and police violence. Theoretically, understanding this prefigurative work necessitates reconceptualizing the overpolicing/underpolicing paradox because, like overpolicing, what I call the failure to serve is another mechanism of racial control. Drawing from over 360 hours of ethnographic observation and 39 interviews, I analyze how CGV activists address both overpolicing and the failure to serve at the individual and institutional levels. In contrast to various efforts to promote police legitimacy as a way to increase law abidance, CGV activists seek to decenter the police and divert those at risk away from the criminal justice system toward community‐based organizations to address the root causes of violence. As the United States grapples with what to do about police violence in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the experiences and voices of CGV activists are especially valuable.
This article employs and expands a multidimensional framework for understanding movement effects ... more This article employs and expands a multidimensional framework for understanding movement effects that includes political, mobilization, and cultural outcomes. It compares lesbian and gay efforts to decriminalize sodomy between 1961 and 1977 and between 1986 and 1991 and examines the conditions under which activists strive for different sorts of goals. Because movement strategies are inextricably tied to what motivates activists—that is, their understanding of what constitutes success—this article sheds light on how activists understand and negotiate their external environment. In contrast to previous formulations, it argues that political, mobilization, and cultural goals do not always line up in a one-to-one fashion. Therefore, activists' understandings of the relationship between political opportunities and different sorts of outcomes influences their strategic choices, which in turn affects the types of outcomes they achieve.
Out of the Closets and into the Courts by Ellen Ann Andersen is a superb analysis of the relation... more Out of the Closets and into the Courts by Ellen Ann Andersen is a superb analysis of the relationship between the law and social movements. Using Lambda as a case study, Andersen develops the concept legal opportunity structure(LOS) to answer the questions ...
Interests and Credibility : Whistleblowers in Technological Conflicts. Mary Bernstein, James M. J... more Interests and Credibility : Whistleblowers in Technological Conflicts. Mary Bernstein, James M. Jasper [109-134]. Accompanying the increase in technical controversies in the last twenty years has been in the United States an explosion of whistleblowing by those involved in the design, implementation, and operation of complex technologies. Whistleblowers provide a window onto the trade-off, in the construction of social problems, between one's credibility and the pursuit of one's interests. Whistleblowers gain credibility for speaking out contrary to their own interests and those of their employers, but they lack the organizational power to promote their definitions of the social problem. Typically the result of a conflict between professional ethics and organizational demands, whistleblowing can heigten controversy and provide ammunition for critics of a technology. A few prominent whistleblowers, blacklisted in their industry, even turn to social movement organizations for employment, though by normal predictors of activism they should be the last to join the movement. Examples drawn from the american nuclear power industry are used to demonstrate the importance of whistleblowers in technical controversies.
Accompanying the increase in technical controversies in the last 20 years has been an explosion o... more Accompanying the increase in technical controversies in the last 20 years has been an explosion of whistleblowing by those involved in the design, implementation, and operation of complex technologies. Whistleblowers provide a window onto the trade-off, in the construction of social problems, between one's credibility and the pursuit of one's interests. Whistleblowers gain credibility for speaking out contrary to their own interests and those of their employers, but they lack the organizational power to promote their definitions of the social problem. Typically the result of a conflict between professional ethics and organizational demands, whistleblowing can heighten controversy and provide ammunition for critics of a technology. A few prominent whistleblowers, blacklisted in their industry, even turn to social movement organizations for employment, though by normal predictors of activism they should be the last to join the movement. Examples drawn from the nuclear power industry are used to demonstrate the importance of whistleblowers in technical controversies.
In this article, we use comparative historical analysis to explain agenda-setting and the timing ... more In this article, we use comparative historical analysis to explain agenda-setting and the timing of policy outcomes on same-sex marriage in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Unlike the United States and Canada, Australia does not have a bill of rights, making litigation to obtain rights not enumerated in existing legislation unavailable to activists. Extending the literatures on the development of public policy and on political and historical institutionalism, we argue that in the absence of domestic opportunities for legal change, international law becomes more important to activists in wealthy democracies, but it is contingent on states’ specific institutional and cultural features. Even when international law is “domesticated” into national political structures, it is still secondary to internal conditions in countries with extensive rights-based polities. International law may set a political agenda, but once introduced, policies move according to internal conditions related to party discipline, the centralization of courts, and policy legacies within those countries.
This article examines how community gun violence (CGV) activists reenvision policing in order to ... more This article examines how community gun violence (CGV) activists reenvision policing in order to reduce both CGV and police violence. Theoretically, understanding this prefigurative work necessitates reconceptualizing the overpolicing/underpolicing paradox because, like overpolicing, what I call the failure to serve is another mechanism of racial control. Drawing from over 360 hours of ethnographic observation and 39 interviews, I analyze how CGV activists address both overpolicing and the failure to serve at the individual and institutional levels. In contrast to various efforts to promote police legitimacy as a way to increase law abidance, CGV activists seek to decenter the police and divert those at risk away from the criminal justice system toward community‐based organizations to address the root causes of violence. As the United States grapples with what to do about police violence in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the experiences and voices of CGV activists are especially valuable.
This article employs and expands a multidimensional framework for understanding movement effects ... more This article employs and expands a multidimensional framework for understanding movement effects that includes political, mobilization, and cultural outcomes. It compares lesbian and gay efforts to decriminalize sodomy between 1961 and 1977 and between 1986 and 1991 and examines the conditions under which activists strive for different sorts of goals. Because movement strategies are inextricably tied to what motivates activists—that is, their understanding of what constitutes success—this article sheds light on how activists understand and negotiate their external environment. In contrast to previous formulations, it argues that political, mobilization, and cultural goals do not always line up in a one-to-one fashion. Therefore, activists' understandings of the relationship between political opportunities and different sorts of outcomes influences their strategic choices, which in turn affects the types of outcomes they achieve.
Out of the Closets and into the Courts by Ellen Ann Andersen is a superb analysis of the relation... more Out of the Closets and into the Courts by Ellen Ann Andersen is a superb analysis of the relationship between the law and social movements. Using Lambda as a case study, Andersen develops the concept legal opportunity structure(LOS) to answer the questions ...
Interests and Credibility : Whistleblowers in Technological Conflicts. Mary Bernstein, James M. J... more Interests and Credibility : Whistleblowers in Technological Conflicts. Mary Bernstein, James M. Jasper [109-134]. Accompanying the increase in technical controversies in the last twenty years has been in the United States an explosion of whistleblowing by those involved in the design, implementation, and operation of complex technologies. Whistleblowers provide a window onto the trade-off, in the construction of social problems, between one's credibility and the pursuit of one's interests. Whistleblowers gain credibility for speaking out contrary to their own interests and those of their employers, but they lack the organizational power to promote their definitions of the social problem. Typically the result of a conflict between professional ethics and organizational demands, whistleblowing can heigten controversy and provide ammunition for critics of a technology. A few prominent whistleblowers, blacklisted in their industry, even turn to social movement organizations for employment, though by normal predictors of activism they should be the last to join the movement. Examples drawn from the american nuclear power industry are used to demonstrate the importance of whistleblowers in technical controversies.
Accompanying the increase in technical controversies in the last 20 years has been an explosion o... more Accompanying the increase in technical controversies in the last 20 years has been an explosion of whistleblowing by those involved in the design, implementation, and operation of complex technologies. Whistleblowers provide a window onto the trade-off, in the construction of social problems, between one's credibility and the pursuit of one's interests. Whistleblowers gain credibility for speaking out contrary to their own interests and those of their employers, but they lack the organizational power to promote their definitions of the social problem. Typically the result of a conflict between professional ethics and organizational demands, whistleblowing can heighten controversy and provide ammunition for critics of a technology. A few prominent whistleblowers, blacklisted in their industry, even turn to social movement organizations for employment, though by normal predictors of activism they should be the last to join the movement. Examples drawn from the nuclear power industry are used to demonstrate the importance of whistleblowers in technical controversies.
This article uses the Hapa movement as a case study in order to provide a framework for understan... more This article uses the Hapa movement as a case study in order to provide a framework for understanding identity as a goal of social movements and to expand on a theoretical understanding of multiracial social movements. In contrast to current understandings of identity-based movements, this article argues that the Hapa movement seeks simultaneously to deconstruct traditional notions of (mono)racial identities and to secure recognition for a multiracial "Hapa" identity. Movements that have identity as a goal are motivated by activists' understandings of how categories are constituted and how those categories, codes, and ways of thinking serve as axes of regulation and domination. The Hapa movement simultaneously challenges (mono)racial categories at both the institutional level through targeting the state and at the micro level through challenging the quotidian enactment of race and promulgating a Hapa identity. Activism by mixed-race individuals and organizations constitutes an important challenge to power that has significant implications for racial categorization and classification in contemporary American society.
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Papers by Mary Bernstein