Page 111 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

Social Movements 97

The most important aspect of Tilly ’ s work is the way in which he deals
explicitly with what is often implicit in other studies based on RMT: the
importance of the state. Tilly argued that, as the most powerful political
actor in modern industrial societies, the state selectively represses or facili-
tates social movements and/or their activities according to the perceived
interests of state elites. That the state represses certain movements and
organizations is evident: terrorist organizations are to be repressed by

definition, for example; those who take direct action in opposition to
government policies are not usually tolerated; and even those organiza-
tions which act within the limits of the law may fi nd themselves outside
it if a change in policy is seen as desirable and practicable (as in the case
of trade unions in Britain in the 1980s, for example). By the same token,
some social movements are tolerated, even encouraged, to the point where
they become part of the polis , that is, where they gain routine access to
the government. Tilly suggests that the American state creates three main
destinations for a social movement: its dissolution (as a result of repres-
sion); the merging of organized activists into an existing political party
(absorbing it into the polity – this is how the labor movement became
established in the corporatism of post – World War II Western Europe); or
the constitution of an enduring pressure group working on the govern-
ment and political parties (the most frequent outcome for social move-
ments in the US). There is a fourth destination common in countries in
which there are single - constituency and single - issue parties – where the
electoral system is based on proportional representation, for example: the
creation of a new, possibly temporary, political party (as in the case of
the German greens) (Tilly, 1984 : 312 – 13).
According to Tilly, in comparison with social movements before the
nineteenth century, those with which we are familiar today are organized
and oriented toward effecting change through the nation - state to an
unprecedented degree. In fact, he calls such movements “ national move-
ments ” to distinguish them from the less organized, more defensive, and
more local movements which were particularly prominent during the
aggressive expansion of states in the seventeenth century. The rise of
national movements is due to the growth of electoral politics and the
consequent widening of access – at least in principle – to the political
process, according to Tilly: where movements see themselves as having
routine access to government agencies, they are likely to take their griev-
ances there; where they do not, they will resort to other means. It is also
due to the learning of what he calls “ repertoires of collective action. ” A
repertoire of collective action includes all the ways in which a group uses
its resources to bring about a common end. In twentieth - century North