Social Movement Spillover PDF

Social Movement Spillover* Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 DAVID S. MEYER, University of Michigan NANCY WHITTIER, Smith College Social movements are not distinct and self-contained; rather, t...

Social Movement Spillover* Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 DAVID S. MEYER, University of Michigan NANCY WHITTIER, Smith College Social movements are not distinct and self-contained; rather, they grow from and give birth to other movements, work in coalition with other movements, and influence each other indirectly through their effects on the larger cultural and political environment. Building on both political process and collective identity perspectives, this paper uses a case study of the women's movement's impact on U.S. peace movement activity in the 1980s to develop a theory of movement-movement influence. We argue that this influence is shown by: 1) the adoption of feminist ideological frames by the peace movement; 2) the spread of the women's movement's tactical innovations into peace protest; 3) increased presence of women in leadership positions in both the institutionally-oriented and direct action wings of the movement; and 4) the adoption of organizational structures that built on feminist processes designed to avoid hierarchy. Drawing data from both movements at local and national levels, we suggest four mechanisms of transmission between the movements: 1) organizational coalitions; 2) overlapping social movement communities; 3) shared personnel; and 4) broader changes in the external environment. Social movement spillover effects have implications for our understanding of both the continuity and impact of social protest movements. In the early 1980s, antinuclear weapons activists and politicians courting their support actively sought the endorsement of the so-called "mothers" of the nuclear freeze, Helen Caldicott, perhaps its most prolific and polemical advocate, and Randall Forsberg, who drafted the initial proposal and political strategy. The visibility of these women reflected not only the perceived strength of the freeze movement, but also the less direct influence of an earlier movement—the second wave of feminist mobilization begun in the late 1960s. The notion of two women legitimately claiming leadership of a movement concerned with military and foreign policy is inconceivable without the influence of the women's movement. Social movements are not self-contained and narrowly focused unitary actors, but rather are a collection of formal organizations, informal networks, and unaffiliated individuals engaged in a more or less coherent struggle for change (Buechler 1990; McCarthy and Zald 1977; Morris 1984; Staggenborg 1989). Because social movements aspire to change not only specific policies, but also broad cultural and institutional structures, they have effects far beyond their explicitly articulated goals. The ideas, tactics, style, participants, and organizations of one movement often spill over its boundaries to affect other social movements. Scholars have found mutual influence among social movements in numerous empirical studies—the impact of the civil rights movements on the student and antiwar movements (McAdam 1988), of civil rights and the New Left on the women's movement (Evans 1979), and of the struggle for the abolition of slavery on the woman suffrage movement (DuBois 1978)—yet this subject has received little theoretical attention. McCarthy and Zald's (1977) resource mobilization perspective points to competition among social movement organizations within a social movement industry or the broader social movement sector, but it conceptualizes inter-organizational relations relatively narrowly in terms of contemporaneous * Direct correspondence to David S. Meyer, Department of Political Science, 5602 Haven Hall, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109; Nancy Whittier, Department of Sociology, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063. We presented an earlier version of this paper at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 20, 1992. For helpful comments on earlier drafts, we thank Craig Jenkins, Nechama Katz, Suzanne Staggenborg, Charles Tilly, Gilda Zwerman, and three anonymous reviewers. SOCIAL PROBLEMS, Vol. 41, No. 2, May 1994 277 278 MEYER/WHITTIER Conceptualizing Social Movement Outcomes Although social movements struggle for a set of explicitly-articulated goals, including changes in state policy, the private sector, and cultural norms, they also influence indirect targets. These indirect targets include the practices, perspectives, and outcomes of other collective actors, as well as the lives of participants. There is virtually no theoretical literature that specifically addresses the influence of one challenging social movement on another (but see Giugni 1992; Rucht and McAdam 1992). We draw on two distinct sets of literature to conceptualize social movement spillover effects: a political process approach that focuses on the effects of movements; and work drawing on new social movement theory that focuses on the continuity of collective challenges. 1. We follow the widespread distinction between two wings of the women's movement: one, termed radical, younger, or collectivist, which emerged from the student movements of the 1960s; and another, termed liberal, older, or bureaucratic, which grew out of the President's Commission on the Status of Women and the organizing efforts of professional women's interest groups (Ferree and Hess 1985; Freeman 1975; Taylor and Whittier 1993). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 competition for resources and adherents. Subsequent studies have examined competition and interaction among organizations within one movement, while the social movement sector contains all social movements, including opponents as well as allies. Neither concept taps the interactions among allied, but separate, challenges, and neither calls attention to cooperation and mutual influence as well as competition. Subsequent studies have examined competition and interaction among organizations within the same movement or between movement and countermovement organizations (e.g., Gitlin 1987; Miller 1987; Staggenborg 1991), but they have not examined how different social movements affect one another or developed a systematic way to study these effects. In this paper we explore the nature of movement-movement influence through a case study of the women's movement impact on peace protest in the 1980s. Historians and analysts have convincingly shown that the radical women's movement1 of the 1960s and 1970s emerged from earlier civil rights, student, and anti-war movements, but scholars have conceptualized feminism primarily as influenced by other movements rather than as exerting an influence on them (Echols 1989; Evans 1979; Freeman 1975; Hole and Levine 1971). We argue here that the peace protest of the early 1980s was profoundly influenced by the women's movement. We use this case to begin building a theory of movement outcomes that considers a wide range of potential effects, including not only explicitly articulated goals, but also spillover effects on subsequent challenging movements. Recognizing the phenomenon of social movement spillover adds to our understanding of social movement outcomes and the continuity of challenges over time. We begin by discussing the theoretical underpinnings of this work, drawing from both collective identity (Cohen 1985; Melucci 1985, 1989; Taylor 1989) and political process (McAdam 1982; Tarrow 1991; Tilly 1978, 1983) approaches to the study of social movements. We then examine the case of the peace movement, which historically has featured extensive participation by women, and trace the development of the "second wave" of feminist activism in the late 1960s, noting its roots in the peace and antiwar movements. We briefly describe the re-emergence of a broadbased peace movement in the early 1980s in the form of a nuclear freeze campaign and show that the women's movement influenced the ideological frames, tactics, leadership, and organizational structure of the freeze. We identify four specific routes of movement-movement transmission: organizational coalitions, overlapping social movement communities, shared personnel, and changes in the external environment achieved by one movement that then shape subsequent movements. We conclude with a discussion of the significance and implications of social movement spillover. Social Movement Spillover Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 The political process approach defines a social movement as a sustained challenge to state policy that has observable origins, peaks, and declines in activity, and uses a combination of conventional and non-conventional collective action (e.g., McAdam 1982; Tarrow 1991; Tilly 1978, 1983). In this view, social movements are visible through their public actions, and their effects include state and organizational responses as well as successor effects on subsequent challenges to the state. Movements can affect one another by passing information about state responses to collective action, identifying potential strengths and vulnerabilities in the political structure, or affecting changes in the external environment that restructure political opportunities (Gamson and Meyer 1992). As states alter the costs and benefits of collective action and develop new techniques for controlling collective action, they allow, encourage, or discourage movements to adopt particular strategies of influence. Clusters of social movements then flourish and decline in cycles as states respond to movement challenges and alter the opportunities available to contemporary and subsequent movements (Meyer 1993c; Tarrow 1991). Others see social movements as more than just visible political challenges to the state, noting that movements often survive the low points of protest cycles and continue even when not staging direct political challenges to the state or public policy (Morris 1984; Taylor 1989). By emphasizing the relationship between group consciousness and collective action, this work dovetails with new social movement theory, which argues that contemporary social movements are distinctive because they organize around a common identity and seek to challenge dominant meaning systems and definitions of their group as much as they seek changes in the state (Cohen 1985; Melucci 1985, 1989; Touraine 1985; Pizzorno 1978). Scholars looking at social movement continuity point to the importance of oppositional culture and the collective identity of participants in sustaining a challenge over the long haul (Taylor 1989). In this view, movements do not simply die or emerge from nowhere, but adopt a variety of forms and strategies in order to adapt to changing external and internal conditions (Rupp and Taylor 1987; Zald and Ash 1966). Challenges take two main courses in their endurance over time. First, a number of studies point to the persistence of ideology, organizations, and strategies used by one constituency to address one set of issues. These include Isserman's (1987) analysis of the links between the Old Left and the New Left, Staggenborg's (1991) account of the changing structure and level of pro-choice activism over twenty years, Rupp and Taylor's (1987) documentation of the endurance of the women's movement in the 1940s and 1950s, Morris's (1984) examination of the civil rights movement's origins in the 1950s, and Whittier's (1994b) analysis of the long-term activism of participants in the radical feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. During the low points of protest cycles, movements survive in a variety of what Taylor (1989) describes as "abeyance" structures, that is, organizational forms that preserve movement culture and values. Second, and more important for our purposes, as a movement shifts into abeyance on one set of issues, its personnel and organizations may switch the grounds of the challenge to another set of issues. Rosenthal et al. (1985), for example, note the dense network among women's rights activists in New York state at the turn of the century, even as so-called "women's issues'* were rarely their central explicit concern. Other scholars have identified the women's movement's origins in the civil rights and New Left movements (Evans 1979), the Communist Party's connections with women's liberation (Weigand 1993), and the roots of the 1960s student movements in the civil rights struggles commenced earlier (McAdam 1988; Miller 1987). We thus see effects of social movements on other subsequent movements in response to changing political opportunities. 280 MEYER/WHITTIER Policy Numerous studies of social movement effects deal explicitly with public policy. In most cases, scholars have focused on the relative success or failure of challenges. Gamson's (1990) influential work conceptualizes two components of success: a challenging group can win recognition as a legitimate actor in politics, and/or gain new advantages for itself or its beneficiary constituency. Broadly speaking, these dimensions refer to the substance (new advantages) and process (recognition and participation) of public policy. Subsequent scholars assessed outcomes differently but accepted this general definition of success (Piven and Cloward 1971, 1979; Button 1978). Public policy includes both substantive and symbolic components. Policymakers often make symbolic concessions in an attempt to avoid granting the aggrieved group's substantive demands or giving it new power. In domestic policy, elected officials offer combinations of rhetorical concessions or attacks, in conjunction with symbolic policy changes, to respond to or preempt political challenges (Edelman 1971). In a particularly garish example, President Reagan attempted to obviate criticism of his education policies by enlisting a teacher in the space shuttle program. In foreign policy, the government may pursue arms control negotiations or softer or harder rhetorical lines in response to domestic pressures (Miller 1985). Both symbolic and substantive concessions in response to pressure from one social movement change the context in which other challengers operate. They may open or close avenues of influence, augment or diminish the pressure a movement can bring to bear, or raise or lower the costs of mobilization. Culture Social movements struggle on a broad cultural plane, of which state policy is only one parameter (Fantasia 1988; Gusfield 1980; Taylor and Whittier 1994). Wuthnow (1989) suggests that contemporary social movements are a primary agent of cultural change and, in fact, collective actors often explicitly seek to alter the dominant culture. Campaigns may focus on changing discourse about a particular topic, challenging the symbolic meaning of objects, or overturning behavioral norms. The women's movement sought to change expectations about women's career and family positions, criticized language that relegated women to a subordinate position, and argued against standards of feminine appearance requiring Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 The effects of one wave of activism then include subsequent waves of activism. As a result, the questions of social movement continuity and social movement outcomes are inherently tied together. Challenges initiated by an oppositional group at one time are sustained in subsequent decades both through abeyance structures that maintain the identity and claims of the challenge, and through the transformation and migration of the movement into other related challenges. Social movement abeyance then is not necessarily a retreat from political mobilization, but may also include mobilization on different, more promising— or urgent—political issues. Social movement spillover is a product of both contemporaneous and successor effects, as movements influence each other directly, alter successive challenges, and affect the larger terrain on which they struggle. In order to understand the shift from issue to issue, we need to examine both changes in political opportunity structures and changes in activists' collective identities. We can examine movement outcomes on three interdependent levels: public policy, culture, and movement participants. Each of these is important not just for its impact on the larger society, but for its direct and indirect effects on other social movements. We focus here on allied movements of the left, but changes in policy, culture, and participants affect opposing movements as well. Social Movement Spillover Participants Finally, social movements influence the people who participate in them. Through movement participation, individuals construct new politicized perspectives on the world and their own identities (Ferree and Miller 1985). Conscious of this, organizers seeking to mobilize protest explicitly try to change the "frames" through which activists view the world (Snow et al. 1986). Participants construct and internalize oppositional collective identities in the process of collective action (Morris 1992). That is, activists come to see themselves as members of a group that is differentiated from outsiders, interpret their experiences in political terms, and politicize their actions in social movement contexts and in everyday life (Melucci 1989; Taylor and Whittier 1992). Collective identities constructed during periods of peak mobilization endure even as protest dies down. One-time movement participants continue to see themselves as progressive activists even as organized collective action decreases, and they make personal and political decisions in light of this identity (Fendrich and Lovoy 1988; McAdam 1988, 1989; Whalen and Flacks 1987; Whittier 1994b). By changing the way individuals live, movements affect longer term changes in the society. In summary, movements can influence not only the terrain upon which subsequent challengers struggle, but also the resources available to the challengers and the general atmosphere surrounding the struggle. In changing policy and the policymaking process, movements can alter the structure of political opportunity new challengers face (Gamson and Meyer 1992). By affecting changes in culture, movements can change the values and symbols with which both mainstream and dissident actors operate (Edelman 1971; Gusfield 1980). They can expand the tactical repertoire available to new movements (Meyer 1992; Tarrow 1993; Tilly 1992). By changing participants' lives, movements alter the personnel available for subsequent challenges. Taken together, one movement can influence subsequent Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 women to wear make-up and restrictive clothing (Taylor and Whittier 1993). Social movement strategies draw on the dominant culture as well as incorporate new symbols, reconstruct discourse, and display alternative norms (Swidler 1986). Movements produce culture, and cultural changes are an important product of collective action. In addition to their direct impact on social life, cultural norms and symbols constrain government policy. For example, military women's participation in combat roles, inconceivable two decades ago, is now a contested mainstream political issue. A number of scholars have argued that the cultural effects of movements, though often neglected by analysts, frequently last longer and have greater influence than more narrow, short-term policy victories and defeats (Breines 1982; Gusfield 1980; Rochon 1992). Indeed, in the absence of concrete policy successes, movements are likely to find culture a more accessible venue in which to struggle. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Eastern European dissidents chose explicitly "antipolitical" strategies of participation, in a deliberate attempt to create a "civil society," that is, a set of social networks and relationships independent of the state (Havel 1985). This battle, in the least promising of circumstances, proved to be critical in precipitating and shaping the end of the cold war (Meyer and Marullo 1992). The cultural changes promoted by a social movement affect not only the external environment but also other social movements. As sexism and racism became less acceptable in U.S. society, for example, they became less accepted in social movement organizations as well. Further, as Freeman (1983) argues, the social movements of the 1960s encouraged activists to take up a broad variety of issues in extra-institutional challenges by demonstrating political efficacy, expanding tactical repertoires, and legitimating protest. Essentially, they helped create a civic culture of political activism in which lobbying, protest, and organizing were socially acceptable parts of everyday life. Importantly, these broad cultural changes influenced the development of movements on the left and the right. 282 MEYER/WHITTIER State Policy and Policy Process Mainstream Culture Social Movement 1 (Women's) Social Movement 2 (Peace) Social Movement Organizations Social Movement Communities Social Movement Personnel Figure 1 The women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s produced far-reaching changes in policy, culture, and participants. It sought both concrete changes in government and corporate policy, and changes in popular attitudes and expectations about women's roles in politics and social life. In policy, the effects of the movement included formal prohibitions on sex discrimination, recognition of women's rights as protected by the government, and the legalization of abortion (Ferree and Hess 1985; Freeman 1975; Gelb and Palley 1987; Mansbridge 1987). Women became more visible in the policy process both inside and outside of government, winning greater access to formal political institutions and leadership positions in a broad variety of public policy advocacy organizations (Boles 1991; Freeman 1987; Klein 1984; Mueller 1987). Well after the peak of extra-institutional activity, women continued to enter mainstream political institutions, changed by their experience in the women's movement, ultimately altering even institutions as apparently intractable as the military and the Catholic Church (Katzenstein 1990). The influence of the feminist challenge on mainstream culture was profound, as the movement expanded the range of employment and family options open to women and introduced concepts such as "male chauvinism," "sexism," and "sexual harassment" into popular parlance. By the late 1980s, polls showed widespread support among both women and men for such feminist tenets as women's access to the professions, equal pay for equal work, and opposition to sexual harassment (Boles 1991). It is not surprising then, that the women's Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 movements bothfromoutside andfromwithin: by altering the political and cultural conditions it confronts in the external environment, and by changing the individuals, groups, and norms within the movement itself. Movement-movement influence is not a one-way street; rather, social movements may have a mutual and reciprocal impact, as did the women's and peace movements. Social Movement Spillover 283 movement, based around a fundamental social cleavage, would affect other social movements. In order to discover the effects and routes of social movement spillover, we employ an inductive two-way process-tracing approach. By looking at the peace movement of the 1980s and comparing it with earlier peace movement campaigns, we can identify distinct differences in such variables as organizational structure, leadership, and values, and trace the roots of these changes back to the women's movement of the 1970s. We ask the counterfactual question: Would these historical departures be possible without the women's movement? We report only elements that cannot be explained credibly without reference to the women's movement. We also process-trace forward, examining the development of the women's movement by tracing the activities of key leaders and organizations to new issues and activities through time. We identify phenomena that can be explained most parsimoniously by spillover and provide historical evidence of how this took place in order to develop a robust and credible theoretical model. This analysis draws on research conducted on the peace movement and on the women's movement during the 1970s and 1980s. The peace movement data include primary historical research and is supplemented by secondary sources (Kleidman 1993; Lofland and MaruUo 1990; McCrae and Markle 1989; Meyer 1990, 1993a,b,c; Solo 1988; Waller 1987). Data on the women's movement include organizational documents and in-depth interviews with 44 core leaders in a cluster of feminist organizations in Columbus, Ohio, a mid-sized city centered around a university and state government, that typifies the local settings central to both the women's movement and the freeze.2 These are supplemented by data on the women's movement at the national level from other studies (Echols 1989; Mansbridge 1987; Ryan 1992; Staggenborg 1991; Buechler 1990; Ferree and Hess 1985; Taylor and Whittier 1992). The nuclear freeze movement was striking in its combination of national coordination and visibility with widespread grassroots organizing. The present study's combination of national-level and local-level data makes it possible to examine the impact of the women's movement on the peace movement both at the level of national policy and media visibility, and in the micro-mobilization contexts at the grassroots level that shape the participation of most activists (McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1988). The Peace Movement and the Women's Movement The peace movement and the women's movement have long and linked histories. The peace movement is comprised generally of two broad wings that have waxed and waned in concert (Wittner 1984). One, based primarily in pacifist and religious groups has espoused a broad critique of U.S. foreign policy, and called for far-reaching transformation of governmental and social institutions. Activists within this wing emphasize expressive rather than instrumental activities and frequently engage in dramatic direct action and civil disobedience campaigns at military sites. A second wing, comprised primarily of liberal-internationalist groups, has advocated the management of international conflict and nuclear weapons 2. Respondents are a non-random sample of core leaders in radical feminist, university-affiliated, and liberal feminist organizations between 1969 and 1991. Core leaders were defined as those who held a formal leadership position, consistently initiated organizational decisions, or were mentioned by several other respondents as leaders. Interviews were in-depth and open-ended, and focused on the effects of respondents' feminist participation on their later political participation and on the evolution of women's movement organizations. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 Data and Methods MEYER/WHTTTIER In summary, women's participation in the peace movement was two-tiered before the feminist resurgence of the 1960s and 1970s. Women led or participated visibly in organizations that used traditional feminine roles to make moral claims against war and nuclear weapons, and they generally worked outside institutional politics. In the institutional wing of the peace movement, women were relegated to supporting roles. Claims of policy expertise and discussion of negotiations, compromises, and partial solutions remained the province of men. Indeed, the subordinate role women were forced into in the campaign against the Vietnam War was one of the sparks for the resurgence of the feminist movement's second wave. Women who participated in the civil rights, student, and anti-Vietnam War movements rebelled against their second-class position and the trivialization of their concerns. Beginning in 1967, these women formed the initial socialist feminist and radical feminist groups (Echols 1989; Evans 1979; Freeman 1975). Early radical and socialist feminist organizations such as the Chicago Women's Liberation Union, Bread and Roses, New York Radical Women, and Columbus Ohio Women's Liberation remained closely linked to the New Left and peace groups from which they emerged. For example, Columbus Ohio Women's Liberation worked in coalition with anti-war and civil rights groups to organize a student strike at the Ohio State University in the wake of the Kent State shootings. Feminist groups that maintained close ties with the New Left and saw themselves as part of a broader movement to transform society along socialist lines were termed "politico* to distinguish them from emerging feminist groups with fewer ties to the male-dominated Left (Echols 1989). In the early 1970s, however, radical feminist groups around the country distanced themselves further from the male Left and emphasized the separateness of the women's movement. By the mid-1970s an extensive and largely autonomous feminist community had emerged in most major cities (Buechler 1990; Echols 1989; Taylor and Whittier 1992; Whittier 1994a). Feminist service organizations such as rape crisis centers and battered women's shelters combined with feminist businesses such as bookstores, music production companies, and women's theater groups to form a dense and wide-reaching network with a distinct culture. Although the radical feminist organizations that initially grew from the New Left were key to this community, organizations that emerged separately in the liberal wing of the women's movement were also connected, and feminists with varying outlooks cooperated on common issues, such as ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 through multinational agreements and arms control. Its activity has been largely based in Washington, D.C., and its partisans have worked primarily through institutional politics. Periodically, both wings have united to stage broad protest campaigns that have reached the political mainstream (Meyer 1991, 1993b,c). Women participated extensively in both wings of the movement, but in different ways. Women have been extremely visible and active in the direct action wing of the movement, founding separate women's organizations such as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WELPF, 1915) and Women Strike for Peace (WSP, 1960), and taking leadership roles in mixed-sex groups such as the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). In this regard, women have been at the forefront of making morality-based claims against war in general, specific wars, and the nuclear arms race. They have emphasized images of women as mothers of prospective soldiers or as protectors of the home, often similar to conventional notions of women's difference. Within the institutionally oriented wing of the movement, men filled virtually all leadership roles in major organizations (e.g., Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy [SANE], Federation of American Scientists, Council for a Livable World, Union of Concerned Scientists) before the 1980s. Women were far less visible, although they were active as participants and working in the rank-and-file of organizations. Social Movement Spillover Peace Protest of t h e 1980s: The Nuclear Freeze The year 1980 was a watershed for peace activists and feminists alike. Ronald Reagan's election to the presidency was a major gain for the New Right, and activists on the left viewed it as signaling the beginning of increased anti-feminism and militarism. The administration's cuts in social programs decimated many social movement organizations (Imig 1992); at the same time the attack galvanized activists. For the women's movement, although the final push to ratify the ERA by 1982 was unsuccessful, it led to mobilization on a variety of other issues (Costain 1992; Mansbridge 1987; Ryan 1992; Staggenborg 1991). Yet an anti-feminist countermovement had gained sufficient strength and institutional Support by 1980 to block most feminist challenges. Failure to pass the ERA led feminists to look for more promising issues for political action (Gelb and Palley 1987). Coalitions between feminist and peace organizations increased in the face of what both viewed as a hostile political environment; peace and women's groups co-sponsored such events as a national march in 1981, a series of Mother's Day demonstrations for peace, and a demonstration of one million people in New York City in June 1982. At the local level, feminist groups in Columbus sponsored anti-nuclear weapons rallies, such as one in 1981 called "A Feminist Celebration for Life," vigils and protests against U.S. intervention in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and joined a coalition called the Federation for Progress that sought to bring together diverse progressive groups for political action.3 The nuclear freeze movement was arguably the largest and most visible of the challenges to conservative federal policies in the early 1980s, and it reflected the profound influence of the women's movement. Beginning in 1980, antinuclear weapons activists mobilized a broad-based peace campaign around a proposal that called for a "bilateral freeze on the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons," generating the highest levels of antinuclear activism in the post-war United States (Meyer 1993b,c). A product of changes in the structure of political opportunity represented by a new bellicose foreign policy posture, and activist efforts from the grassroots, the nuclear freeze made its effects visible throughout U.S. politics and society. We can see its faces in both institutional and advocacy politics, in broad extra-institutional politics, and in mainstream political culture. Institutionally, the larger peace movement's efforts centered on securing passage of a freeze resolution and endorsements of nuclear free zones or peaceful conversion programs in 3. WAC Newsletter. May 1981; WAC Newsletter, June 1981. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 The women's movement of the late 1960s and 1970s developed ideological frames, tactics, organizational structures, and culture that shaped later movements. Feminist organizations emphasized the politics of process, in an effort to allow all members to have an equal voice in making decisions about their aaions. The New Left movements of the 1960s had claimed a commitment to "participatory democracy," but it was the women's movement that consistently attempted to implement a non-hierarchical structure through such practices as consensus decision making and rotation of leadership positions (Breines 1982; Epstein 1991; Pateman 1970). Because the feminist movement drew explicit connections between personal and political lives and between local and national politics, it sought social change from the bottom up as well as substantive policy changes from above. The slogan "the personal is political" came to mean that meaningful political change required change in the way people lived, and that the problems individuals experienced in organizing their own lives often reflected broader social injustices, and were therefore matters of legitimate political action. When the peace movement re-emerged in the early 1980s, its form and content reflected the wide-reaching impact of feminism. 285 286 MEYER/WHITTIER Women's Movement Influence The forms and strength of peace protest in the 1980s were inextricably linked to the women's movement. The nuclear freeze emerged as a highly visible issue from a cluster of progressive social movements, all of which affected each other to some degree. The women's movement influenced both the direct action and institutionally oriented wings of the peace movement in four areas: ideological frames, tactical repertoires, organizational structure, and leadership. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 government venues. Beginning with a grassroots ballot effort in western Massachusetts in the fall of 1980, activists managed the passage of freeze referenda in nine states, and won endorsement of the resolution in many other government institutions, ranging from hundreds of town meetings in New England in 1982 to the House of Representatives in 1983. Freeze campaigns generated dozens of proposals and efforts to revive and manage arms control, cancel dozens of weapons systems, and mandate lower military spending. Freeze-related organizations and political action committees (PACs) endorsed candidates in local and national elections, contributed volunteers and large sums of money, and claimed influence in dozens of electoral races. In 1984, the Democratic Party nominated for president one of six aspirants who claimed to support the nuclear freeze, and a freeze resolution was a visible plank in the national Democratic Party's platform. The freeze also buoyed support for moderation and arms control within mainstream political institutions (Meyer 1990). Freeze advocates testified before Congress, which considered dozens of movement sponsored resolutions, amendments, and bills. The nuclear freeze campaign revived several existing arms control organizations, and also won support from Washington-based groups that focused on different issues, such as the National Council of Black Mayors, Common Cause, Greenpeace, and numerous trade unions. It also spawned scores of new groups at local and national levels, often organized along professional lines (see Conetta 1988). Virtually every mainstream religious organization in the United States endorsed the nuclear freeze proposal in statements such as the Catholic Bishop's Pastoral Letter on Nuclear Armaments (1983). The movement was also visible in its extra-institutional political efforts. The nuclear freeze coordinated the largest demonstration in U.S. history, as one million people marched in New York City on June 12, 1982 under the twin slogans "Freeze and Reverse the Arms Race," and "Fund Human Needs." Local, often less visible, civil disobedience campaigns and demonstrations emerged across the country. These ranged from quiet and regularly scheduled peace vigils commemorating the bombing of Hiroshima, to direct action efforts to stop the transport of nuclear weapons. Militant direct action began in November 1980, when eight Catholic activists broke into a General Electric plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania to damage nuclear warheads with hammers, and eventually included more than two dozen similar "Plowshares" actions. Activists also organized "peace camps" outside several military installations. The movement also reached deeply into mainstream popular culture, serving as the catalyst for television news specials, for several movies, including the much publicized and controversial 1983 account of nuclear war in Kansas, The Day After, and for episodes on television serials such as Lou Grant and Family Ties. The movement was everywhere for awhile, dominating mainstream culture and media, and drawing unprecedented public scrutiny to United States nuclear weapons policy. Social Movement Spillover Frame Alignment Tactical Repertoires Successful tactical innovations developed by one social movement become part of a collective action repertoire upon which subsequent social movements draw (Tarrow 1993; Tilly 1978, 1992). For example, the civil rights movement adapted non-violent tactics such as sitins, passive resistance, and mass marches; these tactics spread to the student and anti-war protests that followed (McAdam 1988). Similarly, the women's movement's tactical innovations influenced nuclear freeze campaigns. Many actions by women's peace groups drew on a feminist tradition of theatrical tactics dramatizing the feminist frame linking militarism to patriarchy. For example, in 1981 and 1982 the Women's Pentagon Action staged large demonstrations and civil disobedience actions outside the Pentagon, linking the nuclear arms race to broader social injustices, including violence against women, poverty, and other violations of human rights (Cloud 1981; Epstein 1991). The Pentagon actions included expressions of mourning for societal injustice, anger at the perpetrators of injustice, and ended with participants symbolically "exorcising" Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 The moral claims/direct action wing of the antinuclear weapons movement in the early 1980s was broader, larger, and more militant than ever before. Women leaders and activists remained prominent in the historically female direct action wing, which in the 1980s consisted both of new women's peace organizations (such as Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament), revitalized women's peace groups (such as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom), mixed-sex organizations (such as Educators for Social Responsibility and Physicians for Social Responsibility), and broader feminist groups (such as the National Organization for Women and assorted local organizations that addressed peace issues). The direct action wing framed the issue of nuclear disarmament by drawing on both traditional and feminist views of gender. Snow et al. (1986) propose that social movements must bring their politicized interpretations of events, or frames, into alignment with potential recruits' pre-existing frames. When social movements can link their perspectives to widelyresonant beliefs or concerns they are likely to be more successful at gaining support (Snow and Benford 1992). We think that the notion of frame alignment is useful for understanding how the ideology of one movement spreads to another. Peace activists successfully linked peace and feminist frames. On the one hand, the ideology of the direct action wing built in part on traditional notions of gender, emphasizing that women's special concerns as mothers led them to support peace. For example, Helen Caldicott was the most quoted speaker among dozens at the 1982 New York City demonstration, particularly for her remark that "there are no Communist babies; there are no capitalist babies. A baby is a baby is a baby" (Meyer 1990:129). The organization she founded, Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND), coined slogans such as "you can't hug a child with nuclear arms." WAND and similar organizations also promoted an analysis of militarism rooted in a feminist critique of patriarchy. Caldicott (1984), for example, claimed that the arms race was the product of masculine competitiveness and could be managed by "tak(ing) the toys away from the boys." Other writers and activists equated nuclear missiles with the phallus, viewing nuclear proliferation as a sort of contest between male heads of state attempting to prove that "mine is bigger than yours" (Russell 1989). Books promoting these analyses sported titles such as Nuclear Phallacies, Does Khaki Become You? (Enloe 1988); and Caldicott's (1984) own Missile Envy. In essence, the long-lived peaceframethat emphasized militarism and women's special caring for life was linked with & feministframethat attributed the arms race to patriarchy. This proved a potent combination that successfully recruited both feminist and non-feminist women as activists for the freeze. 288 MEYER/WHTTTIER Women organized "peace camps" outside military bases near the Puget Sound and in Seneca Falls in central New York (Krasniewicz 1992). Modeled after similar camps in Europe, the camps coordinated ongoing opposition to the transport of nuclear weapons. Activists lived in tents by the military bases for days, weeks, or even years, and engaged in public education, direct action, and civil disobedience campaigns. While European peace camps included women's, mixed-sex and family camps, in the United States only women's camps developed. They built on the radical feminist practice of establishing "women-only space" in the belief that women were better able to act independently and strongly in the absence of men. The peace camps were one explicit way activists linked personal and political concerns, as women left home and family to live ongoing antinuclear protest. Activists tried to organize the camps in accordance with feminist ideals of egalitarianism. Organizations sponsoring more moderate activities tried to make the same connection between personal and political. In 1985, for example, a number of groups coordinated a "peace ribbon" campaign in which local activists and organizations made quilted squares depicting scenes of things they would miss in the event of a nuclear war. They sewed these segments together, creating a single ribbon that reached more than 10 miles. In a colorful demonstration, activists wrapped the ribbon around the Washington Monument. Leadership Women in the 1960s New Left criticized their exclusion from leadership positions (Echols 1989; Evans 1979). During the intervening years, feminist critiques of this exclusion from decision-making roles in government, business, education, and other arenas gained some ground (Boles 1991; Mueller 1987). As exclusively-male leadership became less common in some mainstream social institutions, it became largely unacceptable in ostensibly "progressive" organizations. One of the most striking changes in the peace movement was the visibility of women, most explicit feminists, in leadership positions in both wings of the movement. In the direct action wing, Helen Caldicott's visibility as a national leader and spokesperson for the nuclear freeze clearly drew on the increasing credibility that the women's movement gained for women in the public arena. In the institutional wing, women won new credence for their expertise and political power. Members of Congress such as Democrats Patricia Schroeder and Barbara Boxer and Republican Nancy Kassebaum, elected in part because of the influence of the women's movement, were active freeze supporters and persistent advocates of arms control and military restraint. The earliest freeze organizers were disproportionately women, including Jan Orr-Herter, Wendy Mogey, and Sister Judith Scheckel. Pam Solo, first strategy coordinator of the nuclear freeze campaign, organized the civil disobedience campaigns at the Rocky Flats nuclear plant in Colorado and later managed one of Schroeder's Congressional campaigns. Randall Forsberg, founder of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (IDDS), was the intellectual architect of the freeze. Many women leaders entered the institutional wing of the peace movement bringing skills and perspectives directly from the feminist movement. Karen Mulhauser, for example, formerly director of the National Abortion Rights Aaion League (NARAL), became executive director Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 the evil spirits of the Pentagon by weaving a "web of life' around the building, simultaneously trying to shut the building down. These symbols reprised decades-old self-consciously dramatic tactics. Activists combined direct political action with spiritual rituals they claimed drew on the strength of goddesses and other sources of women's power (Spretnak 1982). The effects of these events spread beyond the hundreds of women who participated, as the activists took the tactics and inspiration back to local communities where they organized a wide variety of campaigns. Social Movement Spillover Organizational Structure Finally, the feminist movement influenced organizational structure of both wings of the movement. The women's movement consistently sought to put an ideal of collective structure into practice (Breines 1989; Epstein 1991). The direct action wing of the nuclear freeze movement established decentralized organizational structures that sought to avoid all hierarchy and used what activists termed "feminist process." Partisans argued for the necessity of egalitarian participation by all group members, consensus decision making, rotation of key tasks and roles among members, and attention to the emotions and interactions of participants in addition to the pursuit of instrumental goals (Epstein 1991). A concern with non-hierarchical organizational structure shaped organizations in the institutional wing as well. For example, the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Clearinghouse (NWFC) served as a national coordinator for local and national groups. Its charter emphasized the need to promote "local self-determination" and allow for a diversity of analyses and tactical approaches. In keeping with organizers' aversion to hierarchy, the NWFC's top position was "coordinator," rather than "president" or "executive director." The first coordinator, Randy Kehler, adopted a leadership style in which he emphasized consensus politics, attention to democratic processes, and avoiding conflict, all hallmarks of feminist organizing in the 1970s.4 It is important to note that the women's movement was changed by the peace movement as well; social movement mutual influence is not a one-way street. A full discussion of the effects of the peace movement on the women's movement is beyond the scope of this paper (but see Whittier 1994b). In brief, as a result of contact with the peace movement, many women's organizations broadened the scope of issues they addressed to include nuclear disarmament, and were more likely to work in coalition with organizations that included men; perhaps they also became more tolerant to rhetoric based in "essential" differences between men and women, such as the capacity to give birth. Participants disagreed over whether freeze activism was integral to, or a distraction from, the feminist cause. 4. It's not clear that this form of organization best served the movement's instrumental goals—especially in the short term. Activists on the left of the nuclear freeze consistently criticized the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Clearinghouse (NWFC) for being unduly concerned with avoiding potentially controversial or divisive issues. Such issues included military intervention in Central America or the Middle East, or even particular weapons systems, and more aggressive tactics. The NWFC, with Kehler at the helm, emphasized moderate politics and tactics, perhaps squandering the movement's strength (see Solo 1988). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 of the Washington-based United States Citizens Against Nuclear War (USCANW) (Staggenborg 1988). Caldicott and Forsberg personified conflicting views in the women's movement about the nature of gender discrimination. Caldicott argued that women's attitudes and approaches to life were naturally different from those of men and that women needed to bring their distinct and caring perspective to their professions and to political life. Although being a physician enhanced her credibility, her rhetoric was based on moral outrage and emotional appeals, and emphasized her personal concerns as a woman and mother. Forsberg, in contrast, who drew credibility from her extensive training as an arms control analyst, argued that women could be as expert and detailed in their analyses of arms control as men, and contended that a nuclear freeze was a 'rational and verifiable" first step toward disarmament anyone would support, regardless of gender. She based her appeals on rationality, detailed information, and technical analyses (e.g., Forsberg 1982). Regardless of their differences, Caldicott, Forsberg, and numerous other less well-known women owed their leadership roles to the gains of the women's movement. 290 MEYER/WHITHER Yet by responding to more favorable mobilization opportunities, the peace movement provided feminist activists with an opportunity and an outlet for directing challenges to the state. In the section above, we outlined the types of effects that the feminist movement had on peace movement activity in the 1980s. We now turn to a discussion of the processes by which the women's movement influenced the nuclear freeze, in order to develop a model of movement spillover. We suggest four distinct routes of influence: organizational coalitions; overlapping social movement community; shared personnel; and broader changes in the external environment. Coalitions Social movements are comprised of multiple organizations working in coalition (McCarthy and Zald 1977; Staggenborg 1986; Zald and McCarthy 1987) One of the hallmarks of left protest in the United States since the 1960s has been frequent large demonstrations sponsored by multiple organizations that address a "laundry list" of demands. Broad issues such as opposition to Presidents Reagan and Bush, opposition to the Persian Gulf War, the 1984 presidential candidacy of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, have pulled together groups from diverse movements including the peace, women's, anti-intervention, gay and lesbian, and AIDS movements. A bellwether issue, generally representing what activists view as either the most threatening and urgent problem or the most promising vehicle for action, comes to unify a broad spectrum of groups that share similar or related concerns. Ryan (1992) terms such causes "unifying issues" and argues that they are important less for the concrete improvements their success would bring than for their value as symbols that spur mobilization. The nuclear freeze was such a unifying issue, drawing support from multiple movements. Participating and endorsing organizations included several explicitly feminist groups, such as the National Organization for Women. National coalitions such as the Monday Lobby Group (Hathaway and Meyer 1994) brought feminist organizations that endorsed the freeze together with peace groups that were not explicitly feminist. In addition to women's movement organizations that endorsed the freeze, many feminist groups formed to focus specifically on peace issues. Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND), the Women's Pentagon Actions, women's peace camps, and a host of local groups, were influential in the broader peace movement. Such groups often grew out of more general feminist organizing and served as a route for the transmission of feminist collective identity and organizational structure into the mixed-sex peace movement (Epstein 1991). In the process, activists drew explicit connections between their issues, noting, for example, that the Reagan administration cut social welfare spending to fund increases in military spending. In short, coalitions are structuring mechanisms that bring a broad spectrum of otherwise distinct organizations into contact, spreading interpretive frames, organizational structures, political analysis, and tactics. Feminist analyses and processes, carried by participating groups, influenced the way coalition work proceeded, and as a result, percolated into peace organizations. The extent to which social movement organizations work in coalition rather than on single issues is one variable that may affect the degree of diffusion between movements. Because broad-based coalitions flowered in the 1980s and early 1990s, it is likely that mutual influence among social movements was particularly extensive. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 Mechanisms of Transmission Social Movement Spillover Social Movement Community Personnel While social movements are often explicitly identified with only one issue or set of issues, activists rarely are. Protesting and organizing for a variety of related social changes over several decades is the rule rather than the exception for individual activists, as studies of participants in the civil rights, student, and women's movements show (Fendrich and Lovoy 1988; McAdam 1989; Whalen and Flacks 1987). Activists can shift goals and groups in response to the changing political environment, responding to proximate threats and opportunities, while maintaining an essentially consistent political worldview (Meyer 1993b,c). Participants in the women's movement developed enduring commitments to a broad set of goals aimed at transforming the existing social system (Echols 1989; Ferree and Hess 1985; Freeman 1975). It is not surprising therefore that many feminist activists joined and led nuclear freeze campaigns. Veterans of the women's movement brought their feminist experiences and values with them when they entered peace movement organizations. Specifically, debates over non-hierarchical leadership structure, interpretative frames linking militarism to patriarchy, and the expectation that leaders would include women were all part of the legacy feminist activists brought (see Marullo 1992). In addition, extensive participant networks in the 1970s women's movement helped to draw in more feminist supporters of the nuclear freeze, and they Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/41/2/277/2925324 by National Science & Technology Library user on 29 September 2023 Social movements are more than the sum of participating formal organizations (Oliver 1989). Challenges grow from what Buechler (1990:42) terms "social movement communities," or "informal networks of politicized individuals" who share a commitment to common goals of social change. Buechler conceptualizes social movement communities as associated with a single movement, but we suggest that a range of movements participants termed "progressive" (including the feminist and peace movements) have overlapping social movement communities that promoted the diffusion of feminism into the freeze campaign. The women's movement community included by the late 1970s well-established cultural institutions as well as more informal overlapping friendship networks (Taylor and Whittier 1992). Much of this feminist community was autonomous, but parts overlapped with other movements, forming a larger "progressive social movement community." Because many women's movement community institutions produced texts, art, or events that were publicly available, activists in the peace movement could read, observe, and participate in feminist writings, cultural events, and conferences. Cultural organizations such as Syracuse Cultural Workers, founded by feminist musician Holly Near to produce and distribute art promoting social change, feminist bookstores that stock alternative peace-oriented publications, and performers such as the group Bright Morning Star, who sing folk music with peace and feminist themes, drew together participants in the two movements. As a result of such overlap, feminist culture, including the avoidance of sexist language, norms for presentation of self (such as women not shaving their legs), and norms of interpersonal interaction (such as the value placed on open emotional expression) entered peace moveme