diani alliance building
Post on 30-Oct-2014
143 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
Mario Diani Building civic networks: Logics of tie formation1 3.1 Why alliances matter
Very few organizations can afford to pursue their goals in total autonomy. Even business organizations,
that are supposed to operate in regimes of fierce competition, are substantially dependent on each other
as well as on other types of actors in order to secure the financial, intellectual and professional
resources which are essential to their survival and development (Fligstein 1996; Gulati and Gargiulo
1999; Powell et al. 2005). In the case of voluntary organizations active in advocacy, the centrality of
alliance building has never been questioned (M. N. Zald and McCarthy 1980; Meyer and Corrigall-
Brown 2005). This is not because voluntary organizations would not be inclined to work in pursuit of
their own distinctive agenda. This applies not only to major organizations richly endowed with
resources,2 but also to much smaller, grassroots organizations: in Bristol and Glasgow alike, the list of
the two most important projects pursued by each of our respondents showed hardly any overlap. At the
same time, however, if we take a slightly broader perspective and look at the overall amount of projects
that civic organizations are actually involved in, alliance building is usually regarded as an essential
requisite of their success; it is also considered an essential component of collective action, for practical
as well as symbolic reasons (Knoke 1990b, xxx). Voluntary organizations collaborate in order to
maximize their limited resources, increase their reach into different social and political milieus, and
their potential threat towards their opponents.
“.... the authorities, the powers that be pay more attention to more than one voice. Because
people feel disempowered by the scale of the issues which they face and feel stronger by
combining with others…” (Representative of black and minority umbrella group, Bristol)
1 Chapter 3 from Mario Diani, The Cement of Civil Society, under review. 2 Greenpeace is probably the most extreme case of highly influential organization focusing almost
entirely on its own campaigns, even though over the years has proved more willing to engage in
collaborative collective action, both within civil society and in broader policy arenas (Eyerman and
Jamison 1989; Stafford, Polonsky, and Hartman 2000).
2
“Nobody can do everything themselves, and if what we want is an environmentally friendly
Scotland involving the people of Scotland, nobody can do that on their own we all have to do
it together.” (Representative of conservation group, Glasgow)
They also work together, however, in response to ethical imperatives and to normative arguments that
emphasize the positive nature of collaboration, its role in building cohesion within civil society, and in
strengthening collective identities associated to alternative perspectives. It is in other words possible to
extend to the organizational level the well-known argument, elaborated in reference to individual
participation, that holding a collective identity both helps citizens to pursue their goals and to
strengthen their identification with larger collectives (Pizzorno 1978):
“[Alliance building] is important because we want to live in a harmonious society and we
want to live as one big multicultural community…..It’s one way of sharing and meeting and
exchanging information on community things…… it’s because we were are not talking
enough to one another that we have these problems [linked to competition for resources].
This is where the barriers are because we are not communicating enough, we are not finding
out what each of us are doing and if we had better collaboration, better networking we would
be able to use our resources in a better way as well as have a better understanding of what
people are doing..” (Representative of capacity building organization in the black and
minority sector, Bristol)
More specifically, alliance building can be seen as a primary component of the relation between
organizations and their environment. Resource dependence theories have stressed how organizations
not only secure resources through alliances, but also operate a reduction of systemic uncertainty (e.g.
Galaskiewicz 1985). In business terms this may correspond, e.g., to the reduction of competition by
establishing ties to potential competitors; in the field of voluntary action, it may prevent limited
resources, controlled by one organization’s potential allies, from being concentrated onto agendas that
are not relevant to the organization’s itself.
“[alliances are] important to us because we provide specific services for specific client group
and it is most important for us to network with other organisations and have alliances with
other organisations so that we can refer people on as well as make some of those other
3
organisations accountable to providing services and support to people in the mainstream of
society.” (Representative of capacity building organization in the black and minority sector,
Bristol)
3.2 Ties, relations, interactions
One problem is, of course, how to study alliances, or even better, and more broadly, cooperative ties
between civic organizations. Establishing the nature of social ties represents a fundamental question for
sociologists, and one we are not going to address – not to mention solve – in the context of this book.
At the same time, our – admittedly far more modest – task, namely, mapping the structure of civil
society, strongly resonates with broader discussions. Structural analysts have handled the distinction
between interactions and social relations in different ways. In explicit critique of network analysis,
Bourdieu associated for example networks with ephemeral and contingent interactions, while leaving
the term ‘social relations’ to designate deep differences between social positions in terms of power and
access to material and symbolic resources (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 113–114).3 Leading analysts
of social movements have been relatively ambiguous on the issue. In their last synthesis of the
contentious politics approach, Tilly and Tarrow introduced the distinction between ‘social movements
campaign’ (the classic ‘sustained challenge to powerholders…..’) and ‘social movement bases’,
consisting of ‘movement organizations, networks, participants, and the accumulated cultural artifacts,
memories and traditions that contribute to social movement campaigns’ (Tilly and Tarrow 2007a, 114).
They kept a neat distinction between networks and interactions, but turned Bourdieu’s approach on its
head: they used the term ‘networks’ to designate the more stable social relations that facilitate
collective action, while collective action proper consists of sustained interactions between conflicting
actors. In other writings, however, they put forward a view of social structure as emerging from
repeated interactions (e.g. Tilly 2005; see also Diani 2007), suggesting a high degree of continuity
between interactions and relations.
3 However, Crossley (2002) has developed an approach to social movements inspired by Bourdieu but
far more open to consider the heuristic potential of network analysis.
4
The view of social structure as the outcome of patterned, relatively stable interactions is also the one
dominant among social network analysts (Wellman 1988; Monge and Contractor 2003), and is the one
explicitly adopted in this book. While the ties that develop within organizational fields may not display
the same resilience and stability as those linked to class position or ethnic group membership, they
nonetheless may achieve some constraining power, and may be seen as the foundation of a peculiar
form of social organization (see also ch.1). At the same time, there is no denying that certain types of
ties be more stable and indicate stronger links than others, and therefore be better indicators of the
structure of civil society: the frequency of interactions, their emotional intensity, the amount of shared
risks and resources may differentiate between alliance ties within civil society; or, certain types of ties
may prove stronger than others, e.g., sharing resources in a series of jointly promoted campaigns may
be seen as more demanding, and therefore as evidence of a stronger tie, than the exchange of
information, or the sharing of some basic facilities (e.g. Diani 1995). Later in this chapter we’ll
introduce the difference between transactions and social bonds, that attempts to link the present
discussion to the exploration of modes of coordination (Lemieux 1998; Baldassarri and Diani 2007).
Analysts of collective action fields also have to choose whether relying on ‘objective’ measures of the
links between actors, or on actors’ perceptions of the strength of their ties, regardless of empirically
measurable criteria. We may for instance associate strength of ties to frequency of collaboration,
assuming that two organizations will be more strongly linked, if they are involved in a larger number of
jointly promoted events over the years, or to the number of shared activists. On the other hand, two
organizations might regard each other as particularly important partners even though they do not
necessarily interact most frequently. For example, one neighborhood environmental group may regard
a major national environmental organization as a most important partner even though they most
frequently interact with other neighborhood-based groups on specific initiatives and campaigns (Diani
1995, chap. 1).
This study largely focuses on perceptions rather than objective measures, although chapter 6 pays some
attention to organizations’ joint participation in events. This is due to both substantive and
methodological reasons. In methodological terms, it has long been shown that social actors’ accounts of
the actual frequency/intensity of their exchanges with other actors are less accurate than their
qualitative assessment of the presence and relevance of specific ties (P. Marsden 1990; 2005; Casciaro
1998). Moreover, intensity or frequency of interaction is by definition strongly dependent on other
5
factors such as organizations’ overall centrality or size.4 In substantive terms, perceptions5 are more
relevant to the main goal of this project, namely, the identification of informal yet relatively stable
patterns of social organization, originating from recurrent exchanges between formally independent
partners. It is sensible to assume that each actor, when planning an activity, will look first for
resources/support from its closest and most reliable partners and will refer to others only if the latter are
obviously relevant for the specific project being considered.6
In order to identify relevant inter-organizational ties we proceeded in two steps. Respondents were
asked to name “up to five groups/organizations with which you collaborate most intensely”. While they
were not submitted any predetermined list as a stimulus, later in the interview they were also asked
whether, on top of the five partners already mentioned, they had connections to organizations in any of
the following types: environmental groups, ethnic minority and migrants organizations, community
organizations, unions and other economic interest groups, religious organizations, political parties,
other political organizations, other voluntary associations, any other organization. Participation in a
formally constituted organization, coordinating a number of different groups on a specific campaign,
was recorded as an inter-organizational tie, similarly to an alliance between two any other formally
independent organizations. On the basis of these criteria, in principle each organization might have
identified up to a maximum of 37 alliance partners (the five most intense ties plus up to four ties for
4 For example, one monthly meeting between a neighborhood environmental group and a major
environmental association may be a strong tie for the former but a weak tie for the latter. 5 The role of perceptions in the development of collective action (in particular, actors’ perceptions of
their environment and the opportunities it offers) has long been recognized by movement analysts
(Gamson 1992; Gamson and Meyer 1996). 6 One should at least acknowledge another important distinction, running between cooperative and
adversarial ties. When using network approaches to look at organizational fields, analysts of collective
action and social capital have largely focused on cooperative ties (B. Edwards, Foley, and Diani 2001;
Diani and McAdam 2003; Diani 2004). This book follow the same approach, although it would have
also been interesting to pay attention to adversarial ties. Unfortunately, the traditional reluctance of
civil society organizations to identify explicit opponents in their organizational fields resulted in the
impossibility of conducting a systematic analysis of adversarial ties (we consider, on the other hand,
conflictual ties to other, public and private, actors).
6
each of eight organizational types). Unsurprisingly, the average number of partners was much lower,
and very similar in the two cities (9.1 in Glasgow and 9.7 in Bristol). Of those ties, in the average 2.83
in Glasgow and 1.96 in Bristol were directed to other organizations included in our unit of analysis, to
suggest a stronger clustering inclination among Glaswegian groups.
We also urged respondents to specify the content of the link, in order to qualify the nature of the tie.7
Specifically, we asked whether the tie implied 1) conducting joint projects; 2) sharing information; 3)
pooling resources;8 4) sharing core members; 5) activists with strong personal ties to each other. We
operationalized transactions as those links that only consisted of exchanges of resources, as measured
by tie types 1-3. In contrast, social bonds were multiplex links which could be seen as the composition
of ‘transactions’ and ‘personal ties’, measured by ties 4-5.9 The distinction will be crucial to the tracing
of different modes of coordination in the next chapter.
It is worth noting that, against current trends, we did not pay specific attention to relations mediated by
information technology. There might have been good reasons for doing so, and not only because this
particular sphere of political activity has attracted increasing scholarly attention in recent years (Van de
Donk et al. 2004; Earl and Kimport 2011): but also because new technologies play a specific role in
sustaining underground critical communities of activists that were somehow present in both cities. In
7 As Kenis and Knoke (2002, 276) argue, most tie contents “may be classified under five broad
substantive headings: information transmissions, resource exchanges, power relations, boundary
penetrations, and sentimental attachments." 8 While the conduction of joint projects implies shared information and resources, the reverse does not
necessarily apply. Organizations may also collaborate through regular exchanges of information, or
through the pooling of resources (a classic example being sharing offices). 9 As suggested in ch.1, in principle one could also conceive of situations in which organizations are
involved in the same sub- or counter-cultural milieus, organizational industries, or movement sectors
through the multiple forms of participation and the personal connections of their members (ties of the
type 4-5), yet are not engaged in any type of resource exchange (V. Taylor and Whittier 1992; Melucci
1996). While, in principle, one organization might identify as an important partner another one with
which has no resources exchanges but only shared activists and friends, in practice this never happened
in our specific case.
7
particular, at the time of the project there was already in Bristol an active radical community that
operated largely through fanzines and other forms of communication10 rather than through more
conventional inter-organizational contacts. Their presence in the local political life is probably
somehow underestimated, precisely because of the lack of attention to ICT-mediated communication.
On the other hand, systematic studies of the role of ICT in local communities have conclusively
demonstrated the enormous level of overlap between ‘virtual’, computer-mediated ties and ‘real’, face
to face interactions (Wellman and Gulia 1999; Hampton and Wellman 2003). For these reasons,
neglecting the role of new technologies should not alter our understanding of local structural patterns in
any significant ways.
3.3 What drives and what prevents alliance building
If being able to count on alliances is universally regarded as an important organizational asset, it is far
less obvious on what bases do organizations choose their partners. The building and managing of
alliances entails considerable costs, their outcomes are far from certain, and risks involved are non
negligible (Gulati and Gargiulo 1999, 1440). Partners may prove unreliable and unwilling to pull their
weight in campaigns, thus leaving one organization to face the whole burden of collective action.
Symbolic differences may also play a role. Much more than business organizations, voluntary
organizations may hugely differ in their framing of issues and in their ethical and ideological starting
points, despite having what on first sight might look quite compatible agendas (Gerhards and Rucht
1992; Diani 1995, 11–14; Roth 2010). Such differences may represent a serious obstacle to the
establishing of an alliance. For example, the extent to which some organizations are perceived to be
close to institutions may render them implausible allies for the most radical sectors of civil society:
“Whereas the protest folk, I know of certain people in Bristol that regard us as the
establishment and therefore they would not work with us, not because they’d ever asked us
what we think about something, that would be seen as a [treason] to their view of
themselves and their place in society to work with what they regard as centralist types of
10 For example, militant newsletters like Schnews (http://www.schnews.org.uk) or webpages like South
West Activists Network (http://www.myspace.com/swactivists).
8
organizations like [us]. But what is seen as radical is the actual particular form of action
they take. If you are seen as strong on the protest scene you will be less seen on the
alliance scene” (Representative of international NGO, Bristol).
Conversely, protest-inclined organizations may voice positions and adopt tactics that the members,
supporters and sympathizers of other organizations find controversial and possibly embarrassing. Once
again, this may seriously affect opportunities for alliance building:
“…. for example, in the anti-globalisation movement, some sectors, parts of the anarchist
end in Bristol have such a clear oppositional stance that a lot of people that might regard
them as useful allies instead view them as complete no go areas.”(Member of sustainability
group, Bristol).
Far from being a purely instrumental problem, alliance building requires the overcoming of several
potential barriers, linked to cultural and/or ideological differences, the legacy of past experiences, lack
of mutual trust, etc. (Griggs and Howarth 2002; Shumate, Fulk, and Monge 2005; Beamish and
Luebbers 2009). Alliance building depends heavily on a sustained work of assessment – we could call
it a ‘preliminary investigation’ - of organizational fields in order to acquire appropriate knowledge of
prospective partners, and cues about their reliability (Diani 1995, 8; Gulati and Gargiulo 1999, 1442).
When looking at the main mechanisms behind alliance building it is advisable to consider both factors
that facilitate, and factors that discourage the start of an alliance. The obvious starting point, that
alliance will be more likely if the interdependence between two organizations is higher (e.g. Gulati and
Gargiulo 1999, 1444), largely reflected in the priorities of our respondents. In both Glasgow and
Bristol, when asked to indicate up to three main reasons behind their choice of allies, about half of civic
organizations mentioned shared interests (table 3.1 below).
“People would work together if they have got a common cause or a common reason to do it.
Like the Stop the War coalition, CND and Muslim Association in Britain, and the march on
Saturday [February 15 2003] so they work together but normally they wouldn’t agree on
things or work together …. partnership building is probably lower on my list of priorities but
9
where we have things that we can work with we will do and we have been working with a
number of people anyway.” (Representative of Muslim organization, Bristol).
The capacity of other actors to provide organizations with essential resources, and to act as a source of
information and advice, was also highly rated (about 40% in both cities). The relevance of one
organization in its own field also mattered for a non negligible share of respondents (about one
quarter). If we also take into account less popular reasons for alliance building, such as one
organization’s capacity to provide access to important political connections, and the simple
accessibility linked to having an office, we see how about two thirds of civic organizations somehow
regarded resource interdependence as an important element behind their choices:
“Over time if you deliver successful services, word of mouth will spread, more organisations
will come to you ... you are almost forced into a situation of creating alliances which say
there are other groups who empathise with the issues that are there …. the organisation has
come to that realisation that we don’t have and will never have that capacity as a single
organisation to deal with an issue and therefore we need to form these alliances to better
understand reactively and proactively how to deal with them.” (Representative of community
association, Bristol)
“many of the groups will seek to form an alliance and a partnership that is funding driven.
Much of the energy of groups is going into funding, contractual arrangements and so on and
so where there are pots of money, groups will be looking for players and alliances in order to
access those things mostly” (Representative of umbrella organization, Bristol)
Table 3.1 about here
At the same time, commonality in basic values and principles was by far the most frequently mentioned
facilitator of alliance building, by four out of five respondents (see also Ellingson, Woodley, and Paik
2012). This applied in the same way to organizations that also assigned relevance to shared interests
and resource interdependence, and to organizations that did not: about forty percent of the total
respondents considered both value proximity and similarity of interests as important, while ten percent
stressed the role of interests while denying that of values. On the other hand, few organizations
10
emphasized the role of more specific values and cultural traits, such as those linked to membership in
the same religious or ethnic group.11 It was certainly recognized that some minority groups might be
inclined to work mainly on their own, but that was largely imputed to a hostile environment:
“the Afro-Caribbean communities in Bristol are not willing to be engaged…… I think that is
to do with defensive attitudes on all sides and where people have made strong efforts, then I
see promising results of that. I see St. Paul’s Carnival as an opening point for a mixture of
white protests and white radical and other groups” (Representative of Black and minority
sector umbrella group, Bristol)
The rhetoric of inclusion and pluralism, and the negative framing of religious and ethnic intransigence,
that characterized Britain –and indeed the West in general – in the aftermath of 9/11, may also have
discouraged some from emphasizing the role of ethnic or religious identities in alliance building, and
encouraged broader approaches:
“ the younger Muslims are much more prepared to be involved on issues other than issues
related to their faith …. Certainly round the time of 9/11, since then there has been a feeling
among some of the younger Muslims, they feel they are being victimised. ….. I find that by
being part of an organisation which is not built around their own ethnic principles they find it
actually quite liberating to be able to say, “we are part of this because of nothing to do with
whether I’m Muslim, Christian, whatever. I’m involved on something which I find important
socially” and they are able to be just citizens of Bristol …. the younger generation, the ones I
work with, are feeling positive and are being part of something else other than Muslim
culture and society. It gives them an extra identity.” (Representative of inter-faith
organization, Bristol)
11 Those items might have been by most subsumed under the broader heading ‘shared values’ – only 3
out of 17 that identified either religion or ethnicity as an important factor did not also tick off ‘shared
values and principles’ .
11
Many organizations (about 40%) were also keen to stress the importance of having complementary
rather than overlapping roles and functions with their allies. As the representative of a cycling
association in Bristol put it:
“we have always said it was down to the “3 Ps” so there’s provision of infrastructure for
cycling, so Sustrans would be doing that, they are building a national cycle network, safe
routes to schools, safe routes to stations, infrastructure so that provision. Policy change
would be people like Bristol Cycle Campaign trying to affect the political arena. The third
‘p’ is promotion and that’s what we do. That would be the division of labour and that’s why
there are three different organisations.”
Assigning importance to division of labour correlated negatively, if quite weakly, with emphasis on
commonality of interests: in Glasgow, 39% of those that did regard division of labour as important also
stressed the relevance of shared interests, vs. 60% of those who did not (p<.05); in Bristol, the figures
were 42% and 60% (p<.05). In Glasgow, the importance of division of labour also correlated
negatively with the emphasis on resource interdependence (52% vs. 78%, p<.01). Among
organizational properties, shared tactics did not seem to facilitate alliances, while divergences on
tactics were important negative reasons for not setting up an alliance (table 3.2 below). Arguments
about the importance of organizations’ previous embeddedness for alliance building received mixed
support, as those factors seemed far from negligible, yet perhaps less than previous analyses might
have led one to expect (Gulati and Gargiulo 1999).
Altogether, about one fifth of respondents acknowledged the role of different indicators of social
capital. The presence of trustworthy figures within prospective partner organizations seemed
particularly important (Corrigall-Brown and Meyer 2010), and so was commitment to long term
collaboration: 12
12 Interestingly, organizations stressing the role of social capital were significantly under-
represented among organizations highlighting at the same time the importance of shared interests
(16%, p<0.05) and incentives and opportunities (10%, p<.000).
12
“Reputation. It’s down to the way you behave in particular situations….. it’s about actually
not hiding behind the organisation, but saying I am me, I happen to be part of that but it’s
about me.” (Representative of inter-faith organization, Bristol)
“Everytime I speak to a new community [group] who started an initiative, I always make a
point that as an organisation we are not here to run it and go away….. I think you are
looking at three years into working, before people trust you and begin to understand that
you are not going to run away when it gets difficult as people have done in the past.”
(Member of conservation group, Glasgow)
Let’s look now at what kept organizations apart, according to their own perceptions (table 3.2). First of
all, only one third of the respondents actually identified factors that might prevent them from
establishing alliances with other groups. It remains to be seen whether this stemmed from the urge to
underline their inclusive, totally pragmatic and non ideological approach, consistently with the rhetoric
of times in which social conflict has been ejected from political language (Mouffe 2005), or not.
Among those groups that actually identified some reasons for not setting up alliances, differences in
principles still mattered a lot, while few groups seemed prepared not to engage in alliances because of
mere differences in specific interests, or because of prospective partners’ inability to provide relevant
resources. In other words, interdependence drove alliance building, but lack of it did not seem to
discourage alliances.
Alliances were rather prevented by factors that were relatively less important as positive motives, such
as tactics or social capital. Lack of trust in leaders, and lack of previous personal or political
connections with members of other organizations, seemed to discourage alliances, as risks attached to
engaging with other groups become more difficult to assess. Trust building was often recognized as an
essential step to counter risks of manipulation:
“Groups like ours operate on understanding the historical experiences that we come out of
and part of that historical experiences is that ….. we have been used as a [group] that
somebody in order to secure funding or secure a position comes and wants to form a
partnership with or want to be part of the network. Then once they have secured the funding
13
or secured whatever it was the goal… you are forgotten about, you’re a thing of the past.”
(Representative of black and minority organization, Bristol)
Table 3.2 about here
As for tactics, although the 1990s had seen both a substantial growth in protest activities and a rise in
the number of individuals prepared to engage in protest, or at least to view it benevolently (see ch.2), a
sizeable proportion of organizations (about one fifth) still regarded differences in tactics as a major
reason for not engaging in alliances. On the one hand, one could have expected more moderate
organizations to refrain from setting up alliances with more radical ones, due to their disagreements
about acceptable courses of action, and their evaluations of the possible negative consequences for their
own and their constituency’s position in the political process. In the words of the Glaswegian
representative of an international NGO,
“We’ll be very careful, we don’t get involved in a lot of protest stuff, we just don’t. We don’t
exclude it utterly, there are things we will do, we will protest outside embassies, in general
not slugging it out with them with tear gas ….. we are very choosy about what we do e.g. if
people wanted to protest outside Sainsbury’s because they were allowing asylum seekers to
use vouchers we won’t do that because that is not the way we are choosing to conduct this
campaign. Partly there’s a whole political thing about charity status but also it was the wrong
target, it was the Home Office was the target, they are the ones setting this on track and so
strategically it was like don’t waste your energy on Sainsbury’s.”
Some black and minority leaders in Bristol reiterated this point in reference to the consequences of the
major riots that back in 1981 had taken place in the St Paul’s neighborhood (Rex 1982):
“…we would perhaps not be over keen in supporting some of the direct action things….
and not because it isn’t important but because we feel that, again some of us have had
experience where we’ve been at the brunt for protesting…… [in the St Paul’s riots] the
majority of people who were jailed were black yet the thing was that there were black
people and white people out on the front line, throwing stones. ….. somebody says well
14
there were some members from white organizations making cocktails and giving it to the
black youths to throw.” (Leader of Black and minority organization, Bristol).
Conversely, groups that were more sympathetic towards protest might have been wary of organizations
who refused even to consider more radical tactical options, thus limiting their range of possible allies:
“…. the leadership of [group X] fields itself in opposition to Oxfam, to the paid salaried,
funded NGO’s – [the leader] is a volunteer and activist and he draws a line between those
who are self-motivated, self-financing activists, often on the dole, and people who receive
salaries……” (Member of sustainability group, Bristol).
“We just got frustrated waiting for something to happen and so we decided to approach the
Parliament by disrupting proceedings, hanging a banner from the public gallery and singing
songs and being arrested, we did it [on our own terms], not as CND… and it certainly stirred
it up ….. we would never want to be in the position where we have to be sort of careful on
the toes we tread on, that we can’t take action.” (Peace direct action group, Glasgow)
It is also important to note that no consistent differences – indeed, hardly any difference at all – could
be found between the two cities despite their different political and cultural profiles. Among factors
positively encouraging alliances, only access to resources turned out to be significantly more present in
Glasgow than in Bristol. However, that only applied to the aggregate measure, that took into account
the presence of at least one motivating factor that could be linked to resource interdependence. No
significant differences emerged when looking at the indicators one at a time (see table 3.2). Among
factors discouraging alliances, the only significant difference challenged common sense expectations.
One might have reasonably expected Glaswegian organizations, embedded in a more polarized political
culture, to assign greater importance to consistency in values and principles. However, it was Bristol
organizations that gave relatively more importance to that element, despite the supposedly more
pragmatic and less ideological political culture of their city (see chs. 2 and 9).
3.4 Finding the perfect match: Why do organizations choose (or not choose) certain specific partners?
15
So far we have just discussed actors’ perceptions of what facilitates and discourages alliance building.
How such perceptions matched the ties in which actors were actually involved, is another matter. We
explore this question in two steps. First, we focus on direct ties, as we try to identify what accounted
for the presence or absence of an alliance between a pair of organizations. Next, we look for factors
that may contribute to explain the similarity between two organizations in their patterns of alliances to
third parties. In this case, two organizations were not similar because they were necessarily directly
connected, but because they had relatively similar allies. In the first case, the explanandum consisted of
matrices that recorded the presence or absence of a tie between two organizations; in the second, of
matrices that reported for each pair of nodes (in our case, organizations) their structural proximity.13
The explanans consisted of several matrices, representing the proximity or dissimilarity between pairs
of organizations on a number of theoretically relevant properties. Unless explicitly indicated, each
matrix reported the absolute difference between the scores of two organizations on a given property.
Consistently with the ‘null hypothesis’ that inter-organizational alliances be mainly driven by resource
dependence mechanisms, four matrices were built on the basis of four variables, that reflected as many
aspects of such mechanisms. The higher the values of a cell in the matrices originated from these
variables,14 the more dissimilar two organizations on that particular variable. Two matrices focus on
issue priorities: one reported the similarity between organizations in their interest in issues connected to
the new social movement agenda, the other, their interest in issues linked to the overarching theme of
exclusion and deprivation.15
13 More specifically, proximity was measured by the so-called positive-matching index (also known as
Jaccard’s index), which expresses the ratio of partners that two organizations have in common to their
overall number of partners. If, as it normally happens, two nodes had a different number of partners,
the index was computed using the lowest of the two numbers as a denominator (Hanneman and Riddle
2005, 211). This measure can also be seen as an approximation of two organizations’ structural
equivalence (Steve Borgatti and Everett 1992), or structural embeddedness (Gulati and Gargiulo 1999). 14 Matrices from these and other variables were created with the Ucinet routine ‘data\attribute to
matrix’. 15 More specifically, the ‘NSM issue’ variable combined the ‘environment’ and ‘globalisation’ issue
scales identified in table 2.4; the ‘exclusion and deprivation’ variable combined the ‘social exclusion’,
‘housing’ and ‘ethnicity and migration’ scale. See Appendix for details.
16
Two matrices also focused on organizational properties. One reported differences in levels of
organizational formalization (see table 2.1), in order to test the hypothesis that organizations tended to
engage in ties to actors with similar organizational profiles. The other measured the difference in the
number of times that organizations had been identified by other organizations as leaders in the local
civic sector. The main question here was whether organizations with similar levels of local influence
and/or prestige would tend to join forces; or whether, consistently with the expectations of dependency
theory, asymmetrical relations will prevail between local leading organizations and other less
influential actors. Another matrix reported in each cell the number of public events in which
organizations had been involved in the past,16 in order to check to what extent past experiences of
collaboration might have shaped network configurations at later stages. This matrix provided the best
possible approximation of what has been defined as ‘relational embeddedness’, namely, “the extent to
which a pair of organizations (dyad) had direct contact with each other in the past” (Gulati and
Gargiulo 1999, 1462).17
A third set of matrices measured the similarity or dissimilarity of pairs of organizations on the basis of
their relations to institutional and protest politics. One matrix measured the extent to which two
organizations differed in their overall evaluation of the approach to civil society and citizens’
participation brought about by New Labour since the late 1990s. Another matrix measured the overall
involvement of civic organizations in public-private partnerships, with high value cells reflecting
greater differences in the number of public private partnerships (PPPs) in which two organizations were
involved. In principle, similar levels of involvement in these policy-oriented fora might have been
expected to create indirect ties that might in turn prove conducive to alliance building. Finally, one
matrix measured how much two organizations differed in their adoption of a protest repertoire. This
16 The full list of events (26 in Glasgow, 17 in Bristol) is discussed at length in ch.6. Here we only look
at events that took place before the year 2001. Annual events (e.g. May 1st or International Women’s
Day) have been excluded from this particular matrix. 17 However, it does not represent a direct measure of relational embeddedness as the presence of a tie is
inferred from involvement in the same event, and not from respondents’ direct identification of another
organization as a partner in intense past exchanges.
17
enabled us to look at the crucial role of tactics in shaping alliance building (see table 2.4 for details on
these measures).
The whole exercise may be summarized in a nutshell as a test of the homophily principle, applied to
organizational populations. Studies focusing on networks consisting of individuals have identified a
range of sources of homophily, including, with a varying salience depending on context and nature of
the tie, gender, ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, age, occupation, etc. (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and
Cook 2001). In a similar vein, it’s important to check whether similarity on some property affects the
probability of a tie and/or of similar allies between pairs of organizations. Table 3.3 below reports the
standardized coefficients of analyses in which adjacency and similarity matrices for both cities are
regressed on the matrices we have just introduced, using QAP (quadratic assignment procedure).18
However, as the direct interpretation of those coefficients is not straightforward, my comments on the
findings will refer to table 3.4. It only reports the sign of the coefficients that turned out to be
significant at .05 level or below, and has adapted it in order to match the logical relation between
matrices.19
First, arguments by resource dependence theorists were carried quite consistently across the two cities,
on two grounds at least. Similarity in organizational profiles showed significant correlations to the
presence of an alliance, suggesting that bureaucratic organizations would be more likely to set up
18 As the data reported in these matrices are by definition non independent, traditional regression
methods are not really suitable. QAP allows for the non independence of the observations (Hanneman
and Riddle 2005, chap. 18). It is also worth remembering that in QAP regressions the overall amount of
explained variance is not very meaningful. It is certainly not comparable to results obtained from an
ordinary least squares regression (see e.g. Mizruchi 1993, 287–289). 19 For example, the negative coefficients in row 3 in table 3.4 suggest that the more two organizations
differ in their organizational structure, the lower will be the chance of an alliance between them, and
viceversa. Accordingly, table 3.5 reports a positive sign for the corresponding cells, to indicate a
positive relation between similarity on that particular property and the chances of an alliance. In
contrast, the sign of the coefficients in row 5 has not been changed, as higher scores in the matrix
measuring number of joint involvements in past events actually predict higher chances of alliances
going on at the time of the project.
18
alliances to their likes, and that grassroots, informal organizations would do the same. No evidence was
found for grassroots groups engaging disproportionately with more formalized organizations, providing
them e.g. with militancy on specific occasions and receiving technical advice and material resources in
return. This seems to depend at least in part on the scepticism of some of the most participatory –
although not necessarily radical – groups towards the role played by of big, professionalized charities.
They were sometimes blamed for focusing on their self-reproduction and attracting substantial funds to
the detriment of more informal but more committed and engaged actors:
“We are more suspicious of big charities….. there are plenty of examples there in Scotland of
organisations that get a lot of money and you wonder exactly what they are doing and a lot of
their money gets spent on a lot of expensive research for a lot of PR and less gets spent on
tackling the issues that are coming up from the ground, e.g. in relation to refugees…..
governments round the world will say “Yes, well we have heard of them and people keep
saying things about them, therefore we must give them money” whereas organisations that
are grassroots who perhaps deserve the money don’t get anything because they are not
established enough, they are not playing the language of the people that are giving the money
out.” (Representative of black and minority housing association, Glasgow)
This attitude cannot be equated to the simple rejection of any imbalanced collaboration. To the
contrary, organizations showed a significant inclination to set up alliances with actors that had a
different level of prestige and influence within the civic sector than their own. In this sense, the fact
that ‘likes ally with likes’ in terms of organizational profiles did not imply symmetric, horizontal
patterns of alliance building in the civic sector. Both formalized organizations and informal grassroots
groups actually seemed involved in exchanges which were somehow imbalanced, if one looked at the
perceived influence of the partners in the local civic sector.
Tables 3.3-3.4 about here
Differences across cities were quite substantial for all the other factors included in the analysis. In
Bristol, alliance building was easier between organizations with similar levels of interest in deprivation
or in themes closer to the new social movements such as the environment or globalization. None of this
was found in Glasgow, where issue agendas were very poor predictors of alliance building. The picture
19
is reversed if we look at organizations’ levels of involvement with institutions. Sharing similar opinions
on New Labour’s approach facilitated alliance building in Glasgow, while had no impact in Bristol.
Likewise, Glaswegian organizations with similar levels of involvement in public-private partnerships
were also more likely to work together as allies, while Bristolian ones were not.
Interestingly, the overall impact of similarity in action repertoires was quite modest, with a significant
positive correlation with alliance building to be found only in Bristol, and only for the adjacency
matrix. Despite claims about the depth of the differences in action repertoires, as shown in section 3.3,
in practical terms they did not seem to constitute a major practical obstacle when it came to alliance
building, as long as controversial tactics were not used on the occasion of jointly promoted events. A
quite detached attitude towards more confrontational tactics seemed to prevail. When they were
rejected, this was not necessarily on principles, but rather stemmed from the recognition, once again, of
the need for some sort of division of labor within civil society:
“All our staff have [been involved in direct action] but we are very careful to say that none of
that action is part of [our organization]. You are not representing [us] when you are doing
that. For all those reasons for being a charity, people we work with, local authorities,
regional government, national government and all of the difficulties you face. So that’s not
part of our brief, we don’t work in that way. But all of our staff do it.” (Representative of
cyclists association, Bristol)
“We wouldn’t engage in some of the tactics that they engaged [in the campaign against pool
closure], we wouldn’t get involved, I mean, people occupied the buildings and things like
that, we wouldn’t discourage it but we wouldn’t get involved in it, we wouldn’t like to be
labelled in that way…. we wouldn’t say, “no don’t do it” but we wouldn’t want to be labelled
as that sort of organisation because it closes down too many other avenues of influence and
discussion. We are quite happy for someone else to go and do it because it is a pressure on
another front.” (Representative of Muslim organization, Glasgow)
Finally, previous ties between organizations once again facilitated alliances in Glasgow but not in
Bristol. As path dependence mechanisms are usually regarded as a powerful predictor of inter-
organizational alliances (Gulati and Gargiulo 1999), it is worth asking why they seemed to operate in
20
one city but not in the other. One possible explanation, consistent with arguments that assign previous
ties the role of reducing the complexity of a certain organizational environment (Gulati and Gargiulo
1999), points at the higher levels of political fragmentation in Glasgow. As we have seen (chapter 2),
accounts of Bristol civil society portrayed it as dominated by a largely pragmatic political culture. This
in turn resulted in alliance building being largely dependent on the similarity of the interests that two
organizations had in specific issues. In contrast, the political environment in Glasgow seemed more
complex, and more fragmented across traditional political cleavages. This resulted in alliance building
mechanisms that depended more heavily on differences in attitudes towards New Labour policies. The
greater depth of ideological differences might have also rendered alliance building more dependent on
stronger ties between prospective partners, forged through shared past experiences of collective action.
In Glasgow, however, divergences of opinions on the role of New Labour were just one aspect of the
complex relationship between traditional left and civil society organizations. For example, the trade
unions’ closeness to the Labour Party appeared in some cases to discourage alliance building with civil
society organizations, even on issues where there was an objective convergence of interests. This was
candidly acknowledged by a Scottish Trade Union Council representative:
“That’s what I’ve always found, an inclusive approach is the best way, ‘let’s highlight the
issue and let’s not get party political here’…. but that is very difficult within the trade union
movement because about half of our affiliates are also affiliated to the Labour party and …..
sometimes the wish to disagree with your political enemies and agree with your political
allies dominates more than your commitment to the issue”.
The picture was even more problematic if one looked left of Labour. The Socialist Workers Party (who
in Glasgow in 2001 had merged with other left-wing groupings to form the Scottish Socialist Party,
from which was to split in 2006) was frequently singled out as a problematic alliance partner in both
cities:
“they are really hard to work with …… they are just going to like take up issues and use them
for their own political ends and basically we won’t work with them. It’s hard because on the
asylum issue they were very strong and they were saying lots of good things and that is an
issue but it is hard we don’t want to go for an all out anti-Labour Party line again either, we
21
do oppose the Labour Party policies but not the kind of general “let’s just ditch the Labour
Party” kind of a way” (Representative of international NGO, Glasgow)
“they try to take over everything that they are involved in and make it their cause, you go to a
public meeting, somebody from SWP will always stand up and make a very long speech
pushing their party line. You go to any protest, they will be there with ready-made banners
giving them out to people with ‘Socialist Workers Party’ across the top. People don’t like
that” (Bristol activist)
However, other accounts were more positive regarding the role of SWP in local alliances. According to
the representative of an umbrella organizations working on inequality and deprivation issues in
Glasgow,
“Because of the nature of their involvement in various campaigns and their relatively healthy
membership in [our organization], well, a couple of local groups involved and …. one board
member for a few years as well so, there has been a relationship there but it was never one
where they have ever attempted to “use” [us] for their own political work.”
3.5 Conclusions
The analyses presented in this chapter illustrate the differences between the two cities, that emerge
when we pass from the analysis of organizations’ behaviour and attitudes taken as an aggregate, to the
analysis of relational patterns. If we look at the overall propensity of organizations to get involved in
alliance ties, as well as, most important, to the factors that individual organization representatives
identified as crucial facilitators or obstacles to alliance building, the profiles of the two civic sectors
appear remarkably similar (tables 3.2-3.3). If, however, we look at how the same factors affected the
probability of alliances between specific pairs of organization, then differences between cities are not
negligible. There was certainly homogeneity in the tendency of organizations to exchange resources
with organizations with a similar structure (either bureaucratic or grass-roots) while at the same time
engaging with organizations with a different level of perceived influence (with less influential group
looking for stronger partners, and influential groups aiming at extending their area of influence over
22
more marginal actors). However, there was overall quite a mismatch between the criteria that actors
identified as driving alliance building in general, and what seemed to lay behind the alliances that
actually took place. In the latter, differences between cities were quite pronounced.
The findings presented here may be at least partially imputed to differences in local political cultures
and traditions. Alliances between civic organizations were embedded in a previous history of joint
participation in events and in similarity of opinions on the state of the civil sector and on relations to
institutions in Glasgow. Given the stronger resilience of the left-right divide in the Scottish city,
conditions might have been more favourable for the development of alliances between ideologically
homogeneous actors, who had developed some level of mutual trust over time. In contrast, alliances
seemed primarily driven by proximity in issue interests in Bristol. In a context in which cleavages
appeared to be largely pacified, the only factor keeping organizations with a common agenda apart was
disagreement on protest repertoires, as protest might be perceived by many as in contrast with the
compromise-oriented style of policy making, dominant in the city.
Focusing on the factors that lead to the formation or absence of a tie between two organizations, i.e., on
the most basic components of network structures, has enabled us to illustrate the two most important
themes of this book: the tension between properties (in the specific, organizational properties) and
relations, and how different settings (or local opportunity structures) may affect network structures. It is
now time to move ahead, and explore how the interplay of attributes and relations shapes modes of
coordination in different local contexts. To this purpose, however, we need to show how specific,
dyadic alliances combine in more complex network patterns, and how such combinations may be
associated to specific modes of coordination. That’s the task for next chapter.
23
Table 3.1 Facilitators of alliance building (percentages)
Glasgow Bristol Total Same specific interests 52 52 52 Social capital 22 18 20 Trustworthy leaders 11 14 13 Previous personal bonds to their members* 9 4 6 Members have similar past political background 2 0 1 Shared culture 6 6 6 Same religious practice 3 2 3 Same ethnic group 3 5 4 Resources & access* 69 59 64 Provided us with resources/ information/advice 43 39 41 Major player in our field/area 27 23 25 Important source of political/media connections 6 6 6 Easy to contact 5 4 4 We have complementary roles/functions 37 41 39 We tend to adopt similar tactics 3 5 4 Shared values and principles 79 83 81 Do not identify any facilitator 1 2 2 *p<0.1
24
Table 3.2 Obstacles to alliance building (percentages)
Glasgow Bristol Total Different specific interests 6 13 9 Social Capital 14 16 15 Their leaders are untrustworthy 11 8 10 No personal bonds to their members 2 5 4 Members have different political background 2 3 2 Shared Culture 0 2 1 Different religion 0 2 1 Different ethnic group 0 1 0 Resources & Access 6 13 9 Unable to provide us with resources/information 1 2 2 Minor players in our field/area 2 3 2 Alliance with them would damage our political/media connections 3 6 4 Difficult to contact 1 3 2 We are competing for the same resources 0 0 0 We disagree with their tactics 21 16 18 Different fundamental principles** 11 25 18 Do not identify any constraint on alliance building** 73 55 64 **p<0.01
25
Table 3.3 QAP regression predictors of alliances (adjacency matrices and Jaccard similarity matrices) Glasgow Glasgow Bristol Bristol
Adjacency Jaccard Adjacency Jaccard
Organizational formalization -.033*** -.016** -.025** -.017*
Influence in the civic sector .069*** .058** .079*** -.001
Deprivation issues -.012 .009 -.018* -.037***
NSM issues .017 .028 -.034*** -.023*
Joint involvement in events before 2000
.043** .044* -.010 .019
Opinions on New Labour approach
-.021* -.046** -.013 -.018
Involvement in PPPs -.022* -.044** -.004 -.004
Protest repertoire -.017 -.027 -.018* -.017
R2 .010 .011 .01 .003
* p<.05; **p<.01; *** p<.001
26
Table 3.4 Predictors of alliances (summarizing table; signs of coefficients have been adapted to reflect logical relation; only coefficients significant at p<.05 or lower are reported) Glasgow Bristol
Adjacency Similarity (Jaccard)
Adjacency Similarity (Jaccard)
Similar organizational structure
+ + + +
Similar influence in the civic sector
- - -
Similar agenda on deprivation + +
Similar agenda on NSM issues + +
Joint involvement in events before 2000
+ +
Similar opinions on New Labour approach
+ +
Similar involvement in PPPs + +
Similar adoption of protest repertoire
+
27
References Baldassarri, Delia, and Mario Diani. 2007. “The Integrative Power of Civic Networks.” American
Journal of Sociology 113 (3): 735–780. Beamish, Thomas, and Amy Luebbers. 2009. “Alliance Building Across Social Movements:
Bridging Difference in a Peace and Justice Coalition.” Social Problems. Borgatti, Steve, and Martin Everett. 1992. “Notions of Position in Social Network Analysis.”
Sociological Methodology 22: 1–35. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loic J.D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge:
Polity press. Casciaro, Tiziana. 1998. “Seeing Things Clearly: Social Structure, Personality, and Accuracy in
Social Network Perception.” Social 20: 331–351. Corrigall-Brown, Catherine, and David S. Meyer. 2010. “The Prehistory of a Coalition: The Role of
Social Ties in Win Without War.” In Strategic Alliances: New Studies of Social Movement Coalitions, ed. Nella van Dyke and Holly McCammon, 3–21. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Crossley, Nick. 2002. Making Sense of Social Movements. Buckingham: Open University Press. Diani, Mario. 1995. Green Networks. A Structural Analysis of the Italian Environmental Movement.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ———. 2004. “Networks and Participation.” In The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements,
ed. David Snow, Sarah Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi, 339–359. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 2007. “The Relational Element in Charles Tilly’s Recent (and Not so Recent) Work.”
Social Networks 29 (2): 316–323. Diani, Mario, and Doug McAdam, eds. 2003. Social Movements and Networks. Oxford/New York:
Oxford University Press. Van de Donk, Wim, Brian D. Loader, Paul G. Nixon, and Dieter Rucht. 2004. CyberProtest.
London: Routledge. Earl, Jennifer, and Kathrin Kimport. 2011. Digitally Enabled Social Change Activism in the Internet
Age. Boston, MA: MIT Press. Edwards, Bob, Michael Foley, and Mario Diani. 2001. Beyond Tocqueville: Social Capital, Civil
Society, and Political Process in Comparative Perspective,. Hannover, NH: University Press of New England.
Ellingson, Stephen, Vernon A. Woodley, and Anthony Paik. 2012. “The Structure of Religious Environmentalism: Movement Organizations, Interorganizational Networks, and Collective Action.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 51 (2): 266–285. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2012.01639.x.
Eyerman, Ron, and Andrew Jamison. 1989. “Environmental Knowledge as an Organizational Weapon: The Case of Greenpeace.” Social Science Information 28 (1) (January 3): 99–119. doi:10.1177/053901889028001005.
Fligstein, Neil. 1996. “Markets as Politics: A Political-Cultural Approach to Market Institutions.” American Sociological Review 61: 656–673.
Galaskiewicz, Joseph. 1985. “Interorganizational Relations.” Annual Review of Sociology 11: 281–304.
Gamson, William. 1992. “The Social Psychology of Collective Action.” In Frontiers of Social Movement Theory, ed. Aldon Morris and Carol Mueller, 29–50. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Gamson, William, and David S. Meyer. 1996. “Framing Political Opportunity.” In Comparative Perspective on Social Movements. Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framing, ed. Doug McAdam, John McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, 275–290. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
28
Gerhards, Jurgen, and Dieter Rucht. 1992. “Mesomobilization: Organizing and Framing in Two Protest Campaigns in West Germany.” American Journal of Sociology 98 (3): 555–595.
Griggs, Steven, and David Howarth. 2002. “An Alliance of Interest and Identity? Explaining the Campaign Against Manchester Airport’s Second Runway.”
Gulati, Ranjay, and Martin Gargiulo. 1999. “Where Do Interorganizational Networks Come From?” American Journal of Sociology 104: 1439–1493.
Hampton, Keith, and Barry Wellman. 2003. “Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb.” City & Community 2: 277–311.
Hanneman, Robert A., and Mark Riddle. 2005. Introduction to Social Network Methods. Riverside, CA: University of California, Riverside (published in digital form at http://faculty.ucr.edu/~hanneman/).
Kenis, Patrick, and David Knoke. 2002. “How Organizational Field Networks Shape Interorganizational Tie-Formation Rates.” Academy of Management Review 27: 275–293.
Knoke, David. 1990. Organizing for Change. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Lemieux, Vincent. 1998. Les Coalitions. Liens, Transactions Et Controles. Paris: Puf. Marsden, Peter. 1990. “Network Data and Measurement.” Annual Review of Sociology 16: 435–
463. ———. 2005. “Recent Developments in Network Measurement.” In Models and Methods in Social
Network Analysis, ed. Peter Carrington, John Scott, and Stanley Wasserman, 8–30. New York/Cambridge: Cambridge university Press.
McPherson, Miller, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M. Cook. 2001. “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks.” Annual Review of Sociology 27: 415–444.
Melucci, Alberto. 1996. Challenging Codes. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. Meyer, David S., and Catherine Corrigall-Brown. 2005. “Coalitions and Political Context: U.S.
Movements Against War in Iraq.” Mobilization. Mizruchi, Mark S. 1993. “Cohesion, Equivalence, and Similarity of Behavior:a Theoretical and
Empirical Assessment.” Social Networks 15: 275–307. Monge, Peter R., and Noshir S. Contractor. 2003. Theories of Communication Networks. Oxford:
Oxford University Press. Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. On the Political. London: Routledge. Pizzorno, Alessandro. 1978. “Political Exchange and Collective Identity in Industrial Conflict.” In
The Resurgence of Class Conflict in Western Europe, ed. Colin Crouch and Alessandro Pizzorno, 277–298. New York: Holmes & Meier.
Powell, Walter W., Jason Owen-Smith, Kenneth W. Koput, and Douglas R White. 2005. “Network Dynamics and Field Evolution: The Growth of Interorganizational Collaboration in the Life Sciences.” American Journal of Sociology 110: 1132–1205.
Rex, John. 1982. “1981 Urban Riots in Britain.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 6: 99–114.
Roth, Benita. 2010. “‘Organizing One’s Own’ as Good Politics: Second Wave Feminists and the Meaning of Coalition.” In Strategic Alliances: New Studies of Social Movement Coalitions, ed. Nella van Dyke and Holly McCammon, 99–118. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Shumate, Michelle, Janet Fulk, and Peter Monge. 2005. “Predictors of the International HIV-AIDS INGO Network over Time.” Human Communication Research 31 (4): 482–510.
Stafford, Edwin R, Michael Jay Polonsky, and Cathy L Hartman. 2000. “Environmental NGO–business Collaboration and Strategic Bridging: a Case Analysis of the Greenpeace–Foron Alliance.” Business Strategy and the Environment 9 (2) (March 1): 122–135. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1099-0836(200003/04)9:2<122::AID-BSE232>3.0.CO;2-C.
Taylor, Verta, and Nancy Whittier. 1992. “Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities: Lesbian Feminist Mobilization.” In Frontiers of Social Movement Theory, ed. Aldon Morris and Carol Mueller, 104–132. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
29
Tilly, Charles. 2005. Identities, Boundaries, and Social Ties. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Tilly, Charles, and Sidney Tarrow. 2007. Contentious Politics. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Wellman, Barry. 1988. “Structural Analysis: From Method and Metaphor to Theory and
Substance.” In Social Structures, ed. Barry Wellman and S.D Berkowitz, 19–61. New York/Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wellman, Barry, and Milena Gulia. 1999. “Net Surfers Don’t Ride Alone: Virtual Community as Community.” In Networks in the Global Village, ed. Barry Wellman, 331–367. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Zald, Mayer N., and John D. McCarthy. 1980. “Social Movement Industries: Competition and Cooperation Among Movement Organizations.” Research In Social Movements, Conflict and Change 3: 1–20.
top related