Glimpses of the Anti-Sweatshop Movement

Political Opportunity Systems

lt would be mistake, however, to analyze the anti-sweatshop movement’s strategy in isolation. The movement ’s strategy was born out of both activists’ analysis of their social environment and their attempts to alter that social environment--particularly, the conflicts they had with powerful foes, ranging from college administrators to

transnational apparel corporations. Given this, to understand how the anti-sweatshop movement has strategized, we must understand how their interaction with their social, political and economic environment influenced their choices--how it constrained them, where they found opportunities, what their analysis of the social forces they were up against was. In other words, we need to understand what political process theorists would refer to as the political opportunity structure of the anti-sweatshop movement.


The Current Literature

The main obstacle to the anti-sweatshop movement achieving its goals has been the structure of the international apparel industry. Given the way USAS has sought to use the licensing programs of colleges and universities as a way to exert influence on the apparel industry, the power structure of higher education also played an important role in defining their political opportunities. In seeking to understand how these structures have affected the anti-sweatshop movement, we find surprisingly little guidance in political process theory and the concept of political opportunity structure. As not only cultural constructionist critics of the political process model (Goodwin and Jasper 2004a), but even some of its major proponents (Gamson and Meyer 1996; McAdam 1996), have

admitted, the concept of POS remains vague, more of a sensitizing concept that anything else. William Gamson and David Meyer (1996), for instance, argue that it is often “defined exclusively ad hoc and after the fact” (p. 276) and that “[i]t threatens to become an all-encompassing fudge factor” (p. 275). One telling sign of this vagueness is that Richard Healey and Sandra Hinson (personal communication, 2008) of the Grassroots Policy Project, two activists with an extensive knowledge of academic theories of social movements, which they seek io use to help movement organizations develop more effective strategy, have said that they have found it impossible to operationalize the concept of political opportunity structure in a way that is useful to activists. Instead of developing a coherent definition of POS, too many scholars have simply identified what aspects of the social environment are most relevant to the success or failure of the movement they are studying and labeled those the political opportunity structure, leading to a bewildering variation of definitions from one scholar to the next (Meyer 2004).
Several leading political process theorists have, however, attempted to synthesize those definitions to capture the most commonly cited—and presumably therefore most important--factors. McAdam (1996) names the following four factors as the crucial ones:
“1. The relative openness or closure of the institutionalized political

system[;]

“2. The stability or instability of that broad set of elite alignments that typically undergird a ^polity_[:l

“3. The presence or absence of elite allies[; and]

“4. The state’s capacity and propensity for repression” (p. 27).

Tarrow (1998) divides the POS into the stable, institutionalized aspects of the political system and those that are more likely to change in the short-term. In the stable category he includes state strength, the state’s prevailing strategy for dealing with movements, and typical modes of repression; in the less stable category, the degree of access movements have to the political system, shifting political alignments, divisions among the elite, the existence of elite allies, and whether elites choose to repress movements or facilitate them. Gamson and Meyer (1996) place elements of the POS along two axes--stability vs. volatility and institutional vs. cultural—then proceed to place a wide range of social phenomena, including many identified by McAdam and Tarrow, as well as other scholars, at various points along these two axes.

I would argue that, while all these definitions highlight important factors, they all remain somewhat ad hoc and not easy io operationalize. Where, for instance, does one look for “openness [in] the institutionalized political system"? One could look for whether a system is democratic or not, but in the experience of anti-sweatshop activists, this does not necessarily correlate with openness. Indeed, most anti-sweatshop activists, while hoping to change government policy at some future date, have concluded that, for the time being, governments are so committed to neoliberal policies that they are, for all intents and purposes, largely closed to movement influence. Instead, they have found effective ways to pressure major transnational corporations, among the least democratic organizations on the planet; while even authoritarian governments may hold sham elections in the hopes of shoring up their legitimacy, the bodies that run the world economy do not feel the need even for such pretense. Yet, this is where the anti-

sweatshop movement has been able to pry open some opportunities and begin to alter

policy.

Two major cultural constructionist theorists, Jeff Goodwin and James Jasper

(2004a) (see also Jasper (1997)), while agreeing that it is important to look at the social environment movements operate in, would have us dispose of the concept of POS entirely. They argue that when we speak of a political opportunity structure, the metaphor of structure can sometimes obscure as much as it reveals. Though social

scientists are, in principle, all perfectly well aware that social structures change over lime, the metaphor of structure tends io make us focus on what is fined in the social environment, not what is undergoing transformation. This tends to obscure the fact that movements can, by their actions, change the political opportunities and constraints they face--a rather odd thing to obscure when one considers the fact that the very goal of movements is to transform their social environment. The metaphor of structure also tends to obscure the fact that the structures with which movements interact are not passive-- they consist of elite social actors (Jasper and Poulsen 1993; McAdam 2004), such as corporations and governments, that respond to movements, sometimes in ways that harm movements (repression or countering their messages), sometimes in ways that help (whether through concessions or strategic blunders). The definitions of POS we have reviewed try to take into account elite actors and changes in structure, but Goodwin and Jasper (2004a) argue that in all too many analyses, they are not evident and POS is
treated in a static--as well as ad hoc--fashion.
One notable attempt to give the concept of political opportunity more definition is Myra Marx Ferree, William Gamson, Jürgen Gerhards, and Dieter Rucht’s (2002) analysis, which focuses on movements’ interactions with the with the mass media. As such, they focus on developing the concept of a discursive opportunity structure (DOS), which they succeed in defining with more precision than anyone up till now has deemed political opportunity structure. They argue that in public life, there are any number of arenas where social movements and other groups fight frame battles (Ryan, 199 1)--that is, they come into conflict over the proper framing of the issues, each side struggling to ensure that their frame will prevail as the one through which a particular issue is generally understood. The most important such arena in contemporary society is the mainstream mass media--which frame prevails in the mass media has consequences far beyond it, helping to define the larger public agenda. As Steven Lukes (2005) argues, the ability to get issues on the public agenda--or keep them off--and help define the terms in which they are understood is as critical io exercising social power as actual control over political decision-making processes.
Unlike a real arena, the refrain in the mass media is uneven, with some groups having a structural advantage over others, features that help define the DOS. Journalists and editors do not act as neutral referees, but are themselves active participants in the conflict. They in turn are guided by journalist practices and norms, which can shape which actors and frames can gain access to the arena--and how much access to it they can get. Related to this, is what Ferree et al. (2002) call standing--essentially a form of status (in Max Weber’s (1946) sense), defining whether or not a social actor can expect to be quoted in the media and how likely this is to happen. Standing is shaped by not only different journalist practices, but by political structures and the “characteristics of the actors who compete for standing including their goals, resources, and professionalism" (p. 87). (See also Ryan (1991).) Social actors must also contend with the various themes and counter-themes that exist in any society--what values and ideas are typically emphasized in public discourse (themes) and those that, while not dominant, may still sometimes be emphasized as a countering set of values. Those whose frames resonate with the dominant themes are much more likely to be taken seriously by mainstream journalists; and will have a much easier rime conveying their meaning to a larger audience. In other words, they face a more open discursive opportunity structure (Ferree et al. 2002; Gamson 1992).