Social Movements and Institutional Analysis - Reed …€¦ · Social Movements and Institutional...

Social Movements andInstitutional Analysis

Marc Schneiberg and Michael Lounsbury

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Calls for reintroducing agency, politics andcontestation into institutional analysis are nowlegion, spanning nearly two decades sinceDiMaggio’s (1988) classic piece, and gainingnew urgency as scholars struggle to explaininstitutional emergence and change.Institutionalists face persistent difficulties inthese tasks. Working from arguments aboutisomorphism, diffusion, or path dependence,they often invoke ad hoc explanations likeexogenous shocks in order to reconcile changeand path creation with theories that stress thecontextual sources of stability, continuity andconformity (Greenwood & Hinings 1996;Clemens & Cook 1999; Campbell 2004;Streeck & Thelen 2005; Schneiberg 2005;Guillén 2006). To address these difficulties,institutionalists have begun to revise both theirconceptions of fields and their views of action.From a structural standpoint, some scholarsincreasingly view fields as comprising multi-ple logics, or by indeterminacy, ambiguities orcontradictions, opening theoretical spaces foraction (Scott, Ruef, Mendel, & Caronna 2000;Stryker 1994, 2000; Seo & Creed 2002;Schneiberg 2002, 2007; Lounsbury 2007;Marquis & Lounsbury 2007). Focusing moreon agency, other scholars have brought new

attention to actors and what they do, produc-ing studies of ‘institutional entrepreneurs’(Beckert 1999; Hwang & Powell 2005;McGuire Hardy & Lawrence 2004; Hardy &McGuire, Chapter 7 this volume) and institu-tional work (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006).Within this milieu, scholars have also soughtto overcome ‘excessive institutional determin-ism’ by turning to social movement theory andthe study of collective mobilization.

Spanning sociology and political science,social movement theory has produced awealth of concepts and research on change,including studies of students organizing toregister black voters in the 1960s (McAdam1988), the mobilization of farmers, workersand women to make claims on the state(Clemens 1997), shareholder activism tocontest managerial control over corporations(Davis & Thompson 1994), the growth ofidentity movements pursuing peace, gay/les-bian rights and environmentalism (e.g.,Laraña, Johnston, & Gusfield 1994), and therise of transnational pressure groups (Keck &Sikkink 1998). What these studies share is aninterest in contestation and collective mobi-lization processes – how groups coalesce tomake claims for or against certain practices

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or actors in order to create or resist new insti-tutional arrangements or transform existingones (McCarthy & Zald 1977). They alsoshare an interest in tracing how contestationand collective action rest on the capacity ofgroups to mobilize resources and recruit mem-bers, their ability to engage in cultural entrepre-neurship or frame issues to increase acceptanceof their claims, and the political opportunitystructures that constrain or enable mobilization(McAdam, McCarthy, & Zald 1996). Thischapter focuses on how engaging collectivemobilization and social movement theory hasinspired new work in institutional analysis.

The integration of movements into institu-tional analysis has begun to revise existingimageries of institutional processes, actors,and the structure of fields, generating newleverage for explaining change and path creation. Regarding processes, it adds con-testation, collective action, framing and self-conscious mobilization for alternatives toconceptual repertoires of legitimation, diffu-sion, isomorphism and self-reproducingtaken-for-granted practices (Jepperson 1991;Colyvas & Powell 2006). Regarding actors, itcounter-poses challengers and champions ofalternatives to standard accounts of states,professions and other incumbents as keyplayers. Regarding structure, it moves awayfrom images of an isomorphic institutionalworld of diffusion, path dependence and con-formity toward conceptions of fields as sitesof contestation, organized around multipleand competing logics and forms (Kraatz &Block, Chapter 9 this volume).

As will be clear, work that integratesmovements into neo-institutionalism paral-lels work on institutional entrepreneurship inkey respects (Hardy & McGuire, Chapter 7this volume). Both emphasize agency, delib-erate or strategic action, and self-consciousmobilization around alternatives. Both wres-tle with problems or paradoxes of how actorsembedded within institutions can changethose systems, how institutions limit or sup-port change, and how actors draw on the elements or contradictions of existing institu-tions to forge new ones. Both identify some

of the same processes as critical for change,including framing, theorization, transposi-tion, and the recombination of logics. Yetwhere institutional entrepreneurship researchoften attributes substantial casual efficacy toindividuals, studies linking movements andinstitutionalism are more deeply rooted instructural perspectives. They thus placegreater emphasis on politics and collectivemobilization as motors of change, and moresystematically address the relations betweenactivity, collective organization and existinginstitutional contexts.

Our central claim is that analyzing move-ments within neo-institutional theory isessential for understanding when and how:(1) paths or fields become constituted aroundmultiple, competing logics; and (2) multiplelogics, contradictions and ambiguities fuelfield-level change and new path creation. Inmaking this claim, we accept, rather than dis-miss, contextual arguments about durability,path dependence, and stability that give insti-tutionalism its analytical edge in explainingcontinuity, differences or ‘higher order’effects on organizations (Schneiberg &Clemens 2006). Institutions often exhibitincreasing returns and positive feedbacks(Pierson 2000). Actors empowered by exist-ing institutions use their advantages to elabo-rate institutions in ways that preserve theirpower and preclude alternatives. Diffusion,adoption and the resulting communities ofpractice create isomorphic pressures thatmake conformity a condition for legitimacy,fueling further diffusion. Institutionalizedtheories of order render alternatives unthink-able, irrational or inefficient. And the preva-lence of taken-for-granted understandingsmeans that even opposition occurs in thoseterms, deepening the paths it contests.

In short, rather than simply assert an agentic, actor-centered institutionalism, webegin with the structural insight that limits onalternatives and pressures for continuity or convergence often exercise considerableforce. Reflexive action, the capacity to articu-late alternatives, the salience of multiple logics, or their translation into change, cannot

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be assumed. To the contrary, these are oftenfragile achievements which ultimately rest on the emergence and efficacy of social movements.

Using existing and ongoing research, thischapter outlines analytical strategies foraddressing the rise and effects of movementson institutional fields. We pay particularattention to how those strategies revise exist-ing institutional accounts of change and pathcreation. In parts I and II, we consider move-ments as agents and infrastructures ofchange, outlining two emerging approachesto what movements do and how they affectfields. One treats movements as forcesagainst institutions; that is, as forces operat-ing outside established channels to assertnew visions and disrupt or directly contestexisting arrangements, evoking legitimacycrises, sense-making and other institutionalprocesses within fields. This approachrevises two canons in institutional theory –the two-stage model of institutionalizationand histories of change as punctuated equi-librium. It also provides insights into howfields become constituted around multiplelogics.

A second approach considers the rise andimpact of movements within fields, examin-ing movements as institutional forces orinfrastructures for institutional processesincluding theorization, recombination anddiffusion. This approach reveals how diffu-sion, translation and adoption are contested,political processes that often depend on col-lective action. It also sheds light on howmovements emerge from and exploit contra-dictions or multiple logics within fields tomobilize support, forge new paths or producechange.

In part III, we turn from movements asagents of change to analyses of how contextsshape contestation and collective action.Institutionalists have recognized that existinginstitutions constrain and enable mobiliza-tion, create openings for challengers, andshape their capacities to produce change. This has led neo-institutionalists to the move-ments literature on political opportunity

structure and institutional mediation (e.g.,Amenta, Caruthers, & Zylan 1992; McAdam1999; Davis & Thompson 1994), promptingnew insights about opportunity structures, areinvigoration of multi-level approaches, andnew strategies for analyzing movements,existing institutions and change. Taking adecidedly cultural cast, these strategies reformulate arguments about political oppor-tunity structures as institutional opportunitystructures, highlighting how movements and change are endogenously shaped by institutions.

Based on these discussions, we turn in partIV to suggest new directions for research onhow movements and institutional dynamicscombine to produce change. One key direc-tion is methodological: to develop clearer,more direct measures of movements and toexploit the analytical leverage of multivariateapproaches. This will help assess and sys-tematize claims from qualitative and histori-cal work about movement effects and therelations between movements, institutionalcontexts and outcomes.

A second direction is to analyze move-ments as a political condition for diffusionand other institutional processes. Insofar asalternatives are contested or suppressed byvested interests, their diffusion will dependon collective action and the mobilization ofpower by champions of new practices andforms. In cases like these, movements canmoderate institutional processes, supportingdiffusion or translation in three ways: by serving as field-wide or cross-field mech-anisms for mobilizing power, by working aspolitical forces within organizations toincrease their receptivity to alternatives, orby working between organizations toincrease innovators’ influence as exemplars.Taking this approach to how movementsoperate in fields can help explain the diffu-sion of alternatives and more diverse sets ofoutcomes related to practice variation.

Finally, we consider the origins of move-ments and institutions, taking an historicalapproach and considering the relationshipbetween institutions and movements as an

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ongoing process in which combinations orsequences of movements cumulatively pro-duce change. Movements might figure in theproduction of unintended and incrementaltrajectories of change. That is, even whenthey are defeated or their time has passed,movements may leave legacies, elements ofinstitutional orders and bits and pieces ofpaths not taken, producing diffuse but impor-tant effects, and creating possibilities for sub-sequent movements, institution-building andtransformation (Schneiberg 2007). Focusingon these possibilities sheds further light onhow movements and their effects are endoge-nously produced, helping researchers avoidthe trap of invoking movements, like exoge-nous shocks, as a deus ex machina.

MOVEMENTS FROM OUTSIDEINSTITUTIONS: CHALLENGER/DOMINANCE APPROACHES

One way to integrate movements into institu-tional research preserves the analytical dis-tinction between movements, contestation anddeliberate mobilization, on the one hand, andinstitutional processes like the reproduction oftaken-for-granted practices, on the other,taking movements as an ‘extra-institutional’force that impacts change or new path cre-ation. This approach hardly exhausts the pos-sible relations between movements andinstitutions. But it captures the potentiallywide class of cases where movements ariseoutside of or on the peripheries of establishedfields, acting as outsider-challengers to assertnew visions of order, disrupt existing systems,or secure policies or representation fromestablished authorities. Thinking in theseterms also extends the institutional frameworkto highlight key processes left exogenous byexisting accounts of emergence and change,opening up the black-box of ‘pre-institutional’dynamics, and adding new imageries andmechanisms to our conceptual repertoire.

Consider two canonical formulations inneo-institutional analysis. In the two-stage

model of institutionalization, the emergenceof new paths or fields is a ‘bottom up’ phe-nomenon: (1) organizations or states adoptstructures or policies in response to localproblems, politics or characteristics, whichthen spark (2) processes of mimesis, theo-rization and diffusion, eventually crystalliz-ing a broader community of practice arounda core set of principles or models (Tolbert &Zucker 1983; Baron, Dobbin, & Jennings1986; Galaskeiewz & Wasserman 1989;Strang & Chang 1993). As solutions diffuse,they become taken-for-granted as anaccepted norm, serving as baselines to whichorganizations must subsequently conform asa condition for legitimacy. In punctuatedequilibrium models, change occurs as asequence of shock, disruption, deinstitution-alization, and reinstitutionalization (Edelman1990, 2006; Fligstein 1990, 2001; Sutton et al. 1994; Sutton & Dobbin 1996). Shockslike new laws or court rulings subvert exist-ing routines, vested interests and establishedunderstandings, evoking uncertainty, sense-making and a succession of players andmodels as new groups emerge to define thesituation and establish their solutions as newbases of order.

Both models shed light on key institutionalprocesses: (1) mutual monitoring, mimesisand the diffusion or transposition of practicesacross organizations; (2) theorization, codifi-cation or the endorsement of best practicesby professional associations; and (3) inter-ventions by states to ratify, redraw or rejectfield boundaries and emerging solutions(e.g., Strang & Meyer 1993). Yet both tend toneglect the origins of new ideas and practicesas well as the sources of disruption, leavingkey players and processes unanalyzed.However, in many canonical cases featuringisomorphism, the instigating shocks or moti-vations for adoption were the direct anddeliberate results of social movements –municipal reformers and progressives fight-ing corruption in city government, civilrights activists demanding state interventionto end discrimination, and agrarian populistscontesting corporate consolidation.


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Schneiberg and Soule’s (2005) study ofrate regulation in insurance develops onemodel of the role of movements in the insti-tutionalization process, filling in gaps in thecanonical accounts. It conceptualizes institu-tions as political settlements. And it analyzespath creation as a contested processgrounded in sequences of mobilization, dis-ruption and conventional institutionaldynamics, tracing how mobilization outsideestablished channels catalyzes path creationand change. Specifically, their study showshow rate regulation by American states in theearly twentieth century was provoked neitherby exogenous shocks, nor by scattered andunconnected politics or problem-solvingbehavior. Rather, it was sparked by anti-cor-porate movements including the Grange andFarmers Alliance who worked to contest cor-porate consolidation and assert alternativeforms of economic order. This mobilizationwas a response to the rise of ‘trusts’ and‘combines’ in various sectors. Grangers andother groups directly opposed ‘corporate liberal’ models of order based on for-profitcorporations, national markets and unregu-lated industry. Instead, they pursued ‘pro-ducer republican’ logics that envisionedAmerican capitalism as a regionally decen-tralized and cooperatively organized economy of independent producers, farmersand self-governing towns. Moreover, in targeting insurance, Grangers and othergroups secured anti-compact laws to break up the ‘insurance trust,’ organized con-sumer-owned mutual firms, and otherwisedisrupted insurance markets, fueling legiti-macy crises, public hearings, and new interventions within key states.

These disruptions and interventions, inturn, sparked politics and conventional insti-tutional processes within the insurance field.They evoked inter-state diffusion in whichkey players monitored other states, theorizedrate regulation as a solution to the ‘insuranceproblem,’ recombined elements to forgethose solutions and adopted laws passed byother states. They also evoked supra-state orfield-wide process in which courts and the

professions endorsed regulation, promul-gated model laws, and built field-wideadministrative organs. Taken together, theseinstitutional processes shifted the balance ofpower within states, crystallizing insurancearound economic models and regulatorysolutions that settled political struggles overindustry governance (see also Schneiberg1999, 2002; Schneiberg & Bartley 2001).

Rao, Clemens and Hoffman also gobeyond canonical accounts by foregroundingmovements, understanding paths as politicalsettlements, or analyzing path creation assequences of movements, mobilization andinstitutional processes. Rao (1998) showshow the consumer watchdog agencies andproduct rating schemes that are now taken-for-granted in the US were the product ofconsumer mobilization and contestation overwhether scientific testing and the power ofinformed consumers should be blended withthe role of labor, unionization and concernsabout products. At first, consumer groupsfought for two different logics of marketreform, one that blended consumer advocacywith unionism and one that focused morenarrowly on the consumer. But broader polit-ical dynamics eliminated the more compre-hensive radical change frame from the path,segregating ‘consumer’ and ‘worker,’ andensuring the dominance of a consumer-onlyimpartial testing logic (see Carruthers &Babb 1996 for a similar analysis of monetarysystems).

Clemens (1993, 1997) more directlyaddresses how change flows from combina-tions of movements and institutionalprocesses, tracing how interest group politicsbecame a core feature of the American politythrough successive waves of mobilizationand transposition by three outsider/chal-lenger groups. Acting collectively to contestparties and patronage, first unions, thenfarmers, and then women’s groups built onprevious efforts to disrupt existing arrange-ments (strikes, boycotts, protests) by trans-posing fraternals, cooperatives, clubs andother kinds of apolitical associations intomainstream politics. These sequences of


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actions fundamentally altered the terms ofpolitical representation and influence, creating access and clout for previously dis-enfranchised groups and institutionalizinglobbying, legislative monitoring, and othernow taken-for-granted modes of Americanpolitics.

Hoffman’s (1999) study of environmental-ism likewise finds that movements and insti-tutional dynamics play pivotal roles in fieldcreation and change. Here, conflicts overcompeting institutions and successive roundsof environmental mobilization, scandal andlegislative activity provoked new forms ofdiscourse, theorization, and new patterns ofinteractions among firms, non-profits andgovernments. These dynamics, in turn,helped produce an increasingly structuredenvironmental field.

As a group, these studies substantiallyrevise canonical accounts of path creationand change. First, they support a view ofinstitutions as settlements of political strug-gles over the character of fields fueled by themobilization of challengers around compet-ing projects and logics (Davis & Thompson1994; Fligstein 1996; 2001; McAdam &Scott 2005; Armstrong 2005). Emphasizingcontestation and collective action, this viewdeparts from ‘cooler’ imageries of paths asbased mainly in diffusion, taken-for-grantedpractices, theorization and normativeendorsement by professions or states. Thus,insurance rate regulation represented a polit-ical solution of struggles between insurers,who pursued economic logics of corpora-tions, markets and unregulated industry asso-ciations, and challenger groups, who soughtanti-trust laws, regulation and mutual alter-natives to promote more regionally decen-tralized and cooperatively organizedeconomies. Conflicts over these visionsyielded structural innovations, but were notresolved until field members crafted pack-ages that combined regulation with privateassociation, and mutuals with for-profit cor-porations. The consumer advocacy field like-wise reflected a settlement of struggles andmobilization around competing logics, albeit

one which involved a clear cut victory of onelogic of consumerism over other.

Second, these studies suggest an image ofthe process of institutionalization as asequence or interaction between contestationand mobilization around alternative visions oforder, on the one hand, and more conventionalinstitutional dynamics, on the other. In insur-ance, challengers mobilized outside the systemto contest the ‘insurance combine’ and forciblyimpose alternative forms and anti-trust policieson the industry. Regulators and reformerswithin the field responded, in turn, by theoriz-ing, endorsing and diffusing regulatory poli-cies which recombined multiple forms intonew packages. Multiple dynamics likewise fig-ured in the case of American state building,where farmers, unions and women’s groupsprogressively institutionalized modern interestgroup politics in the US via successive wavesof mobilization, contestation and translation

Third, these studies provide a more variedunderstanding of how movements fuel pathcreation and change by mobilizing outsideestablished channels to contest extant sys-tems. At a minimum, by introducing multiplelogics and promoting awareness of problems,challenger movements subvert the taken-for-grantedness of existing arrangements,fueling legitimacy crises and institutionalpolitics (Stryker 2000), and providing insid-ers with cultural resources for criticism,reflexive action or ‘mindful deviation’(Garud & Karnoe 2001). Thus, as anti-corporate forces, consumers and women’sgroups took action and asserted new logics,they not only evoked media attention andpublic debate, creating openings for chal-lengers and reformers to delegitimate domi-nant institutional systems. They also suppliedexperts, reformers and other groups withmodels and cultural resources for criticizingand revising extant paths such as by combiningor layering them with new forms and elements.

Moreover, challenger movements are oftencarriers of new organizational forms, and canwork around or outside established channelsto build parallel, alternative systems of organ-izations (Rao, Morrill & Zald 2000; Carroll


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& Swaminathan 2000; Schneiberg 2002;Schneiberg, King & Smith 2008). Theseefforts may not be disruptive in intent. Yetpromoting alternative forms can foster newcompetitive dynamics and populate fieldswith instances of new logics. By translatingapolitical forms of association into state,agrarians, unions and women’s groupsaltered both the terms of competition inAmerican politics and prevailing conceptionsof appropriate political action. By promul-gating mutual insurance, Grangers and othergroups both instantiated cooperativism andtransformed the terms of economic competi-tion in a key sector, forcing insurance corpo-rations to engage in new forms of rivalrybased on prevention, re-reengineering andloss reduction. And by introducing the sci-ence-based, not-for-profit product testingagency, the consumer movement transformedthe terms of trade throughout the economy.

Furthermore, challenger movements canmobilize masses, networks and political sup-port to pressure states and other power cen-ters for new agencies, laws and policies thatban or mandate practices. As scholars haveshown, the uncertainties or prohibitions asso-ciated with new laws, agencies, and man-dates can profoundly destabilize existingsystems, fueling sustained institutionaldynamics (Fligstein 1990; Edelman 1992;Dobbin & Dowd 1997; Hoffman 1999).Finally, outsider groups like ACT UP andEarth First! can and do use protests, boycottsand direct actions to dramatize problems anddirectly disrupt daily operations and routines(Elsbach & Sutton 1992; Hoffman 1999). Inall of these ways, movements can fuel pathcreation and change as political-culturalforces for contestation, confrontation anddisruption. Instantiating new logics, they canevoke controversy and debate within fields,conflicts and policy responses within organi-zations, inter-organizational diffusion andfield-wide association, while supplyinginsiders and reformer with templates, politi-cal support and cultural resources for theo-rization, transposition, recombination andthe assembly of new institutions.

Simple in its essentials, a conception thatemphasizes sequences of outsider movements,mobilization and institutional processes hassupported increasingly sophisticated analysesof path creation and change. As we show inpart III, a ‘movements from outside institu-tions’ conception lends itself readily to multi-level analyses of fields, and to considerationof how existing institutions or political oppor-tunity structures shape challengers’ capacitiesto mobilize and effect change. Yet this concep-tion does not exhaust the ways that move-ments figure as agents of path creation andchange.

MOVEMENTS WITHIN INSTITUTIONS:COLLECTIVE MOBILIZATION AS INSTITUTIONAL PROCESS

Groups seeking change often mobilize col-lectively outside established institutions toassert new logics and disrupt taken-for-granted arrangements. Yet institutionalistshave recognized movements also arise withininstitutions or fields, mobilizing insiders andwell as outsiders, using established networksand resources to diffuse alternative practices,and drawing effectively on existing institu-tional elements and models to craft new sys-tems (see Fligstein 1996, 2001). Indeed,while movements can drive change bydirectly opposing existing schemes, generat-ing legitimacy crises or otherwise disruptinginstitutions, they sometimes promote pathcreation and change incrementally by engag-ing in institutional processes (or becominginstitutional forces). That is, movements canemerge and operate within established chan-nels and power structures, drawing on exist-ing institutions and taken-for-grantedunderstandings to theorize, articulate andcombine new projects or practices with pre-vailing models and arrangements. In sodoing, movements may themselves becomevehicles or established channels for diffu-sion, theorization, recombination and otherinstitutional processes within fields.


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This broader conception of movementsrisks a loss of analytical specificity and adiminished focus on contesting power struc-tures, especially where movements becomesynonymous with collective or quasi-collec-tive action geared toward any type of change(Scully & Segal 2002; Scully & Creed 2005).Yet analyzing movements as intra-institu-tional forces productively blurs distinctionsbetween ‘extra-institutional’ and ‘institu-tional,’ ‘mobilization’ and ‘self-reproducing’process, or ‘contentious’ versus ‘conven-tional’ politics. It has led to new insightsabout parallels between institutional phe-nomena and collective action processes stud-ied by movement scholars (Campbell 2005;Strang & Jung 2005; Davis & Zald 2005;Wade, Swaminathan, & Saxon 1998). It hasled to new understandings of the relationsbetween movements and institutions, includ-ing how institutional reproduction and diffu-sion depend on mobilization, politicalresources and contestation (Thelen 2004;Hargrave & Van de Ven 2006). It supportsresearch that goes beyond analyzing move-ments as ‘extra-institutional’ producers ofmultiple logics to consider also how move-ments and contestation are products of – andmobilize – contradictions and multiplemodels within fields (Strkyer 2000; Seo &Creed 2002; Morrill 2006). And it has letinstitutionalists interested in movements sup-plement images of change as disruption, con-flict and settlement with analyses of howmovements also work in an incremental andembedded fashion, producing trajectories of path creation or change as reconfiguration,recombination or layering (Clemens & Cook 1999; Streeck & Thelen 2005;Schneiberg 2007).

Lounsbury and colleagues’ studies of recy-cling address how movements can enter intoand operate within fields as institutionalforces, emphasizing their role as agents oftheorization, classification, and the diffusionof codified arguments, frames or theoreticalresources (Lounsbury 2001, 2005:Lounsbury, Ventresca, & Hirsch 2003).Initially, eco-activists pursued recycling

outside established channels, working inde-pendently of and against the waste industryto organize thousands of local non-profit,drop-off recycling centers. Such efforts werepart of a broader project to restructure capi-talism. They were articulated within a holis-tic frame that theorized recycling as a way torebuild community, create local closed-loopproduction and consumption, and reducecommunity dependence on conglomeratesand capitalist commodity systems. Yet thecommitment of industry and state agencies toa resource recovery logic which emphasizedlandfill, waste-to-energy programs and large-scale incineration left the recyclingmovement isolated and its centers withoutoutlets for materials.

In fact, a viable infrastructure for recyclingdid not emerge until activists, workingthrough the National Recycling Coalition,entered mainstream policy negotiations,forged ties with solid waste handlers, andretheorized recycling as a for-profit servicethat built on curbside programs and comple-mented landfills and incineration. Coupledwith grass-roots mobilization against newincinerators, and negotiations with stateagencies to buy recycled materials, theoriz-ing recyclables as commodities transformedcultural beliefs and discourse about waste inthe industry, creating institutional conditionsfor diffusing recycling practices (see alsoStrang & Meyer 1993; Strang & Soule 1998;King, Cornwall, & Dahlin 2005).

In addition, environmental movementsalso served as institutional forces by operat-ing inside organizations (see Zald & Berger1978 for an early statement on movementswithin organizations). The StudentEnvironmental Action Coalition promotedrecycling within universities by codifyingarguments, building inter-collegiate net-works and disseminating standardized argu-ments and facts about similar programselsewhere. And the College and UniversityRecycling Coordinators provided universi-ties and colleges with standards and classifi-cation schemes for measuring the progress,costs and benefits of programs, which helped


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deepen discourse and theorization of recy-cling as a rational economic activity. Thus, asGreenwood, Suddaby and Hinings (2002)document for professional associations,social movements can create cultural andtheoretical foundations for new activities,forms and fields (see also Moore 1996, andFrickel & Gross 2005 for examples of move-ments among scientific professionals). Theycan operate within existing power structuresas agents of theorization, classification anddiffusion, and can themselves become infra-structures for those processes within fields.Indeed, as recycling became institutional-ized, the movement itself blurred into profes-sional associationalism. Activists becamerecycling employees; employees used theNational Recycling Coalition to form a pro-fessional association; and the associationforged new identities, statuses and proce-dures for recycling managers within the new field.

Research by Morrill, Creed, Scully andcolleagues, and Moore on the institutional-ization of alternative dispute resolution,domestic partner benefits, and public sciencelikewise document how movements operateas forces within mainstream institutions, de-emphasizing confrontational tactics infavor of their role as mobilizers of multiplelogics and as agents or vehicles for recombi-nation, assembly, translation and diffusion.In Morrill’s (2006) study of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), mobilization foralternatives and contestation themselvesrested fundamentally on the presence andrecombination of multiple logics of practicein the socio-legal field. In this case, institu-tional processes of bricolage, hybridizationand innovation preceded broader mobiliza-tion. Lawyers, social workers, communityactivists and judges working at the intersticesor overlaps between fields during the 1960sdrew in an ad hoc fashion on therapeutictechniques, community mediation, and otherforms of non-adversarial negotiating andgroup discussion to help process minor dis-putes in small claims, family and othercourts. As the ‘litigation crisis’ deepened,

these early efforts supported the mobilizationof two competing critical masses of ADRactivists – one around a ‘community media-tion’ model, the other around the ‘multi-doorcourthouse.’

Both groups devoted considerable energyinto theorizing and disseminating theirapproach, holding conferences, publishingmanifestos in prominent law journals andseeking support from foundation or otherestablished centers. Both also worked hard toarticulate and recombine their models withprevailing models and institutions, includingthe ‘Great Society’ vision of federallyfunded community social programs and theincreasingly ascendant new federalism.Moreover, once advocates could articulateADR with the divorce revolution and no-fault divorce as a non-adversarial solutionto custody and interpersonal problems, theygained a lever for professionalizing media-tion and diffusing its practices. They usedconferences, new organizations, instructionalvideos, newsletters, and the like to furthercodify and disseminate ADR, effectively lay-ering ADR into the legal system as anincreasingly taken-for-granted complementto conventional legal arrangements.

Creed, Scully and colleagues’ studies ofgay rights/GLBT activists shed additionallight on how movements working withinexisting institutions can help establish newpractices by exploiting contradiction andmultiple logics, importing or redeployinglogics across settings, and articulating orrecombining new elements with prevailingmodels, myths or concerns (Creed & Scully2000; Creed, Scully, & Austin 2002; Scully& Segal 2002; Scully & Creed 2005; see alsoRaeburn 2004). Decisive here were activists’use of contradiction and recombination todisturb taken-for-granted assumptions, high-light injustice, and legitimate claims forreform. For example, activists strategicallydeployed identity in face-to-face encounterswith co-workers and supervisors. They usedcasual mentions of partners’ gendered nameswhen sharing experiences of mundane activ-ities and enacted non-stereotypical behavior


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to challenge stigma. They also employed nar-ratives of discrimination or inequality tohighlight hypocrisies, evoking understand-ings that everyday routines produce injustice,and activating listeners’ identities as non-prejudiced persons.

In addition, activists used their knowledgeand status as insiders and loyal corporate cit-izens to couch reforms like domestic partnerbenefits as good business practice or expres-sions of firms’ espoused commitments todiversity. Furthermore, like those fighting forthe federal Employment Non-DiscriminationAct, activists within firms imported higherorder logics or frames, articulating domesticpartner benefits and other gay-friendly poli-cies with broader civil rights frames, valuesof fairness and equality, corporate socialresponsibility, and concerns with competi-tiveness in an increasingly diverse world. Ina sense, GLBT movements worked forchange by simultaneously coming out andfitting in; that is, by carefully articulating andcombining difference, assertions of GLBTidentity and new practices with ‘normal’everyday life, insider identities as dutiful cor-porate citizens, and ongoing organizationalconcerns. Here too, diffusion of new prac-tices like domestic partner benefits was apolitical process, resting on mobilization,contestation, framing and the recombinationof prevailing models and cultural elements inand across firms.

As Moore shows, the institutionalization ofpublic science organizations in American pol-itics also rested critically on multiple logics,mobilization by insiders, and the role ofmovements as bricoleur-agents of recombina-tion and redeployment (Moore 1996; Moore& Hala 2002). During the 1960s and 1970s,university scientists faced increasingly severecontradictions between the logic of publicservice or social utility, on the one hand, and the logics of objectivity, non-partisanshipand detachment as scientists, on the other. Infact, extant ways of joining science and poli-tics – serving the public interest by servingthe state – had become distinct liabilities.University scientists not only faced attacks

by anti-war and environmental groups for their connections to the military andchemical industry, but they also began to criticize themselves and their peers for theseconnections.

At first, activists tried to link science andpolitics and mobilize for change within estab-lished science associations. But mixing parti-sanship and ‘pure science’ produced publicdiscord within the scientific community anddirectly challenged its legitimacy as an impar-tial, objective producer of facts. This led sci-entist-activists to create a hybrid form – thepublic science organization – that resolvedthis tension by recombining science and politics in novel ways. Through dedicatedorganizations like the Union for ConcernedScientists and Scientists’ Institute for PublicInformation, scientists could provide nuclearsafety information, challenge non-scientists’uses of science, and address the public inter-est without risking their credibility as scien-tists by acting in openly partisan ways.Moreover, hybrid organizations separatefrom professional and political associationsprovided activists with a vehicle for publicscience that directed attention away from the inner workings of the scientific commu-nity, letting scientists mobilize politicallywithout calling their legitimacy as scientistsinto question or sparking conflict within professional communities.

All of these studies highlight rich opportu-nities for exploring the role of movementswithin existing institutions and organiza-tions. In general, social life is rife with col-lective mobilization, and whether theseefforts are made by challengers working asoutsiders to redefine existing arrangements,insiders seeking change from within, or elitesstriving to keep existing structures intact(Fligstein 1990, 1996), a focus on move-ments expands our understanding of institu-tional dynamics. Moreover, mobilization canoccur at the level of the field as with anti-cor-porate forces or ecological activists promot-ing communitarian alternatives to corporatecapitalism and with scientists forging newassociations to link expertise to politics.


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Or it can occur within and between organiza-tions as recycling advocates pressed for more substantive forms of recycling or as gayand lesbian groups pushed for recognitionand benefits. A focus on movements, therefore, sheds new light on path creationand change, particularly when it attends to the multi-level character of the institutionalcontext.

To be sure, the distinction between move-ments operating outside and inside fieldsraises questions for future work about theirdifferent enabling conditions, trajectories oreffects. Insiders will more likely pursue dif-ferent tactics and forms of contestation thanoutsider groups. They will likely obilize col-lectively in different ways, frame problemsand solutions differently, and differentiallynegotiate or exploit structures, networks andinstitutional frames provided by establishedfields. And they may be more likely to err onthe conservative side. Conversely, outsiderspursuing disruptive activities face legitimacydilemmas that may pressure them to mobilizeas insiders, articulate their projects withexisting institutional logics, or form separate,decoupled organizations for disruptive andconventional action (Elsbach & Sutton 1992;Lipsky 1968). And, as we suggest in part IV,we can also profitably consider how outsiderand insider movements occur in waves orsequences, producing historical trajectoriesof change. Fortunately, future work on bothkinds of movements can exploit existingresearch on how institutional contexts moregenerally shape mobilization and movementefficacy.

INSTITUTIONAL FIELDS AS CONTEXTSFOR MOVEMENTS

While the work just described provides richdepictions of movements as agents of institu-tional creation and change, analysts of ‘out-sider’ and ‘insider’ movements have also paidcareful attention to the institutional context of social movements. They have not

only begun to theorize how multiple logicswithin fields can motivate contestation andcollective action (Stryker 2000; Seo & Creed2002; Morrill 2006), they have also consid-ered how existing institutional contextsshape mobilization and movements’ capaci-ties for producing change. Indeed, addressingrelations between movements, institutionalcontexts and outcomes lays the foundationfor more sophisticated analyses of power andagency. It lets scholars go beyond simplepower elite or interest group arguments aboutagency and change to consider how extantinstitutions block access, provide chal-lengers with lever and openings, and other-wise condition actors’ ability to translatenumbers, resources or organization intochange. Moreover, in exploring relationsbetween movements, contexts and outcomes,institutionalists have made good use ofresearch on political opportunity structure(McAdam 1999; Tarrow 1998; McAdam,Tarrow, & Tilly 2002) and related argumentsabout institutional mediation (Amenta,Carruthers, & Zylan 1992; Amenta & Zylan1991) and institutional contingency (Thornton& Occasio 1999; Bartley & Schneiberg 2002;Schneiberg Clemens 2006; Lounsbury 2007),supporting a deepening integration of move-ments research and neo-institutional analysts.

Work at this interface has identified vari-ous features institutional and political fieldsthat condition movement dynamics or suc-cess. These include the legacies of prior policies, the receptivity of institutionalauthorities toward challengers’ claims, theconcentration of resources within a field, andthe prevalence of certain cultural models.Work on contexts has also shown how themulti-level character of fields provides open-ings for challengers, and how movementsevoke counter-movements within fields.

Davis and colleagues’ studies of shareholdermovements nicely document how success mayhinge on the institutional context (Davis &Thompson 1994; Davis & Greve 1997; Davis& McAdam 2000; Vogus & Davis 2005).During the 1980s, shareholder activists mobilized to promote new conceptions of the


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corporation, transform the markets for corpo-rate control, and break the hold of vestedmanagerial interests over large US firms. Tothis end, shareholder groups formed neworganizations, launched takeover actionsagainst individual firms, used existing gover-nance machinery to oust entrenched man-agers, and sought legislative and regulatorychanges, relying on their considerable mate-rial resources and connections. Yet activists’ability to translate resources into change wasinstitutionally and organizationally medi-ated. The concentration of assets held byinstitutional investors provided shareholderactivists with critical leverage in firm-levelconflicts with management over the controlof corporations. The SEC’s review of proxy,rules weakened managers’ ability to controlvotes and signaled a favorable regulatorystance toward shareholders and corporatereform. State governments that were heavilydependent on franchise fees for incorporationwere reluctant to alienate shareholder groupsby passing anti-takeover statutes that woulddeprive shareholders of a key weapon. Andprosperity made it harder for vested intereststo use fears of economic ruin to mobilizepolitical support for anti-takeover legislation.

Soule and her colleagues likewise tracehow the ability of the women’s movement tosecure equal rights amendments fromAmerican states rested on political and insti-tutional opportunity structures (Soule &Olzak 2004; Soule & King 2006).Mobilization for equal rights amendmentswas more likely to result in ratification in states with a high level of electoral competitiveness, extensive histories of priorcivil rights legislation, and favorable(Democratic) allies in power. It was alsomore effective in public opinion climatescharacterized by the prevalence of new con-ceptions of women’s roles in private andpublic spheres.

Findings that public opinion climatesenhance prospects for movements are partic-ularly noteworthy here, as they move beyondtraditional realist formulations about politi-cal opportunity structure to consider how

culture shapes mobilization and change.Some of the studies discussed above high-light how institutionalized models or logicsrepresent cultural resources for mobilization,framing and change. So does research byLounsbury and Hironaka, Schofer and Frank.Shifts in the recycling field from a radical,holistic logic to a technocratic logic facili-tated the creation of recycling advocacygroups in urban regions in response to con-test waste management through incineration(Lounsbury 2005). More broadly, the diffu-sion of environmentalism as a global blue-print for the nation state has enhanced thecapacity of domestic environmental activiststo organize and slow environmental degrada-tion (Frank, Hironaka, & Schofer 2000;Hironaka & Schofer 2002; Schofer &Hironaka 2005). As these studies suggest,formal mechanisms (e.g., environmentalimpact assessments) and the prevalence ofglobal environmentalism as a valued culturalmodel have legitimated environmental move-ments, fueling organization, while creatingrhetorical and procedural opportunities foractivists to point out failures and pursue legalactions.

Research on movements and institutionalcontexts has also documented how the multi-level or federated character of institu-tions sometimes creates opportunities formovements. The multi-level nature of fieldsis central to institutionalist imageries of context (Scott 2001; Schneiberg &Clemens 2006), and bears directly on move-ments’ capacities to produce change. As Davis and colleagues’ analyses of share-holder activism show, challengers sometimeshave to mobilize simultaneously at multiplelevels within fields to assert new models andeffect change (Davis & Thompson 1994;Davis et al. 1994; Davis & Greve 1997;Vogus & Davis 2005). Shareholder group were mainly interested in promotingnew conceptions of the corporation and contesting entrenched management at thefirm (‘lower order’) level. But they quicklyfound that they had to take the fight to thestate and federal level. Influencing these


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‘higher order’ units were essential for chal-lengers’ ability to make change, since stateand federal laws set the terms for mobiliza-tion and access at the firm-level, definingrules for proxy systems, takeovers andwhether shareholders could act collectively.By blocking anti-takeover legislation, secur-ing new proxy rules, and so on, shareholderactivism at state and federal levels createdcritical opportunities for mobilization againstand within corporations.

The fractured and multi-level structure ofinstitutions also enabled anti-corporategroups to get insurance rate regulation on thestates’ agenda in the early twentieth century(Schneiberg & Soule 2005; Schneiberg &Bartley 2001; Schneiberg 1999). Challengersseeking decentralized, producer republicanmodels of economic development werelargely closed out of policy making and had little leverage for their regulatory ambi-tions in New York, Connecticut and othercenters of the ‘insurance combine.’ But themore peripheral, agrarian states proved moreopen to populist pressures, enabling agrarianand independent producers to assert statistregulatory measures in the insurance field,disrupt markets, and organize mutuals.Insurers tried to close off access entirely bysuing in state and federal courts to voidstates’ rights to regulate insurance prices. Yet, that strategy backfired when advocatesof regulation found an unexpected ally in the US Supreme Court, which opened thedoor for further intervention in states byruling that insurance was ‘affected with apublic interest’ and thus subject to the states’authority.

Indeed, the multi-level character of fieldscreates possibilities for movements to couplefield-level and intra-organizational mobiliza-tion, with the characteristics of organizationsserving as opportunity structures that shapethe capacities of movements within organiza-tions to produce change. For example, uni-versities and colleges that had previouslyexperienced recycling activism on campushired full-time ecologically-committed coor-dinators and created full-blown recycling

programs while schools without movementstended to adopt a more minimalist approachthat was staffed by part-time custodial staff (Lounsbury 2001). Moreover, ecologi-cal activists were better able to gainfootholds for securing programs at larger college and universities with more resources,selective colleges with histories of activism, and universities with environmen-tal majors that could serve as local allies or institutional conduits for field-level pressures.

Finally, researchers attending to contexthave also found that outcomes are shaped bywhether or not initial movements catalyzecounter-movements within fields. Vogus andDavis’ (2005) study of anti-takeover legisla-tion takes one step in this direction by ana-lyzing how managerial and local elitescounter-organized in response to shareholderactivism to obtain legislation that protectedcorporate managers from raiders and hostiletakeovers. Soule and colleagues’ analyses goone step further. In analyzing states’ adoptionof the Equal Rights Amendment, they simul-taneously include variables for the presenceor strength of women’s movement groups(NOW and AAUW) and anti-ERA organiza-tions (Soule & Olzak 2004; Soule & King2005). Similarly, in modeling the passage of anti-hate crime laws, they include counts ofpro-gay community organizations and community centers, on the one hand, andmeasures of conservative group lobbying and the presence of a Family Policy Council, on the other (Soule 2004). Ingramand Rao (2004) also think in terms of move-ments and counter-movements, but elaboratea different research strategy, analyzing thepassage and then the repeal of legislationbanning chain stores as indicies of populistmobilization and chain store counter-mobilization over the rise of new marketforms. In this way also, the capacities ofmovements to promote change or new pathcreation rests not just on size, resources ormovement strength, but also on the structureand dynamics of the political and institu-tional context.


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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND NEO-INSTITUTIONAL THEORY:FUTURE DIRECTIONS

We conclude our review by discussing newfrontiers for analyzing combinations of insti-tutional process and social movements assources of path creation and change. Futurework, we suggest, can and should attend morecarefully to key methodological issues ofmeasurement and modeling. It can also fruit-fully consider how movements producechange as political forces or conditions for dif-fusion, while simultaneously addressing howmovements are endogenously produced andalways institutionally conditioned. Such anapproach captures the substantial benefits ofintroducing contestation and collective actioninto institutional analysis. But it does so whileavoiding the traps of either invoking move-ments as extra-institutional forces or simplyusing movements to assert agency and aban-don institutional context entirely. Such anapproach, in other words, engages, rather thanavoids, the paradoxes of embeddedness andanalytical impasses involved in explainingpath creation and change (Seo & Creed 2002;Schneiberg 2007). We begin with a discussionof methodological issues, and then emphasizetwo major substantive categories for futureresearch – the outcomes of movements and theorigins of institutions and movements.

Measuring and modeling movements

Much of the work on movements from a neo-institutional perspective has relied on quali-tative and historical methods, playing tothose methods’ strengths in theory construc-tion and producing a rich body of theory andthick descriptions. Supplementing qualitativework with multivariate quantitative researchcan not only help systematize theory con-struction in important ways, it can also helpclarify causal relations, isolate effects, andstrengthen inferences about movement emer-gence and outcomes.

There are substantial methodological chal-lenges involved in documenting movementeffects on path creation and institutionalchange, challenges that literally multiply asresearchers address the moderating influenceof existing institutional contexts. At a mini-mum, documenting movement effectsdepends on credibly measuring the develop-ment, strength and activities of challengermovements. Existing research linking move-ments, organizations and institutions hasmade real progress here, using the presenceof movement organization or chapters,counts of movement organizations, and thenumber of movement members to documentmovement emergence and strength (e.g.,Lounsbury 2001; Schneiberg 2002; Soule &King 2006). It also suggests that future workcan more directly tap such effects by measur-ing protests and other movement activity, orby using newspaper coverage, public hear-ings or other measures of controversy toassess whether movements have been able toforce issues or new conceptions on the publicagenda or call existing arrangements intoquestion.

Documenting movement effects also restscritically on using movement research andmultivariate approaches to isolate and disen-tangle the effects of movement strength oractivity, mobilizing structures, framing, andinstitutional or political opportunity struc-tures (for exemplars, see Vogus & Davis2005 and Soule & King 2006). Absent multi-variate designs or careful comparative analy-sis, inferences about movement effects onchange remain vulnerable to counterclaimsabout spurious relations.

Furthermore, designing research thatattends explicitly to multiple factors is partic-ularly important for addressing how existinginstitutions and opportunity structuresenhance or undermine movements’ capaci-ties for influence, disruption, and new pathcreation. Research on institutions or politicalopportunity structures sometimes analyzesthose factors additively. But whether madeby movement scholars or neo-institutional-ists, arguments about political opportunity


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and institutional mediation are fundamen-tally arguments about interaction effects(Thornton & Occasio 1999; Bartley &Schneiberg 2002; Schneiberg & Clemens2006). They are arguments that political or institutional configurations amplify orblunt the effects of movement numbers,resources or activities on policies, paths andchange. And they can be implemented empir-ically in relatively straightforward ways(Amenta & Zylan 1991; Amenta et al. 1992;Schneiberg 2002; Soule & Olzak 2004;Soule 2004).

Mobilization outcomes: movements, politics and(heterogeneous) diffusion

A second, more substantive direction forfuture research revisits the relationshipbetween collective mobilization and diffu-sion, and considers how movements operateas political forces in promoting the spread ofalternatives. Thinking in these terms keepspolitics and power at the forefront of a recon-stituted institutional analysis, while high-lighting how diffusion is often a contestedpolitical process (Schneiberg & Soule 2005;Fiss & Zajac 2005; Hirsch & Lounsbury1997). Researchers have demonstrated thatsocial movements can shape the compositionof fields and fuel path creation by promotingnew kinds of forms such as craft breweries(Carroll & Swaminathan 2000), nouvellecuisine (Rao, Monin, & Durand 2003),mutual, cooperative and state enterprises(Schneiberg 2002, 2007), and community-based, non-profit recycling centers(Lounsbury, Ventresca, & Hirsch 2003; seealso Clemens 1997; Rao, Morrill, & Zald2000). Yet as also noted, mobilization canspark counter-mobilization by powerfulvested interests threatened by novel prac-tices, pitting industrial brewers against craftproducers, managers and unions againstshareholders, or corporations against cooper-atives and state enterprises. Such counter-attacks are typically political, often involve

state power, and can hinder, halt or evenreverse the diffusion of new forms.

Under these conditions, diffusion is a con-tested process, and the success of the initialmovement for alternatives depends onwhether or not challengers can muster politi-cal support to place and keep alternatives onthe agenda (Soule & King 2005; King,Cornwall, & Dahlin 2005). Under these con-ditions, the diffusion of novel practicesdepends on challengers’ abilities to mobilizesufficient power (resources, numbers, organ-ization) to secure authorizing legislation,defend alternatives politically, and so on. Forexample, the diffusion of mutuals and coop-eratives in the US economy was most exten-sive where anti-corporate forces could securedecisive political victories against corpora-tions, including anti-trust laws and populistrailroad regulation (Schneiberg 2002, 2007).Under these conditions, movements matternot just as a conduit, theorizer or assemblerof frames and new forms, but also, and morecritically, as an accumulator of politicalpower and thus an essential political condi-tion for diffusion.

Considering movements as political condi-tions for diffusion revises conventional viewsof the relationship between movements,institutions and outcomes. Arguments aboutpolitical opportunity structure trace howexisting institutional structures condition theeffects of movements and mobilization onpolicies and change. Here, politics andpower are institutionally contingent (Amentaet al. 1992; Thornton & Occasio 1999;Thornton 2002; Bartley & Schneiberg 2002).As institutional systems become more open tochallengers or provide them with elite allies,movements’ abilities to translate conventionalresources into desired outcomes will increase.Favorable institutional contexts amplify theeffect of movement numbers, organizations orresources on change outcomes.

Conceptualizing movements as politicalforces for diffusion inverts this logic, sug-gesting that institutional dynamics of diffu-sion are politically contingent. Whether ornot actors can adopt, borrow or translate


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novel forms depends on the capacities ofchallenger movements to amass politicalresources, defend novel forms againstcounter-attacks, and create favorable politi-cal contexts for the spread of alternatives(Schneiberg, King & Smith 2008). Here,institutional effects depend on movementpower. Generally speaking, the likelihood of an organization adopting a new practiceincreases as professional communitiesendorse the practice and the number of prioradopters increase. Professional endorsementand increased prevalence of practicesincreases their legitimacy. But, where novelforms are subject to contestation, diffusionwill require the mobilization of numbers,resources or organization to defend and pro-tect these alternatives. Absent such mobiliza-tion, endorsement or prior adoption will havelittle or no effect on subsequent adoption. Yetas champions of alternatives mobilize andshift the balance of power, endorsement andprior adoptions will have increasingly power-ful effects on subsequent adoption, transla-tion or other institutional processes.

Overall, our knowledge of how move-ments create favorable political contexts forthe diffusion and translation of alternatives isrelatively undeveloped. However, futureresearch can draw on both a multi-level per-spective and existing strategies for modelingdiffusion. In principle, movements can sup-port diffusion as a political force at either the field-level or within organizations.Movements can raise the overall receptivityof organizations to new practices by amass-ing numbers and resources to contest field-wide authorities, report success stories inmedia, enhance the visibility of new prac-tices, or demonstrate the possibility of dis-ruption and change. As movements mobilizeeffectively at this level, they create politicalspace for alternatives and multiple logicsacross entire fields, increasing the risk ofadoption of novel practices in the aggregate.

Alternatively, movements can shift thebalance of power and enhance receptivity bymobilizing ‘locally’ within individual organ-izations and making particular organizations

or subsets of organizations susceptible toalternatives that are endorsed or adopted bypeers. Here, movements operating as politi-cal forces within organizations can fuel a dif-ferential flow of a novel practices acrossorganizations.

Furthermore, as movements become morepowerful, they can fuel variation in the con-tent of practices that diffuse within fields. Inthe recycling case, activist groups on cam-puses pushed colleges and universities to gobeyond minimal approaches to recyclingstaffed by part-time custodial staff to adoptprograms with full-time ecologically-com-mitted coordinators (Lounsbury 2001).Similarly, in the insurance case, increasingthe political strength of anti-corporate forcesdrove some states beyond limited, anti-dis-crimination forms of price regulation to fullrate control measures that gave regulatorsauthority to order comprehensive changes inrates (Schneiberg & Bartley 2001).

Fortunately, well-developed tools areavailable for analyzing movements as politi-cal conditions for diffusion, provided meas-ures of movement strength or presence areavailable. To analyze how movements createpossibilities for diffusion by shifting the bal-ance of power at the field-level, models ofadoption can employ interaction effects toexamine whether the political strength ofmovements at the field-level moderates theeffects on organizational adoption of prioradoption by peers or endorsement by expert-professionals. To analyze these dynamics atthe organizational level, a similar strategycould be used, provided measures are available of the presence, strength or efficacyof movements within organizations.Researchers could again use interactioneffects to see if the strength of movements inorganizations increases the effects of preva-lence or endorsement on the likelihood ofthose organizations adopting novel practices.

Alternatively, one can use heterogeneousdiffusion models (Strang & Soule 1998) to see whether increasing movement strength within organizations renders themmore susceptible to the influence of peers


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or professions. As Soule’s (2006) study ofuniversity divestment shows, student protestson campuses against investing in SouthAfrica did not directly promote divestment.But by increasing awareness among adminis-trators of university and surrounding com-munities, demonstrations were a naggingreminder that rendered colleges and universi-ties more vulnerable to legitimacy pressures,making them more likely to divest as theirpeers jumped on the bandwagon.

Finally, future research can use existinganalytical strategies, including competinghazards models, to analyze how growingmovement strength might promote the diffu-sion of increasingly varied, comprehensiveor radical alternatives (Lounsbury 2001;Schneiberg & Bartley 2001). In this way, too,institutionalists can address how movementsas political forces shape not just the overallflow of practices across fields, but also thedifferential flow of alternatives and practicevariants within them.

The origins of institutions: history,sequence and layering

An important and neglected question in neo-institutionalism is where institutions such asfields, practices or paths come from and howthey are forged or elaborated over time. Associologists have emphasized, there is nevera clean slate. Rather, new fields and arenas ofsocial life are typically constructed from therubble, or flotsam and jetsam, of previousinstitutions or paths not taken (Stark 1996;Schneiberg 2007) or from variations pro-duced within extant fields (Lounsbury &Crumley 2007). After all, as Meyer andRowan (1977: 345) observe in their classicpiece, ‘the building blocks for organizationscome to be littered around the social land-scape; it takes only a little entrepreneurialenergy to assemble them into a structure.’Moreover, new systems are often not createdin one fell swoop, through one wave of diffu-sion or comprehensives settlements. Rather,paths may emerge through multiple waves,

over time, via sequences or successive stagesof translation, layering, theorization andassembly that elaborate and innovate on pre-vious, partial accomplishments (Streeck &Thelen 2005). And central to field and pathcreation is some sort of collective mobiliza-tion or movement, not just a single burst oforganization, but also waves or cycles ofmobilization and organizational formation.

The parallels between institutionalistimageries of path creation as waves of layer-ing, on the one hand, and movement researchon cycles of mobilization and protest, on theother, suggest that linking the two can pro-vide new insights for future research on pathcreation and change, while adding new his-torical dimensions to neo-institutional schol-arship. Movement scholars have doneimportant work in highlighting the sequenc-ing of social movements and cycles of protest(e.g., Tarrow 1998), tracing, among otherthings, how contentious politics that involvetactics such as protest are transformed intomore conventional forms of political actionsuch as lobbying (Meyer & Tarrow 1998;Kriesi, Koopmans, Duyvendak, & Giugni1995). Minkoff (e.g., 1993, 1997) adds orga-nizational dimensions to the analysis ofsequences, showing how the proliferation ofradical organizations created legitimacy andfavorable political opportunities for subse-quent organization by advocacy and practi-tioner groups, institutionalizing civil rightsmore deeply within American politics.

For their part, institutionalists have justbegun to think in these terms. But prelimi-nary efforts to analyze path and field creationas waves of mobilization, structuration andlayering have established a new direction forfuture research. Lounsbury, Ventresca andHirsch (2003) took one step in this direction,showing how efforts by early and more radi-cal ‘outsider’ environmental movements inthe 1960s and 1970s to restructure capitalismvia not-for-profit, community-based recy-cling centers unintentionally laid foundationsfor subsequent mobilization by insidergroups in the 1980s to create a for-profitrecycling industry. Most non-profit recycling


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centers proved economically non-viable, butthey nonetheless trained a generation ofAmericans in the habits of saving, cleaning,and sorting their trash, a critical culturalinfrastructure for the creation of marketsbased on curb-side pick up.

Schneiberg (2007; Schneiberg, King &Smith 2008) takes this avenue of research astep further in analyzing the development ofmutual, cooperative and publicly ownedenterprise in the US economy. For the mostpart, populists and the radical anti-corporatemovements of the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries faced decisive defeats intheir efforts to forge alternatives to corporatecapitalism. But even though they collapsed,these movements nevertheless left behindorganizational, cultural and institutionallegacies – bit and pieces of the paths they hadpursued, including theories of order, regula-tory fragments, local movement chapters, andalternative systems of enterprise in key indus-tries. These legacies of previous mobilization,in turn, served as legitimating structures, plat-forms and infrastructures for subsequent col-lective mobilization in the same or relatedindustries during the Progressive era, andthen in the early New Deal. Indeed, succes-sive waves of reformers and anti-corporateforces built or transposed theories, moral sen-timents and cooperative forms out from insur-ance and other early sites of alternativeenterprise into the dairy and grain industries,the electrical utility industry and banking,elaborating what amounts to a secondary pathof industrial order in the US economy.

Haveman, Rao and Paruchuri’s (2007)study of Progressivism and savings and loansassociations likewise highlights the distaland often unintended effects of movementson organizational fields. Progressive activistsquite deliberately and directly sought toreform a variety of economic institutions,from the railroads to savings and loan associ-ations. Yet they also fostered Progressivemodels of rationality, bureaucratization andexpert management within the thrift industryindirectly, via two intermediary institutions.Activists formed Progressive newspapers

that exposed corruption and promulgatedreform principles, and promoted city-man-ager forms of municipal government thatexemplified those principles, providing tan-gible analogies for reformers within the thriftindustry. Both institutions promoted the con-stitutive legitimacy of bureaucracy, prompt-ing saving and loans associations to adoptorganizational forms more consistent with‘modernist’ moral sentiments.

Nor are these processes confined to eco-nomic industries or organizational dynamics.As Armstrong (2002, 2005) illustrates, thelegacy of initial movements may also includethe establishment of new identities, culturaltools such as frames and logics, and ‘creativecontexts’ that enable subsequent groups tocontinue struggles, mobilize and realize new gains in their efforts. The rise of theNew Left in the 1960s enabled the creationof new kinds of lesbian/gay organizationalidentities in San Francisco in the early 1970s.The development of gay identity politics, inturn, proved crucial in structuring subsequentlesbian/gay organizations as well as enablingchanges within mainstream organizationssuch as the establishment of domestic partnerbenefits (Creed & Scully 2000; Scully &Creed 2005). While this work traces thesequencing and layering from ‘outsider’ to‘insider’ movements, it would be interestingto also understand how ‘insider’ movementsfacilitate ‘outsider’ mobilizations.

Overall, the approach to movements andinstitutions that we advocate celebrates theheterogeneity of actors, multiple logics andpractice variation. A focus on such multiplic-ity revises the isomorphic imagery of thecanonical two-stage diffusion and punctuatedequilibrium models (e.g., Tolbert & Zucker1983). Such a perspective concentrates lesson the contagion of unitary practices or a sin-gular rationality, but rather on multiple formsof rationality that inform the decision makingof actors in fields (Bourdieu 1984), and pro-vide foundations for ongoing struggle andcontestation. This conceptualization of insti-tutionalization and fields as multiple, frag-mented and contested (Schneiberg & Soule


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2005; Washington & Ventresca 2004;Lounsbury 2007) is a crucial ontologicalstarting point for a new wave and generationof institutional scholars. And when combinedwith a renewed attention to movements, itdirects analytical attention to how historicallegacies of prior social action becomeembedded in existing fields, providing basesfor sequences of mobilization, and the con-struction of new paths from the elements orruins of old or forgotten orders. The earlywork in this direction has proven fruitful andpromises to propel institutional analysis formany years to come.

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