Complex Interaction: Social Movements and International Institutions

Abstract

Social movements and international institutions interact in manifold and complex ways that pose serious challenges to existing paradigms and research traditions in political science and sociology. Although the ‘contentious politics’ approach has been successful in explaining mobilization and protest behavior in social movements, and theories of international relations (IR) had successes in explaining institutional outcomes as a consequence of such protests, neither of them has been capable of theorizing the complex relationships between these unlikely pairs of actors. Therefore, this panel aims at blending perspectives from social movement studies with IR scholarship in order to account for political outcomes and processes, both in terms of social movement behavior and mobilization, as well as formal institutional politics in the international sphere. The contributions to this panel therefore aim at understanding the multiplicity of interactive relationships that have been evolving between transnational social movements and international institutions, from coopted and cooperative to hostile and disruptive interactions, by critically engaging with agency-centered concepts of advocacy, norm entrepreneurship and protest, and how these have to be thought anew when confronted with ‘cooperative’ repertoires such as institutionalization and cooptation.