Please Stop Helping Us! The Influence of Allies and Opponents on Social Movement Policy Outcomes in Southeast Europe: The Cases of BiH, Bulgaria and Macedonia

Allies and opponents of social movements still lie in the realm of the “undiscovered”. Following the main strands of the political opportunity structure approach in social movement studies, one cannot ignore the relevance of external actors in reference to SMOs (social movement organizations). Both allies and opponents of social movements play a significant role in influencing the outcomes following claims which have been put forward by the challengers. This paper will reflect on key actions and roles of main friends and opponents of movements in three protest movements in Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia: the protests against the Boyko Borisov government in February 2013, the anti-governmental protests in Bosnia and Herzegovina in February/March 2014 (the so called “Bosnian Spring”) and the “Citizens for Macedonia” protest platform which was active in Macedonia from May to July 2015. The text will shed light on their influence on policy outcomes which the movements produced. Strong emphasis will be put on the role of mainstream political parties. I deem their role to be one of the crucial for the selected cases, mainly because of the high level of politicization and polarization of society as a whole in the three countries, which later creates numerous political, class, ethnic and confessional cleavages. On the other hand, a very intriguing issue is the role of influential mainstream media outlets, which almost by default tacitly align, mostly, with political parties in power. Lastly, I treat as crucial the influence of the international community over movement outcomes. These external actors do not appear frequently in social movement studies, but they have strong relevance for the designated region. The cases will be approached by a MSSD method, based on over forty in-depth interviews with SMO representatives, activists, key informants and policy makers. Furthermore, I plan on presenting a political claim analysis (PCA) based on two daily newspapers per country. Lastly, the analysis of the policy documents (the policy outputs) will serve as proof for the degree of involvement of both allies and opponents of social movements in the Balkans.