Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, Doug McAdam, 1982

Before beginning this summary, it seems a good idea to set a particular scene: McAdam is writing about social movements, but he is doing so with the specific example of black insurgency as his model- for every argument he makes, it can be very useful (at least, it was for me) to think of it in terms of the attempts black Americans have made to achieve a fair position within American society. Using this "racial window" provides a helpful guide for following his argument. With that said, let us begin:

Chapter 3, The Political Process Model

McAdam offers a new model for the appearance and growth of social movements that contradicts the basic theories of the Resource Mobilization model (discussed elsewhere in these summaries) and the Classical perspective (which is not in our readings, it seems). It has two basic premises: 1.) social movements are political rather than psychological phenomena (this is where it contradicts the classical model, which states that individuals who get uppity eventually organize themselves to form social movements), and 2.) a social movement is a process without discrete stages of development or change.

It also contradicts an "elite" model, based on the idea that only social elites have the power to generate and sustain social movements. While it is true that most resources are concentrated in the hands of a few people in the U.S., McAdam focuses on the latent political power of the masses as a source of social change: "The insurgent potential of excluded groups comes from the 'structural power' that their location in various politico-economic structures affords them." McAdam concedes that the environment can seriously constrain the possibility of such non-elite social movements, but asserts that the environment is not a constant constraint, and that fluctuations in environmental pressure may permit such movements where they would otherwise not take place. McAdam admits that this is a pseudo-Marxist interpretation of social movements (sort of a, "when the moment is right, the masses will rise and change the system" way of thinking of things), but that a favorable interplay of both factors, environment and group "will," are critical in the generation of social change.

The political process model itself identifies three factors that are crucial in generating social revolution:

1.) The level of organization in the aggrieved population. You have to have people organized before they can demand change. He provides the examples of the NAACP and the rise of black colleges and churches as critical components of the African-American liberation movement. McAdam calls this "readiness."

2.) The perceived chances of success among the same people. You (as a group) have to think you have a chance of successfully accomplishing your goal before you will experience a genuine social movement. McAdam calls this "insurgent consciousness."

3.) The political alignment of groups within the greater social environment. Really, any large-scale social event or shift can present a political opportunity for a social movement. In the cases discussed by Skocpol, the various international wars made the ground fertile for revolt (this is an interesting connection between M. and S. that neither author mentions); in the case of the Tianenmen Square uprising, it was the death of a liberal member of the Chinese national government that served as a catalyst for the student uprising. Other events might be prolonged unemployment, rapid industrialization, or rapid demographic changes. You get the idea. McAdam calls these things the "structure of political opportunities."

So leaders and members of social movements must be ready, aware, and must have opportunity. McAdam provides a chart describing the relationship between these three factors; I will recap it briefly. He identifies opportunities and organization as the structural potential of the movement, both of which affect the consciousness of the group members and all three of which create the social movement. Further, the relationship between cognitive liberation and "indigenous organizational strength" is a reciprocal one, whereas the same relationship between consciousness and the expanding political opportunities is unidirectional (with the latter influencing the former and not vice versa). There is no direct relationship posited between the opportunities and the org. strength in this model (and, really, there is no reason for there to be one).

Here's an interesting term that McAdam uses, though he does not coin it: "fundamental attribution error." This is the tendency for individuals to blame themselves instead of the situation when things go wrong. This error is more common under conditions of individual isolation than under conditions of strong integration. Example (mine): when male military personnel are under female leadership on a training mission, and that mission succeeds, the men attribute the success to their intense cohesiveness as a group and not to their group leader; when the same group of men is under the leadership of a woman on the same kind of mission, and the mission fails, the men invariably identify the woman's inability to lead as the single most important factor in the mission's failure. The "gender fracture" here is a correlate of the idea of "fundamental attribution error" - the distance these men feel from the female leadership allows them to blame her for their failure, while not allowing her to receive credit for her success. When things go right, we "all" take credit; when they go wrong, they go wrong because somebody (the isolated outsider) messed up.

Chapter 6, The Generation of Black Insurgency

This chapter begins with a quick empirical evaluation of the classical and resource mobilization perspectives on black insurgency. In the case of the classical perspective, McAdam demonstrates that the simple cause-effect relationship between economic conditions and the rise of political action is non-existent- classical theorists have argued, for example, that as blacks income increases absolutely by some amount, but drops relative to the income of whites over a certain period of time, the blacks become restless and revolt. The available data do not support this strictly-economic theory.

The resource mobilization model also falls short: it predicts that resources must be mobilized before insurgency can take place. In fact, in the case of American black insurgency, the rise of political movements was followed, rather than preceded, by increasing resources. This directly contradicts the basic tenets of the R.M.M. by demonstrating that as social movements rise they start attracting more attention and that increased attention is how they acquire greater resources, rather than shifts in resources dictating which social movement will take place and which ones will not. "It was the rapid growth of the southern black churches, colleges, and NAACP chapters in the 1931-54 period that was to afford blacks the organizational strength needed to generate a campaign of collective insurgency."

The perspective that McAdam is proposing seeks to account for the disproportionate role played by these three institutions- not on the basis of their individual members, but on the characteristics of the institutions themselves.

So what were these characteristics? McAdam goes over each in detail. I will go over each summarily.

Members. These three groups provided the majority of the front-line participants in various protests and sit-ins that took place during the period in question. Any social movement needs a labor force, and these groups provided it.

Leaders. All social movements need leaders to structure them, help them define goals, and "lead the troops to war" (my cliche). By and large, the leaders of the black insurgency came from the church, from college campuses, and from the NAACP.

Communication Network. In order to expand the geographic base of operations of any social movement, information must be disseminated and people must be mobilized. Because the churches, colleges, and NAACP were regional or national in structure, they could facilitate the spread of information in a way that an unrelated group of dissidents could not. This gave the movement an enormous impetus.

Other Resources. This is McAdam's catch-all category. It includes such things as meeting places (largely provided by the churches), lawyers (largely provided by the NAACP), office supplies and mimeograph machines, etc. etc. The list could be added to indefinitely. Each major organization provided what it could to aid the movement, and each piece helped.

In this sense, McAdam is contradicting the previous theories about social movements. His predecessors claimed that such relatively powerless groups must await attention and resources from above if they are to have any chance of success; in contrast, "the political process model challenges... these accounts. First, while elite groups are not seen as willing, aggressive sponsors of social protest. And second, though clearly disadvantaged, challengers are assumed to possess sufficient resource strength to enable them- under favorable circumstances- to initiate a successful social movement."

Chapter 9, Political Process and Black Insurgency.

This "chapter" is 4 ? pages long, so my summary of it will be correspondingly brief. The first few pages are a re-hash of McAdam's argument- kind of an "I told you so" analysis, pointing out where he was right and previous models were wrong. But the point of this chapter, I think comes in its last paragraph. McAdam states that the giant of black political insurgency is merely sleeping; yes, the days of violent protest are over, for the moment, but he states that the continuing disparity between whites and blacks will one day erupt again into social protest, provided that his conditions for such a movement are met, of course. His argument is compelling: the persistent, grinding poverty of most black Americans, the subtleties and "blatantcies" of racial discrimination, and the divide, culturally, socially and economically, between blacks and whites, combine to create a pressure cooker that is slowly building up steam. The chapter, the whole book, ends on this note: repent, for the end is nigh. Based on the argument he makes, this seems like sound advice to take.