From Mobilization to Revolution, Charles Tilly, 1978

This reading is a long one, and consists of three chapters of the book. As in other readings, I will attempt to give a brief summary of each chapter and assume that this will be sufficient for our purposes. Tilly is an important author on the subject of social change, which means that this section is an important one to cover.

Chapter 3, Interests, Organization, and Mobilization.

The three topics suggested in the title of this chapter make up the bulk of this chunk of the book (all 46 pages of it). Here's the problem with my summary: the summary is, by necessity, brief, but the chapter, by design, is very complex and contains an enormous amount of information. Much of this information is in the form of models, and of describing exactly how each of these models works. There is not space in this summary to go over even one of these models in sufficient detail to give you a proper idea of how it is supposed to work, so I have resorted to a frankly incomplete analysis of the main model that is the subject of the chapter. Since you will probably not even have time during the exam to lay out this model, I think that my brevity can be excused.

Basic premise: the object of the book is to develop an understanding of collective action- of revolts, strikes, uprisings, and various forms of social change. Toward that end, Tilly proposes a model with seven component parts. Four of those parts, interests, organization, mobilization and collective action, are discussed in this chapter; the others, repression/ facilitation, opportunity/ threat, and power, are discussed in a subsequent chapter (which is not included in the reading). For this portion of the summary, I will cover the first four parts in brief- and that will be all I do for now, in light of limited space and time.

Briefly: at the top of the model is interest. Interest affects organization and mobilization unidirectionally. Organization also affects mobilization, also unidirectionally. Mobilization in turn affects collective action, also unidirectionally. Got it?? The remaining variables are discussed in Chapter 4, which will follow.

Definitions. What does each of these terms mean? This is the meat of the summary.

Interest. How do we establish who wants what? We can listen to the statements of individuals ("we workers want better pay for our labor") and we can infer interests from people's social positions (oppressed laborers in general will want better pay for their labor). There may be some conflicts between individual and group interests, of course: as an individual, I may be better off breaking the strike and getting high pay for non-union labor, but as a manual laborer I may be better off holding out with my peers for higher wages in general for all laborers. The dilemma is a classic game theory one- any individual may be better off not participating, but the whole group is better if most actors participate. The "free rider" problem. This is the essence of what is meant by "interest."

Organization. The idea of organization follows directly from the concepts of categories and networks. A set of individuals is a "group" to the extent that they comprise both of these. A category is something like a national identity, a common position in the firm hierarchy, or a sexual identity (to name a random few); a network is a set of social connections, like a group of friends or a set of machinists who all know each other personally. If the identity in both variables is high (strong sense of national identity and strong, extensive social network, for example) the organization of the group is said to be "high" as well.

Mobilization. This is the process by which a group goes from being a passive collection of individuals to an active participant in social life (its opposite obviously being "demobilization"). A group mobilizes if it gains greater collective control over some set of resources. Note: the key word in that sentence is "control" - the actual use of resources is collective action; control over resources represents a potential to use them, the step right before actual use. Mobilization is defined as the product (mathematically) of the "market value of the available labor/ resources" and the "probability of delivery of those resources when called for." Put more simply, the issues are 1.) what resources do you have access to, and 2.) what is the likelihood of getting them when you ask for them. If you have few resources but high delivery rates, you will fail to achieve mobilization and therefore will fail to complete successful collective action.

Collective action. This is the outcome variable. It is defined as "joint action in pursuit of common ends." Such action is collective to the extent that it produces inclusive, indivisible goods (draining a swamp to prevent malaria, for example, or achieving the overthrow of a tyrannical ruler). In this sense, successful law suits with large payoffs where the payoffs are divided evenly between a number of plaintiffs is a form of individual action, since the goods are divisible and actors participate to the extent that they expect such a payoff; likewise, class action suits brought by a few individuals on behalf of a class of citizens is also not a form of collective action, since the total group payoff is a by-product of the actions of a few individuals (though if you limit your analysis to that group of individuals, you can re-define the action as collective). Tilly proposes a series of complex methods for understanding the mechanics of collective action (the zealot, miser, run-of-the-mill, and opportunist models) which would take another four paragraphs to explain, and then follows this with two more general models. I will save you the grief, but know that the methods for understanding "collective action" as an event are numerous and complex.

That's it for this chapter. The final paragraph is an introduction to the next section, in which the other major variables (mentioned at the beginning of this chapter summary) are to be discussed.

Chapter 4, The Opportunity to Act Together

Whereas the previous chapter dealt with the capacity to act, this chapter deals with the opportunity to act. It includes an analysis of the opportunity/ threat, repression/ facilitation, and power aspects of social movements. As before, I will hit on each of these points, and move on to the next chapter; the details (and they are extensive) are omitted.

On this side of the diagram, collective action is affected by power and by opportunity/ threat; opportunity/ threat is also affected directly by power; and finally, power is affected by repression/ facilitation. On to the component parts:

Repression/ Facilitation. Contention for power always involves at least two parties (either individuals or groups). Repression is any action by one group which raises the other group's cost of collective action; conversely, an action which lowers another group's cost is facilitation. From a governmental point of view, raising the costs of mobilization is a more reliable repressive strategy than raising the costs of collective action along (an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure). The bulk of this portion of the chapter focuses on different forms of government repression; it is too long and too complex to be adequately included.

Power. Power is the extent to which the interests of a given party prevail over other parties' interests with which the first party is in conflict. The more powerful the group, the less likely it is to be repressed. A group is effective to the extent that it is successfully able to further its agenda, flex its muscle; it is efficient to the extent that it gets large returns on its investments of energy and resources. This distinction between power-as-effectiveness and power-as-efficiency is a subtle but important one, for both forms of power "count" in the model. To survive and prosper, groups must maintain certain minimum levels of power-efficiency and power-effectiveness.

Opportunity/ Threat. Clearly, this variable has two dimensions. On the opportunity side is the extent to which other groups (like, for example, the government) are vulnerable to new claims by a particular group which would, if successful, enhance that group's realization of its interests; on the threat side is the extent to which other groups are threatening to make claims that would, if successful, reduce the particular group's realization of its interests. The great axiom of this section is that threat generates more collective action than opportunity: "European peasant communities relied on their local communication networks and shared understandings in getting together to chase out the unwanted tax collector. They had much more trouble sending a delegation to the capital to demand an alteration of the tax burden." If a group is powerful, it can reduce threats or take advantage of opportunities more easily than less powerful groups.

Chapter 5, Changing forms of collective action.

This will be an all-too-brief analysis of the subject of the chapter. The three general forms of collective action are competitive, reactive, and proactive. I will quickly cover each. Competitive collective action. This occurs when several pre-existing groups are jockeying for greater control over some resource or social position or status. The author gives the example of the "charivari," an European practice where a re-married widower would find himself awakened in the night by a band of youths burning him and his new wife in effigy. The point here is that the widower is attempting to subvert the "moral order," and the youths are attempting to compete with this action by collective mobilizing to humiliate the offender. Frankly, I think it is a weak example. But you get the idea.

Reactive collective action. In this instance, a group is mobilizing to keep hold of resources that it already has because some other group is threatening to claim those resources. Attempts to raise taxes on the rich might fall in this category if they result in organized groups of rich tax payers who do not want to pay higher taxes.

Proactive collective action. This is the case where a group rises to assert claims that have not previously been exercised. The ERA movement and the black insurgency could be categorized as proactive- the groups in question were formulating demands for resources, not in competition with other groups nor to prevent the loss of existing resources, but to get rights and privileges for the first time. In general, demonstrations and strikes fall into the category of proactive collective action (rich people do not "go on strike" to demand that taxes on them not be increased).

At any given time, a certain repertoire of actions is available to a given group (hence the title of this chapter). For example, most Americans know how to attend a demonstration, and can organize one on relatively short notice. But most Americans do not know how to hijack a plane (this is the author's example). In different contexts, different forms of action can be seen as legitimate, productive ways of achieving certain group goals. This presents some interesting questions: what other forms of action are really available to the group, and how appropriate and efficient are the means actually used- what alternatives are available. It seems that similar groups in similar situations tend to rely on similar means of achieving their goals- terrorists in both the Middle East and Ireland are fanatical, religiously-based, pseudo-political groups confronting organized national and international governments with demands for drastic local change; the appropriate means selected by these groups for affecting that change seems to be through bombings (though the actual effectiveness of this method is open to question). Prior experience will dictate the methods chosen (we bombed them last time, let's bomb them again), as well as repression (bombing results in more repression than signing petitions; maybe we should shift tactics) and the previous effectiveness of those actions (bombing is getting us nowhere; maybe we should call our senator).

The chapter proceeds with an in-depth examination of strikes in the 19th century in western industrial countries. It is very long and complex, and I do not include it here. If you are really interested, you should examine it first hand. I end the summary here- I have already written too much on this book.