The Europeanisation of Conflict: Reflections from a Social Movement Perspective

West European Politics

Volumn 18, Issue 2, 1995, Pages 223-251

  Tarrow, Sidney ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84937293660     PISSN: 01402382     EISSN: 17439655     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01402389508425070     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. In particular, federal and regulatory theory have helped scholars to transcend the international relations focus of earlier work. On the application of federal models, see Fritz Scharpf, ‘The Joint-Decision Trap: Lessons from German Federalism and European Integration’, Public Administration 66 (Autumn 1988), pp.239–78; Joseph Weiler, ‘The Transformation of Europe’, Yale Law Journal 100 (June 1991), pp.2403–83 and Alberta Sbragia, ‘The European Community: A Balancing Act’, Publius: The Journal of Federalism 23 (Summer 1993), pp.23–38. On regulatory theory, the dominant influence is that of Giandomenico Majone, ‘Regulatory Federalism in the European Community’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 10 (Aug. 1992), pp.299–316 and Renaud Dehouse, ‘Integration v. Regulation? On the Dynamics of Regulation in the European Community’, Journal of Common Market Studies 30 (Dec. 1992), pp.383–402.
2. The concept of the repertoire of contention is owed to Charles Tilly's work, first in his From Mobilization to Revolution (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978) and most recently in his Popular Contention in Britain, 1758–1834 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP). For further development and applications of the concept, see the contributions in Mark Traugott (ed.) Cycles and Repertoires of Collective Action (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1995).
3. For two exceptions that do attend to transnational European social movements and overcome the macrosociological bias of previous treatments, see Dieter Rucht, ‘“Think Globally, Act Locally?” Needs, Forms and Problems of Cross-National Cooperation Among Environmental Groups’ in J.D. Liefferink, P.D. Lowe and A.P. Mol (eds.), European Integration and Environmental Policy (London and NY: Belhaven Press, 1993), pp.75–96, and Gary Marks and Doug McAdam, ‘Social Movements and the Changing Structure of Political Opportunity in the European Community’, unpub. paper, 1993.
4. The early 1990s witnessed a virtual re-discovery of the interest group process. See Justin Greenwood, Jurgen R. Grote and Karsten Ronit (eds.), Organized Interests and the European Community (London: Sage, 1992); Sonia Mazey and Jeremy Richardson, ‘Environmental Groups and the EC: Challenges and Opportunities’, in David Judge (ed.), A Green Dimension for the European Community (London: Cass, 1993), pp.109–28; again Mazey and Richardson in their ‘EC Policy Making: An Emerging European Policy Style’, in Liefferink, Lowe and Mol (eds.), European Integration and Environmental Policy, pp.114–21; still more Mazey and Richardson in their Lobbying in the European Community (Oxford: OUP, 1993); and Philippe C. Schmitter and Wolfgang Streeck, ‘From National Corporatism to Transnational Pluralism: Organized Interests in the Single European Market’, Politics and Society 19 (1991), pp.133–64.
5. For this point of view laid out at greater length and supported by historical evidence, see the author's Power in Movement. Collective Action, Social Movements and Politics (Cambridge and NY: Cambridge UP, 1994).
6. The contributions in Liefferink, Lowe and Mol (eds.), European Integration and Environmental Policy and Russell Dalton's The Green Rainbow (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1994) both document this development.
7. 'spanish Fishermen Seize French Boat in Tuna War’, The European, 22–28 July 1994, p.6. For a somewhat hysterical narrative from the French point of view, see ‘Les pêcheurs de L'île d'Yeu témoignent de la violence de l'agression espanole,’ in Le Monde, 21 July 1994, p.18. For a surprisingly detached Spanish narration of the same affair, see ‘La guerra del bonito: A puerto con el botín’, El País, 25 July 1994, p.20.
8. See ‘La armada francesa captura un barco de España en repesalia por el conflicto pesquero’, El País, 25 July 1994, p.20 for the Spanish side of the story, and ‘Le conflit entre pecheurs espagnols et français semble s’apaiser’, Le Monde, 22 July 1994, for the French version.
9. ’La Guerre bleue’, Le Monde, 29 July 1994, p.26.
10. See ‘Le conflit entre pecheurs espagnols et français semble s’apaiser’, Le Monde, 22 July 1994, p.13 and ‘L’accord entre les professionnels de L'île d'Yeu et Jean Puech n’a pas calmé les courroux des pêcheurs espanols’, Le Monde, 28 July 1994, p.17. Alberta Sbragia points out that the decision to allow EU inspectors to monitor net sizes is implicitly an important extension of the European Commission's authority. This politically sensitive step may have been taken because the dispute occurs (and can be expected to recur) outside the territorial jurisdiction of any one country with explosive safety implications. I am grateful to Sbragia for her comments on this case, which had still to be resolved definitively at the time of writing.
11. ‘Atun contra Europa’, El Pais, 1 Aug. 1994, p.8; ‘Des chalutiers espagnols bloquent le port d'Hendaye’, Le Monde, 27 July 1994, p.17.
12. ‘Navy moves in to stop tuna war “wolf packs’”, The Times, 5 Aug. 1994, p.1; ‘Los boniteros espanoles rompen redes ilegales a barcos britanicos e irlandeses,’ El Pais, 8 Aug. 1994, p.21.
13. ’Navy moves in to stop tuna war “wolf packs’”, The Times, 5 Aug. 1994, p.1.
14. ’Navy seizes trawler in row over nets,’ in Guardian Weekly, 14 Aug. 1994, p.8. The Minister's disclaimer did not deter the Royal Navy from hastily escorting two Cornish fishing boats back home on suspicion of using nets of illegal length. The British tabloids had a field day criticising the government's action when it turned out that their nets were only a few metres longer than the statutory limit.
15. ’Dos meses de tension y de incidentes’, El País, 22 Aug. 1994, p.21.
16. Greenpeace took its complaint to Brussels, but it was never a central actor in the drama and was dismissed by most of the principals. A Cornish fishing representative summed up the feeling of all three sides about the pesky Greenpeace militants when he sniffed: ‘I don’t see what any of this has got to do with them. They’ve got rich parents so I suppose they can afford to waste time going out to Biscay Bay for no obvious reason.’ See ‘Rainbow warrior attacked', The Times, 7 Aug. 1994, pp.1–2.
17. One columnist evoked the image of Sir Francis Drake calmly playing bowls on shore as he waited for the Spanish fleet to arrive. No one was actually seen playing bowls, but it made a nice image. See ‘Net losses from the Battle of Biscay’, The Times, 5 Aug. 1994, p.14.
18. The claim would have more substance were it not that the Spanish, with 400 vessels to the 50 French and 11 British, take in more tons of tuna than all the other fleets combined. Thus sniffed The Times in a self-righteous editorial of 5 Aug. 1994, p.17.
19. The quote is from a tuna captain from Hondarribia, quoted in ‘Tempers run high on the “costa tuna” where old fishing habits die hard', The Times, 7 Aug. 1994, p.2.
20. See ‘Anger boils over in the Bay of Biscay’, Guardian Weekly, 14 Aug. 1994, p.8 and ‘Tempers run high’, The Times, 7 Aug. 1994, p.2.
21. ’Net losses from the Battle of Biscay’, The Times, 5 Aug. 1994, p.14.
22. The Times (note 20).
23. See Lynne Wozniak, ‘Industrial Restructuring and Political Protest in Socialist Spain’, Cornell Univ. PhD Diss., 1991, pp.4–5. The transfer of forms of collective action from one sector to another is one of the cardinal features of modern social movements. On this point, see Tarrow, Power in Movement, Ch.2.
24. See Tilly's forthcoming Popular Contention in Britain (note 2), Ch.8, for this definition and its application to Britain. For an elaboration of the logic of the definition and its constituent parts, see my Power in Movement, pp.3–6.
25. The inspiration for this definition, as well as its conceptual differentiation from social movements, is John McCarthy's and Mayer Zald's work. See, in particular, the essays collected in their edited volume, Social Movements in an Organizational Society (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1987). Elaborations of the theory of movement organizations will be found in Bert Klandermans (ed.), Organizing for Change: Social Movement Organizations in Europe and the United States, Int. Social Movement Res., Vol.2 (Greenwich, CT: JAI, 1989).
26. Thus, when Russell Dalton writes of the ‘environmental movement’ but focuses on nationally organized environmental interest groups, he is self-consciously choosing a sample that leans in the direction of institutionalized forms of action like lobbying, media contacts and informational campaigns, and away from contentious collective action. For his findings on the forms of action preferred by these groups, see his The Green Rainbow: Environmental Groups in Western Europe, Ch.7.
27. For the argument that the consolidation of national states structured the modern social movement, see my Power in Movement, Part I. A similar argument with more historical backing will be found in Tilly's forthcoming Popular Contention in Britain (note 2).
28. Michael Mann, ‘Nation-States in Europe and Other Continents: Diversifying, Developing, Not Dying’, Daedalus 122 (Summer 1993), p.117.
29. The literature on political opportunity structure with respect to social movements has a more than 20-year history, beginning with Peter Eisinger's ‘The Conditions of Protest Behavior in American Cities’, American Political Science Review 67 (1972), pp.11–28 and – in different language – in Charles Tilly's From Mobilization to Revolution (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978). The approach owes much to disillusionment with previously dominant psychological and social-psychological models and to the rise of the statist paradigm in political science. Some milestones are Doug McAdam, The Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency (Chicago, IL; Univ. of Chicago Press, 1982); Herbert Kitschelt, ‘Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest’, British Journal of Political Science 16 (1986), pp.57–85; and the author's Struggle, Politics and Reform, Western Societies Program Occasional Paper No.21 (Ithaca, NY: Center for Int. Studies, 1989). For recent contributions, see Hanspeter Kriesi, et al, ‘New Social Movements and Political Opportunities in Western Europe’, European Journal of Political Science 22 (1992), pp.219–44, and the forthcoming book by the same authors, The Politics of New Social Movements in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis (Minneapolis and St. Paul: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1995).
30. At the highest levels of opportunity, movements’ activities became routine, their original goals are displaced and institutionalization results; at the lowest levels, movements disappear or retreat into sectarianism. It is at intermediate levels of political opportunity that social movements prosper best. I follow here the well-known reasoning of Peter Eisinger in his ‘The Conditions of Protest Behavior in American Cities’, American Political Science Review 67 (1973), pp.11–28.
31. J. Craig Jenkins and Kurt Schock, ‘Global Structures and Political Processes in the Study of Domestic Political Conflict’, Annual Review of Sociology 18 (1992), p.161.
32. James Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1990), p.369.
33. Charles Tilly, ‘Globalization Threatens Labor's Rights’, Center for Studies of Social Change Working Paper No. 182 (March 1994), p.12. The strongest advocate of the theory that economic changes in the core lead to ripples of collective action in the periphery and semi-periphery is Giovanni Arrighi. See his ‘World Income Inequalities and the Future of Socialism’, New Left Review 189 (1991), pp.39–65.
34. Kriesi argues that ‘while the prominence of the East-West antagonism has vicariously reinforced images of class conflict, the North-South antagonism rather reinforces images of ethnic, religious or nationalist conflict’. See his Political Mobilization and Social Change: The Dutch Case in Comparative Perspective (Aldershot: Avebury, 1993), p.266.
35. The first scholar to highlight the role of the media in the movements of the 1960s – but limited to the USA – was Todd Gitlin. See his The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and the Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1980). Since then a cottage industry of studies on global media has developed, putting forward the view that the international diffusion of the media is responsible for many international phenomena. See, e.g., Gladys D. Ganley, The Exploding Political Power of Personal Media (Norwood, NJ: Ablex Pub., 1992). The quote in the text is from p.7 of Ganley's book. For the most stunning success of personal media in diffusing collective action, see her discussion of the Iranian revolution in Ch.3 of this study.
36. Philippe Schmitter, ‘The European Community as an emergent and novel form of political domination’, Instituto Juan March Working Paper No.26 (1991), p.15. Even in the former state socialist camp, the signature of the Helsinki accords provided Eastern European dissidents with political opportunities around which they could mobilize. Dan Thomas, ‘International Norms and Political Change: The Helsinki Process and the Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, 1975–1990’, unpub. PhD thesis in progress, Cornell Univ., 1995.
37. The concept of ‘modularity’ comes from my colleague, Benedict Anderson's theory of the diffusion of nationalism. See his Imagined Communities, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991) Ch.2. For the expansion of the concept to a theory of collective action, see my Power in Movement, Ch.2, as well as Tilly's Popular Contention in Britain (note 2), Ch.l.
38. On this concept, see Karl-Werner Brand, ‘Cyclical Aspects of New Social Movements: Waves of Cultural Criticism and Mobilization Cycles of New Middle-class Radicalism’, in Russell Dalton and Manfred Kuechler (eds.), Challenging the Political Order (Oxford and NY: OUP, 1990), pp.23–42 and Tarrow, Power in Movement, Ch.9.
39. See Dalton, Green Rainbow, Ch.2, on the new environmental wave.
40. See Paul Ginsborg, Storia d'Italia dal dopoguerra a oggi (Turin: Einaudi, 1989), Vol.2, Ch.9.
41. This similarity was by no means limited to Western Europe. See Doug McAdam and Dieter Rucht, ‘The Cross-National Diffusion of Movement Ideas,’ in Russell J. Dalton (ed.), ‘Citizens, Protest and Democracy’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 528 (1993), pp.56–74.
42. The data are reproduced from Kriesi, et al., ‘New Social Movements and Political Opportunities in Western Europe’, in European Journal of Political Research 22 (1992), Fig.4 (repr. with permission). Their complete findings, and an interpretation of the French differences, will be published in their The Politics of New Social Movements in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis (Minneapolis and St. Paul: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1995).
43. Dieter Rucht, ‘Campaigns, Skirmishes and Battles: Anti-Nuclear Movements in the USA, France and West Germany’, Industrial Crisis Quarterly 4 (1990), pp.193–222.
44. Thomas R. Rochon, Mobilizing for Peace. The Antinuclear Movements in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1988), Ch.1. Also see Bert Klandermans (ed.), International Social Movement Research, Vol.2: Peace Movements in Western Europe and the United States (Greenwich, CT: JAI, 1991).
45. Philippe Schmitter, ‘Representation and the Future Euro-Polity’, Discussion Paper No.23 (Nuffield College, Oxford: Centre for European Studies, 1993), p.38.
46. The term is Rose-Marie Lagrave's, in ‘La representation de la representation’, in Bertrand Hervieu and Rose-Marie Lagrave (eds), Les syndicats agricoles en Europe (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992), pp.265–94.
47. See Lowell Turner, ‘Beyond National Unionism? Cross-National Labor Collaboration in the European Community’, forthcoming in Richard Locke and Kathleen Thelen The Shifting Boundaries of Labor Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995). Also see Carl Strikwerda, ‘Between the Market and the Nation-State: International Labor Policy and the History of European Integration’, presented to the conference on ‘Markets, States and Social Citizenship: European Economic and Political Integration, 1990–1995’, New School for Social Research.
48. See Gisela Kaplan, ‘Contemporary Feminist Movements in Western Europe: Paradigms for Change?’ in Brian Nelson, David Roberts and Walter Veit (eds.), The Idea of Europe. Problems of National and Transnational Identity (NY and Oxford: Berg, 1992), pp.109–29 and Chiara Saraceno, ‘Gender and Europe: National Differences, Resources and Impediments to a European Women's Common Interest’, presented to the conference on Markets, States and Social Citizenship: European Economic and Political Integration, 1900–1995, New School for Social Research.
49. See Marks and McAdam (note 3), pp.34–7.
50. Some feel that regional movements have taken advantage of the decline of national policy authority to establish their presence in Brussels. Marks and McAdam (note 3), make this argument.
51. The most systematic study of the evolution of police tactics in relation to protest is Donatella della Porta's forthcoming Social Movements, Political Violence and their State: A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany (NY and Cambridge: CUP, 1995), especially Ch.3.
52. On the normalisation of protest, see Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, ‘Normalizing Collective Protest’, in Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Muller (eds), Frontiers in Social Movement Theory (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1992), pp.301–25.
53. Turner, ‘Beyond National Unionism’, p.14.
54. The above paragraph summarizes the findings of Russell Dalton in his Green Rainbow, Chs.4 and 8.
55. Dieter Rucht, ‘Think Globally, Act Locally,’ (note 3) p.90.
56. On consensus movements, see John McCarthy and Mark Wolfson, ‘Consensus Movements, Conflict Movements and the Cooptation of Civic and State Infrastructures,’ in Aldon Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller (eds), Frontiers of Social Movement Theory (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1992) pp.273–300.
57. I am grateful for this obvious point (obvious only once it is pointed out!) to Neil Fligstein. For his point of view in respect of the single unitary market, see his and Iona Mara-Drita's ‘How to Make a Market: Reflections on the Attempt to Create a Single Unitary Market in the European Community,’ prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the EC Studies Assoc., Washington D.C., May 1993.
58. Marks and McAdam (note 3), pp.21–8.
59. The following section is in debt to the work of Giandomenico Majone on the regulatory state. His most central contributions on this topic are ‘Regulatory Federalism in the European Community’, in Environment and Planning 10 (1992), pp.299–316, ‘Cross-National Sources of Regulatory Policymaking in Europe and the United States,’ Journal of Public Policy 11 (1991), pp.79–106, ‘Market Integration and Regulation: Europe After 1992’, in Metroeconomica 43 (1992), pp.131–56 and ‘Deregulation or Re-Regulation? Policymaking in the European Community since the Single Act’, paper prepared for the research project on `La restructuration des Etats Européens’, unpub. paper, 1993.
60. Under its rules with a 12 member council, the larger states of the Union have ten votes each on the council and the smaller states have five or less. It takes just 23 votes to block legislation in the Council, enough to give two large countries and a smaller one an effective veto. Under the voting roles adopted in March 1994 for the expanded Community of 16 members, the total number of votes will increase from 76 to 90 and the blocking majority will rise from 23 to 27, requiring two large states and two smaller ones to combine to block legislation. This change was adopted in March 1994, with a modest compromise intended to meet British and Spanish objections. See the discussion in the New York Times, 28 March, 1994, p.A9 and 30 March, 1994, p.A5.
61. Majone, ‘Regulatory Federalism’ (note 59), p.301. Also see Greenwood, Grote and Ronit, Organized Interests (note 4), and Mazey and Richardson, ‘Environmental Groups and the EC’ (note 4), for treatments of this issue.
62. Majone, ‘Regulatory Federalism’ (note 5), p.301.
63. The French government had fought successfully in Brussels for a derogation from the net size limit that the Spanish tuna men objected to. But this derogation had run out at the end of 1993. The French contended that they carried ‘spare’ nets, which the Spanish say they use instead of the legal ones. The Times, 5 Aug. 1994, P-17
64. ‘Atun contra Europa’, El Pais, 1 Aug. 1994, p.8.
65. Interestingly, however, the dispute over tuna nets led to the agreement of the conflicting parties that inspectors be sent by the European Commission to monitor the length of the nets. As Alberta Sbragia points out (in a communication to the author), ‘Although the fishing arena has pioneered the use of EU inspectors⋯, the decision by the Spanish and French ministers to allow EU inspectors on patrol boats allowed the Commission to expand its role in a politically sensitive area.’
66. Schmitter, ‘Representation and the Future Euro-Polity’ (note 45). Also see Wolfgang Streeck and Philippe C. Schmitter, ‘National Corporatism to Transnational Pluralism’, Politics and Society 19 (1991), pp.133–64.