ABSTRACT

It seems that the political opportunity structure (POS) perspective – also called the “political process model” – has edged out the resource mobilization perspective which was dominant in the 1970s. To be sure, Eisinger’s seminal paper of 1973 laid the foundation of the POS perspective and was thus published earlier than McCarthy and Zald’s founding paper of the resource mobilization perspective in 1977. But the POS perspective could establish itself as a distinctive approach only in the beginning of the 1980s.1 In this chapter we begin with a detailed restatement and discussion of P. Eisinger’s theory. We then address major conceptual problems of the perspective. One issue is whether POSs should be seen as objective or subjective “chances of success.” POSs are defined as changes in the political environment that influence the “chances of success.” The definition thus contains a causal statement. Is this really useful? We further compare the concepts of POS and resources. As in the previous chapters, we look at the explanatory power of the POS perspective, we ask whether there is an implicit micro-macro model, and analyze how the free rider problem is solved. We further review the empirical evidence for the perspective. Among other things, we present several types of situations where the perspective does not work. In the section on recent developments we analyze the models by D. McAdam and S. Tarrow. In regard to the general objective of the book, the section on the synthesis of the POS perspective and the theory of collective action seems particularly important.