ABSTRACT

Social movements have power, they have the capacity to mobilise people and achieve change, and they have the power to affect the social, cultural and political realms. This is commonly known as ‘power to’. Social movements are also produced by power relations (see political opportunity structure, identity politics) and they are often both opposed, and subject to, the exercise of power by political elites, state institutions and policing agencies, those who have ‘power over’. The distinction between ‘power to’ and ‘power over’ is an important one, because as Tarrow (1998: 23) points out ‘a good part of the power of movements comes from the fact that they activate people over whom they have no control’. This autonomy of movement actors is both a strength and a weakness. It allows movements to avoid centralisation and bureaucratisation, but it can also diffuse the power of a movement and provoke factionalisation and internal competition. Social movements are therefore unlikely to have ‘power over’, yet their analysis of the prevailing matrix of social and political power relations is often crucial to the identification of an adversary, and the strategic and tactical repertoires of collective action through which that adversary is engaged. Indeed Melucci argues that ‘Whether wittingly or not, the debate on the significance of collective action always embraces the issue of power relationships, and on closer examination derives its energy from either defending or contesting a specific position or form of dominance’ (1996: 3).