ABSTRACT
Social movement theory has a history of classical thinkers and major paradigms reaching back well more than a century. Political sociology brings another promising dimension to the analysis of collective action. The oft-neglected issue of movement success or outcomes dovetails with questions about determinants of public policy. Globalization can facilitate the mobilization of many movements, but it most obviously expands the transnational movement sector in ways that both support and challenge standard accounts of collective action. Edwin Amenta subsequently focused on the prospects for social movement success in particular, leading to a political mediation model of collective action. The French Revolution unleashed such movements that ultimately led to social democratic politics in core countries, communist parties in the semiperiphery, and nationalist regimes in the periphery. Studies of 'cyberactivism' and 'cyberprotest' have begun to explore the consequences of such new technologies for movement origins, trajectories, and impacts.
