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on the political environment remained largely untouched. It was no accident that scholars who have their roots in the political sciences, such as Kitschelt, Tarrow, and Kriesi, did formulate these questions and proposed a third answer to the

question of why movements come into being: because people seize the political

opportunities they perceive.

Because People Seize the Political Opportunity

Sidney Tarrow defines political opportunities as ``those consistent ± but not

necessarily formal or permanent ± dimensions of the political environment that

provide incentives for collective action by affecting people's expectations for

success and failure'' (Tarrow, 1998, p. 76). The important difference from

grievances and resources is that political opportunities focus on the political

environment of a social movement. What makes people move is not the presence

of aggrieved populations, or the availability of sufficient resources, but a political environment that promises success. Such a focus is so obvious for a phenom-

enon that is as political as social movements that it is amazing that it took so long for politics to become an integrated part of the social movement literature.

Interestingly, Tarrow's definition is about expectations and not about structures.

Hence, by definition only those dimensions of the political environment that are perceived are part of the political opportunity structure of a social movement.

Indeed, opportunities can only be seized if they are perceived.

Which dimensions of the political environment are relevant? Opportunities

can be structural, i.e. refer to relatively stable characteristics of political systems, Why Social Movements Come into Being

275

and conjunctural, i.e. refer to political changes. The first type of stable characteristics is especially useful for comparisons between systems, or states, in other words for making comparisons of space. The second type of transitory characteristic is especially useful for investigating the impact of political change, i.e. for making comparisons of time.

Comparisons of Space

Four structural aspects have been applied in comparisons of space: state

strength, repression and facilitation, party systems, and neocorporatism.

Kitschelt (1986) referred to the strength of the German, Swedish, French, and

American states in his attempt to explain the diverging fate of the anti-nuclear movement in these countries. Strong, centralized states such as France, he

argued, draw protest to the political center and create weak opposition. But

because of their policy-making strength, they may actually be very effective in

implementing change. Hence, if a movement happens to prevail it may win

major victories, as was the case with the anti-nuclear movement in Sweden.

Weak, decentralized states such as the United States, on the other hand, are much more accessible and therefore encourage mobilization, but because of their

policy-making weakness may be unable to implement concessions made to

movements. Repression, according to Tilly (1978, p. 100), is `àny action by

another group which raises the contender's costs of collective action. An action which lowers the group's costs of collective action is a form of facilitation.''

Although states sometimes try to repress any kind of opposition, it is more

common to find some movements or movement organizations repressed, and

others tolerated or even facilitated. The structure of the political representation system (Jenkins and Klandermans, 1995) is an important aspect of the institutional arrangements movements encounter. A movement facing a one-party

system with a strong, monolithic political party must accommodate itself to a

completely different structure than a movement facing a multiparty system.

Electoral systems differ as well. Whether a movement faces a few larger parties

that alternately take office (as, for example, in Great Britain or the United States) or a larger number of smaller parties that must form coalitions (as in many other European countries) makes a real difference in terms of movement strategy; and

so do such differences as proportional representation versus districts, winner

takes all systems, high or low thresholds. A final important aspect is the presence of neocorporatist forms of interest representation; that is systems of institutionalized bargaining between the state and interest organizations (Nollert, 1995).

Neocorporatism reduces the level of political protest because there is less room but also less need for protest, according to Nollert, because neocorporatist

countries performed economically better and reduced economic inequality.

Comparisons of time are about political changes that open windows of

opportunities for social movements that were closed before: increased access to

polity, destabilizing political alignments, changes in a movement's alliance structures, elites that become divided. Because these opportunities are not the same

for every movement, and not every movement is equally successful in seizing

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opportunities, various movements within a country and similar movements in

different countries may take different trajectories. Examples abound of the

paradoxical finding that protest increases when access to polity increases and

political systems become more open and responsive. Recent examples are East-

ern Europe and South Africa, where protest only increased when repression

relaxed. It is not difficult to understand why this is the case. Obviously, expectations of success become greater if access to policy increases. Changes in the

political alignments that control the state create opportunities for challengers as well. In this regard, Kriesi (1995) refers especially to the distribution of power in the party system and in other parts of the system of interest intermediation. The make-up of these systems may change, some parties or interest associations may

grow, others may decline or break down altogether. Such changes may open

opportunities for some movements and close opportunities for others. For

example, the odds of the pro-life and pro-choice movements changed dramat-

ically when Reagan entered office. Political changes may make influential allies available. Kriesi et al. (1995) provide evidence of the facilitation of new social movements by established political actors, especially by organizations of the left.

However, depending on whether the left is in or out of government, its magni-

tude varies considerably. The European movements against cruise missiles cer-

tainly exploited the fact that the elite were divided on the issue of deployment.

For example, in the Netherlands and Belgium for a long time it was unclear

whether there was a majority for deployment at all in the parliament.

In Conclusion

Grievances, resources, and opportunities have all been mentioned as factors that generate social movements. They have sometimes been proposed as competing

explanations, but I don't belief that one would fare very well without the others.

Social movements come into being because people who are aggrieved and have

the resources to mobilize seize the political opportunities they perceive. Before I elaborate this any further, let me shift perspective and provide an answer to the second question that occupies us here: the question of why individuals join social movements. In a way, this question concerns the same process as the question of

why social movements come into being, namely mobilization, but at the indi-

vidual level of analysis. Obviously, social movements come into being because

individuals join them.

Why Do People Join Social Movements?

The question of why individuals participate in social movements brings us to the individual level of analysis, more specifically to the individual characteristics, and the social psychological dynamics, that make an individual decide to take

part in social movement activities. The social psychology of protest suggests

three fundamental motives for participation: a desire to change circumstances, a desire to belong to some group, and a desire to give meaning to one's life.

Why Social Movements Come into Being

277

Succinctly formulated, these are instrumentality, identity, and meaning. Each

individual motive has been proposed as the core of a theory of movement

participation. Instrumentality is the key motive for theories that define move-

ment participation as an attempt to influence the political environment. Social

movements are seen as politics by other means and movement participation as a

form of instrumental behavior. Others have argued that a search for identity is

the key motive of movement participation. Groups that are marginalized or

disadvantaged seek through their movement activity to find a new identity.

Again others have argued that a search for meaning is the most important

motive; a collective attempt to understand the world and to make sense of it.

Different theories are associated with these three angles. Instrumentality is

related to rational choice theory and the theory of planned behavior; identity

is related to sociological approaches that emphasize the collective identity component of social movements and to the social psychological social identity

theory; meaning comes with the framing and narrative approaches in social

movement literature and more psychologically oriented theories of meaning

construction.

I defend the view that we need all three motives to understand participation.

Why would someone take the costs and risks of participation if not motivated by

the desire to change social or political circumstances? At the same time, it is

obvious that the more someone identifies with a group, the more likely it is that he or she will act as a member of that group. After all, social movement type

activities are forms of collective behavior, that is to say, activities by individuals who act as members of their group. Finally, as far as meaning is concerned, a

basic assumption of modern social psychology is that individuals live in a

perceived reality and have no choice but to select, interpret, and give meaning.

Elsewhere, I have tried to bring the three basic principles of movement partici-

pation together into three models: the generation of collective action frames, the motivation to participate in collective action, and the transformation of potentiality into action (Klandermans, 1997). The first model is an attempt to theorize about identity and meaning and about the way identity formation and meaning

construction influence political protest. The second model focuses on instrumen-

tality. Indeed, movement participation is defined as instrumental behavior, but

instrumental in the situation as perceived by the participant. Hence, processes of identification and meaning construction determine which forms of behavior are

instrumental and which are not in the eyes the participants. The third model is a mobilization model. Whereas the first model is about processes that generate the potentiality to participate, and the second about the decision to actually participate in social movement activities, the third model is about the process that

turns potentiality into actual participation. This can be thought of as demand

and supply: potentiality can be seen as demand for protest, but for such demand

to turn into actual behavior a supply of attractive protest opportunities is

needed. Such supply presupposes organizers and/or movement organizations

that offer such opportunities and make the individual the target of a mobiliza-

tion attempt. Protest participation is, then, defined as the positive response of an individual to such mobilization attempts.

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The Generation of Collective Action Frames

We can conceive of collective action frames at different levels of analysis: the collective action frame of a social movement, the collective action frame of a

movement organization, and the collective action frame of an individual. At the

level of a movement or a movement organization this concerns collective beliefs; that is, beliefs that are shared by a set of individuals. At the individual level this concerns individual beliefs. Such individual beliefs are idiosyncratic remakes of the collective beliefs. Each individual adheres to his or her own version of the collective action frame. Yet, it is the same set of shared beliefs they are drawing from. Compare it to a language: a language community ± let's say the Dutch ±

shares a language. Each individual member of the community speaks his or her

own version of the language, yet we have no difficulties recognizing that it is the same language they are speaking.

The generation of collective action frames can be studied at two levels as well.

At the level of movements and organizations it concerns the process of the social construction of collective action frames, involving the processes of public discourse, persuasive communication, and consciousness-raising discussed above.

At the individual level it concerns the process of the appropriation of collective action frames. It is this process that I concentrate on here.

In the course of their life and due to processes of socialization in the family, at school or work, and by peers individuals develop sympathy for some movements

and antipathy for others. This is obviously related to their position vis-aÁ-vis the social and cultural cleavages in their society. Interpersonal interaction plays an important role in these processes. Such interaction may involve friends or

colleagues, or it may occur during encounters between people in buses, on the