Social movement self-governance: the contentious nature of the alternative service provision by Brazil's Landless Workers Movement

Abstract

This puzzle is at the core of my dissertation: the coexistence of movements demanding change and establishing a form of order. Contemporary scholars do not include "governance" in the definition of what social movements do, as they consensually define social movements and contentious politics as non-state actors engaging in activities that challenge existing forms of economic, political, and/or cultural order (McAdam: 1988; 1996; Tarrow: 1998; Aminzade, et al: 2001; McAdam, et al: 2001). These studies focus on how opportunity structures are relatively "open" or "closed," but cannot tell us the ways movements develop when they see an opening, nor the sorts of organizational or institutional forms a movement adopts upon pursuing an opening. They also, typically, focus on movements such as the U.S. Civil Rights Movement or Environmental Movement that sought inclusion for previously marginalized communities into the exercise of formal, official power relations. Discussions of social movement-led counter-orders and service administration would explain these developments as part of a revolutionary situation, dual power, or breakdown of state authority (Tilly: 1977; Sirianni: 1983). Yet movements that govern are not revolutionary, because they seek recognition by state authority in their right to administer services like education and security, normally the prerogative of their governments, but as they see fit. I demonstrate this new form of social movement resistance - what I call self-governmental - through a case study of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Brazilian Landless Workers Movement or MST) and their variable success in governing agrarian reform, educational, and economic policy. Besides postulating this alternative mode of resistance, I develop a new social movement theory to explain successful mobilization and institutionalization that is rooted in the concept of strategy.