Untangling Influence: Studying Social Movement Campaigns in the Transnational EU Arena

Abstract

‘Few social movement theorists do research that looks inside of international institutions to understand how social movements work there and what kinds of impact they have had’ (Sikkink 2005, p.152). Building an analytical framework for the study of social movement campaign outcomes in the EU is thus an important step in the research process before moving to empirical findings. The basis for the framework is rooted in the study of social movements. As mentioned in Chapter 1, the extensive literature on interest representation in the EU has in the past tended to analyse movement groups together with other types of interest groups including industry groups (though it does distinguish between different types of interest groups. For a review, see Rasmussen and Gross 2014). Drawing on the tools of social movement studies thus gives the advantage of providing ready-made attention to the repertoires of movement groups, which unlike other kinds of interest groups present in the EU arena include popular mobilisation. In addition, many of the analytical tools of the interest representation literature recall those found in social movement studies, and conversations between the two have increased in recent years (Mahoney and Baumgartner 2008).