Kerstin Jacobsson - Social Movements in Post-Communist Europe and Russia

This volume provides a much needed update on the state of civil society in post-communist Europe and Russia more than two decades after the fall of the communist regimes. The chapters offer new perspectives on social movement strategies in post-communist Central-Eastern Europe and Russia. The chapters illustrate how social movements develop particular repertoires of action and contention, which are better suited for their specific local contexts in the post-communist setting. In Russia and Poland, the use of domestic and transnational legal opportunities, judicial activism and litigation is a popular strategy complementing the traditional lobbying and mass mobilisation. Human rights framing has become important in Hungary and the Czech Republic. The chapters analyse various types of rights-based activism that operate in otherwise prohibitive social and political environments, thereby raising highly contentious issues, such as animal rights, environment and sustainability, human rights, womens rights, and gay rights activism. The contributions richly illustrate the often surprising and multiple ways in which transnational discourses and norm pressure are received, translated or resisted in the local contexts. Finally, the volume provides a novel reconceptualisation and offers new understandings of the relationships between the state and civil society in the post-communist context.

This book is based on two special issues of East European Politics.

Kerstin Jacobsson publishes widely in the field of political sociology, including studies of social movements in Central and Eastern Europe. Her most recent book is Beyond NGO-ization: The Development of Social Movements in Central and Eastern Europe (edited with Steven Saxonberg, Ashgate, 2013).

Steven Saxonberg has published extensively about the collapse of communism and the development of post-communist social policies and social movements. His recent books include Gendering Family Policies in Post-Communist Europe: A Historical-Institutional Analysis (Palgrave, 2014) and Transitions and Non-Transitions from Communism: Regime Survival in China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

First published 2015

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ISBN 13: 978-1-138-78436-9

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Kerstin Jacobsson and Steven Saxonberg

Kerstin Jacobsson and Steven Saxonberg

Katalin Fbin

Conor ODwyer

Kerstin Jacobsson

Ondej Csa

Christian Frhlich

The chapters in this book were originally published in various issues of East European Politics . When citing this material, please use the original page numbering for each article, as follows:

Chapter 1

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Please direct any queries you may have about the citations to clsuk.permissions@cengage.com

Kerstin Jacobssona and Steven Saxonbergb

a Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; b Centre for Social and Economic Strategies, Charles University, Czech Republic and Dalarna University College, Sweden

More than two decades since the revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the development of social movements and civil society activism in post-communist countries remains a matter of considerable scholarly debate. Whilst earlier research tended to emphasise low levels of protest events and the weak and non-participatory nature of post-communist civil society in general (Mendelson and Glenn 2002, Howard 2003), more recent research has begun to re-evaluate this picture by illustrating the extent to which movement actors develop particular repertoires of action and contention, which are more appropriate for the opportunity structures available within these still young post-communist democracies (e.g. the contributions in Fagan and Carmin 2010, Jacobsson and Saxonberg forthcoming). For instance, it may make better sense to use more apolitical methods of campaigning in a country with a more closed state, rather than engaging in classical contentious politics. It might also be more efficient to fight issues in the courts, rather than trying to influence politicians. Moreover, it has been argued that social movement organisations in post-communist Europe, while less able to mobilise people into traditional forms of participatory activism, have been quite effective in so-called transactional activism. In other words, movement actors manage to build productive relationships with institutional actors in some cases (Petrova and Tarrow 2007, also Cisar 2010 and forthcoming). This symposium explores the extent to which this is true for all types of movements in each of the countries under study. While the dependent variable here is issue and movement type, the particular domestic political opportunity structure and resource availability are also highlighted as intervening in the efficacy of campaigns and actions. It appears immediately evident that the openness of public authorities for such collaboration depends on the types of movements in question and their claims.