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This article advances theory on social movements' strategic adaptation to political opportunity structures by incorporating a narrative perspective. Our theory explains how people acquire and use knowledge about political opportunity structures through storytelling about the movement's past, present, and imagined future. The discussion applies the theory in an ethnographic case study of the climate movement's mobilization around the UN Climate Summit in Paris, 2015. This analysis demonstrates how a dominant narrative of defeat about the prior protest campaign in Copenhagen, 2009 shaped the strategizing process. While those who experienced Copenhagen as a success preferred strategic continuity, those who experienced defeat developed a \"Copenhagen narrative\" to advance strategic adaptation by projecting previously experienced threats and opportunities onto the Paris campaign. Yet by relying on a retrospective narrative, movement actors tended to overlook emerging political opportunities. We demonstrate that narrative analysis is a useful tool for understanding the link between structure and agency in social movements and other actors affected by (political) opportunity structures.

We examine whether and when socially oriented shareholder activists use firms’ corporate social performance (CSP) to identify them as attractive targets for their activism. We build on the research in social movements theory and stakeholder theory to theorize how firms’ engagement with primary and secondary stakeholders reflected in their technical and institutional CSP respectively allows socially oriented shareholder activists to identify targets. We develop a theoretical model by identifying corporate targets’ degree of (1) receptivity to and (2) need to comply with activist demands as two key dimensions of their corporate opportunity structure that explains the variance in firms’ attractiveness as targets for activist demands. We show that a firm’s technical and institutional CSP independently affect the likelihood of activists targeting the firm. We also show that our model has greater explanatory power at firms with high resource slack and from activists not identifying as socially responsible investment funds. Analysis of CSP and shareholder proposals data of 992 U.S. public firms over an 8-year window of observation largely supports our theory.

In this article, we build on the stakeholder-politics literature to investigate how corporate scandals transform political contexts and give impetus to the contentious movements of fringe stakeholders against multinational corporations (MNCs). Based on Adut's scandal theory (2005), we flesh out three scandal-related processes that directly affect political-opportunity structures (POSs) and the generation of social movements against MNCs: convergence of contention towards a single target, publicisation of deviant practices, and contagion to other organisations. These processes reduce the obstacles to collective actions by fringe stakeholders by pushing corporate elites to be more sensitive to their claims, by decreasing MNCs' capability to repress contentious movements, by forcing the targeted MNCs to formalise a policy to monitor and eradicate the controversial practices and by helping fringe stakeholders find internal and external allies to support their claims. This conceptual model of scandals as catalysts of contentious actions contributes to a better understanding of stakeholder politics by unveiling the role of the political context in the coordination of fringe stakeholders.

While it is well-known that democratic backsliding imposes a variety of challenges on civil society organisations, it is often assumed that it represses civil society. However, a closer look at the impact of democratic backsliding on civil society organisations reveals that even in countries where democratic backsliding is fairly advanced, the relationship between civil society and the state is more complex. Close cooperation and partnership between civil society organisations and the state are scarce in backsliding countries; the relationship between civil society organisations and the state might, however, range from hostility to varying forms and degrees of co-optation. Based on interviews with representatives of civil society organisations and the examination of the sector-specific social and political environment, we aim to explore the forms and factors that shape the relationship between civil society organisations and the state in Hungary. More specifically, we analyse the impact of the changing political opportunity structures on three important sectors of civil society organisations: human rights organisations, environmental organisations, and women’s organisations. We argue that, to seize control over civil society the government applies sector-specific strategies, ranging from exclusion to co-optation. State strategies, in turn, spark different responses from civil society organisations.

I review the development of the political opportunity or political process perspective, which has animated a great deal of research on social movements. The essential insight—that the context in which a movement emerges influences its development and potential impact—provides a fruitful analytic orientation for addressing numerous questions about social movements. Reviewing the development of the literature, however, I note that conceptualizations of political opportunity vary greatly, and scholars disagree on basic theories of how political opportunities affect movements. The relatively small number of studies testing political opportunity hypotheses against other explanations have generated mixed results, owing in part to the articulation of the theory and the specifications of variables employed. I examine conflicting specifications of the theory by considering the range of outcomes scholars address. By disaggregating outcomes and actors, I argue, we can reconcile some of the apparent contradictions and build a more comprehensive and robust theory of opportunities and social movements.

Why is the #MeToo movement very active in some countries but not in others? What factors encourage the transnational diffusion of digital feminist activism? Although transnational forces are important, we argue that domestic political opportunity structures play a more significant role than transnational influences in the country-level diffusion of #MeToo. We collected 35,211 global tweets and used Bayesian statistical modeling to test the implications of our theory. Our findings support the idea that as a country better protects its citizens’ political and civil rights and civil liberties, individuals in that country are more likely to engage in the #MeToo movement.

Political consumption is an individualized form of collective action that varies considerably across Europe. Citizens as consumers participate in boycotts and 'positive' buying of goods based on ethical, political and environmental considerations. Overcoming the individualistic bias of past research, the comparative analysis extends actor-centred explanations by focusing on political, cultural and economic opportunity structures and on globalization as contextual factors. Economic opportunities for political consumption are provided by national affluence, retailing structures and the supply of environmental and fair-labelled goods. Political and cultural opportunities are facilitated by 'statist' institutions, social movement organizations as well as trust and post-materialist culture. The impact of globalization is measured by international economic exchange. Logistic multi-level models on the first wave of the European Social Survey for 19 countries reveal that economic opportunity structures and political institutions best explain variations, while globalization does not affect citizens' decisions to voice their interest in consumption. Finally, the effect of individual value orientations is increased by a low-cost context.

Under the Hu-Wen administration, scholars analyzed how political opportunity structures (POS) affect the policy influence of NPOs in China, and found that the opportunity structure was relatively more open, especially for NPOs using personal connections. In this article, we focus on changes in the opportunity structure since Xi Jinping came to power after 2012, and find that the more closed political climate has had important consequences for NPO policy advocacy. We identify three strategies that NPOs have used to advocate, such as using the law, media framing, and establishing expert status. While these strategies are not novel, we argue that the weighting has shifted in terms of what leads to success.

Theories of mobilization suggest that groups are more likely to resort to violence in the presence of political opportunity structures that afford greater prospects for extracting concessions from the government or better opportunities to topple ruling governments. However, existing efforts to consider the possible influences of political opportunity structures on incentives for violence and civil war empirically have almost invariably relied upon measures of democracy to proxy for the hypothesized mechanisms, most notably the argument that the opposing effects of political accommodation and repression will give rise to an inverted U-shaped relationship between democracy and the risk of civil war. The authors detail a number of problems with measures of democracy as proxies for political opportunity structures and develop alternative measures based on the likely risks that political leaders will lose power in irregular challenges and their implications for the incentives for resort to violence. The authors evaluate empirically how the security with which leaders hold office influences the prospects of violent civil conflict. The findings indicate that recent irregular leader entry and transitions indeed increase the risk of conflict onset, while democratic institutions are found to decrease the risk of civil war, after controlling for the new measures of state weakness.

Purpose This paper aims to contribute by placing the missing “learner agent” within the entire process of learning. To understand under what social conditions, it is possible to develop autonomous learners who are conscious of self, able to reflect on their identities, roles and responsibilities, to learn and develop professionally, in alignment with the organizational goals and objectives. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses empirical data from a higher educational institution to provide insights on how it might be possible to intervene to incorporate workspaces which allow learner agent reflection resulting in individual and organizational learning processes, devoid of power exercises and manipulation strategies. Findings The empirical findings reveal the crucial role of learner agents, and positive outcomes associated with learning that happens be an autonomous choice and process, with minimal structural influence. The relevance of reflection, personal identity, social conditions, dialogic third spaces and transformation opportunity structures in developing lifelong learners, learning societies and democratic learning organizations is emphasized. Research limitations/implications This study suggests plausible directions in which the model of learning organizations can move forward, in the form of designing transformation structures or workspaces where learner agents have the opportunity to reflect on their tacit knowledge, job responsibilities and functions in an autonomous manner to generate learning, which is democratic and un-contested in nature. Originality/value The significance of learner agent in the entire learning process is demonstrated, to place forward a learner-centric model of learning organization where structure and agency harmoniously merge to form one common ground, where individual learning becomes organizational learning with no hidden power dynamics. Empirical evidence is provided to demonstrate how learning can be a win–win situation for all organizational groups.