Caught in a winding, snarling vine: The structural bias of political process theory

The study of social movements has recently been energized by an explosion o f work that emphasizes "political opportunities"-a concept meant to come to grips with the complex environments that movements face. In the excitement over this new metaphor, there has been a tendency to stretch it to cover a wide variety of empirical phenomena and causal mechanisms. A strong struct ural bias is also apparent in the way that political opportunities are unde rstood and in the selection of cases for study. Even those factors adduced to correct some of the problems of the political opportunity approach-such as "mobilizing structures" and "cultural framing"-are subject to the same s tructural distortions. We recommend social movement analysis that rejects i nvariant modeling, is wary of conceptual stretching, and recognizes the div erse ways that culture and agency, including emotions and strategizing, sha pe collective action.