How do political opportunities matter for social movements?: Political opportunity, misframing, pseudosuccess, and pseudofailure

A longitudinal case study of Korean white-collar labor movements, which new ly thrived in the democratizing atmosphere after the 1987 June Democratic S truggle, confirms that political opportunity is an important external facto r that impels movement dynamics toward political protest and interunion sol idarity. However, the impact of political opportunity is more complicated t han the political process model suggests. First, it is not objective but pe rceived opportunity that is causal for movement dynamics: Opportunity is fi ltered through participants' interpretations, which shape their responses t o it. The effect of political opportunity is mediated by participants' subj ective conclusion (often inaccurate) that a movement goal has been promoted or obstructed by a particular source (source attribution). Without this fr aming mediation, the impact of political opportunity remains indeterminate, as a single opportunity structure may produce disparate movement dynamics and, conversely, movements may mobilize under both contracting and expandin g opportunities. Second, the causal impact of perceived opportunity-whether perceived contraction or expansion-is contextually specific and contingent . When union members consider their attempts to achieve goals a failure and ascribe the failure to government intransigence, anti-government sentiment s facilitate political protest. In contrast, success attributed to the effi cacy of collective action nurtures solidarity consciousness and labor colle ctivity. In either event, movement dynamics improve.