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aggregate competing interests and occasionally compromise on often mutually exclu-
sive principles. Parties succeed by balancing interests and creating wide appeal, not
through the uncompromising pursuit of a single cause. By contrast, a social movement
arises to address a grievance, whether wide-ranging or narrow. Recruiting participants
and solidifying their loyalty is a movement’s first challenge, and a continuing one
(Williams 1994). However, whereas political parties can offer jobs and influence to in-
duce participation, SMOs are by definition challengers that do not have ready access
to political spoils. They can promise future benefits, but that is a method of recruit-
ment that generates a loyalty dependent upon observable, tangible victories. To deal
with more immediate recruitment needs, SMOs must create solidarity around a cause, a
principle, or a collective identity. As a result, social movements are often more vibrant
than parties or interest groups (e.g., industry lobbies), but they are also more fragile.
Who counts as a “member” is hard to define; a member is harder to win, and harder to
keep.
The passions that often attend dedication to a single issue are also conducive to
social movement involvement. If material interests are not at stake directly, then moral
commitments and a sense of personal identity must keep people motivated to stay
involved. Those passions are often difficult to extend over a number of issues. Certainly
many people have a number of concerns about the state of society – that is, multiple and
(possibly) related grievances. Focusing those concerns on a single issue (or a small set
of issues) can provide the intensity necessary for what is essentially volunteer activities
outside normal routines of living. Thus, for reasons built into the very nature of the
organizational form and purpose, single-issue politics are anathema to political parties
and legislative coalitions, but present a comfortable turf for many SMOs.
Stable organization also can offer a rhetorical advantage for a movement. As noted
above, SMOs have both rhetorical and organizational needs that must be met to keep
adherents mobilized and acting effectively. But if an SMO cannot rely on organizational
routines (such as membership dues or periodic fundraising) for gathering resources, the
more it will have to escalate its rhetorical appeals in public forums. Furthermore, SMOs
have to compete with other movements and with the general din of modern life in
order to be heard. The need to stand out as a prophetic moral voice helps explain much
of the radicalization of movement rhetoric in public politics, as groups escalate the
decibels and severity of their claims in order to attract members or attention.
This dynamic is largely responsible for our recent “culture war.” Study after socio-
logical study demonstrates that the American public is not divided into two polarized,
warring camps (see DiMaggio et al. 1996; Olson 1997). Public opinion is more diverse,
less radical, and not nearly as coherent as the image of a culture war suggests. But move-
ment organizations find that culture wars rhetoric is helpful, perhaps even essential.
The rhetoric helps convince us that there is a moral struggle going on in which the sides
are clear and the cause imperative. Notice, however, that the language comes not from
the center of institutional power but from movement activists – from candidates who
run as crusaders, not those who run as organization men with the potential to actually
win. Furthermore, to the extent that electoral campaigns are like social movement ef-
forts, the culture wars language is particularly apt, but fades as more institutionalized
political routines take over (this analysis is expanded in Williams 1997b).
At the same time that social movements are trying to distinguish themselves from
political parties by flaunting their fidelity to a moralized cause, the two types of