Politics of Pain: State Governance, Moral Protest, and the Varied Impacts of Social Movements.

This paper develops a new approach to collective action that aims to explain variation in social movement outcomes. Specifically, the paper shows how the mutually constitutive forces of state governance and challengers? political practices create the very possibilities for action in the political field. The paper employs the logic and methods of the comparative historical approach to assess how and why challengers can or cannot make an impact. The empirically grounded evidence indicates that a state?s political authority and routine practices of governance interact with victim-challengers? moral protests in ways that significantly shape the substance and trajectory of movement outcomes. The findings extend recent scholarship on social movements by prioritizing the complex interaction between political institutions and challengers? mobilization (Amenta, Caren, Fetner & Young 2002; Andrews 1997; Kriesi & Wisler 1999). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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