Now We Are Almost Fifty! Reflections on a Theory of the Transformation of Social Movement Organizations

In 1963, Roberta Ash (now Garner) was a young graduate student taking a seminar on social movements led by Mayer Zald and the late David Street. There were five students in the class. Several times during the quarter Zald led discussions of the many directions that the transformation of a social movement organization (SMO) could take. Much of the discussion focused upon the limits of the Weber-Michels model, which posited the bureaucratizing and oligarchic tendencies of SMOs, summarized as “the iron law of oligarchy.” The basic framework for discussion was provided by Selznick’s open system approach to organizations. Both internal and external sources of pressures to change were examined. Under specific conditions SMOs could vanish, decline, grow, split or merge with other SMOs, and become more radical and/ or develop internal democracy. The students were given a choice of writing a paper or taking a final examination. Considering herself lazy, Garner chose to take a final exam. She was asked to state three or four propositions that were suggested by the class discussions and justify them. When Zald read her answer he immediately thought they could write a paper on the topic. Since then we have collaborated on one other paper, “The Political Economy of the Social Movement Sector” (Garner and Zald, 1985). Although we both have continued to write about topics related to collective action and social movements, our interests and emphases have diverged. Thus, rather than developing a single response to Arne Kalleberg’s invitation we have decided to provide a conversation between ourselves that responds to the questions he raised in his letter of invitation. Garner begins the conversation.