Protest and the politics of dissent

There are several different moral and practical stances that people can take in relation to their social worlds.  The scenes above depict one of these possibilities: vociferous protest and active opposition to specific social and political policies.  Individuals and groups have ideas about justice and legitimacy.  And they have specific material interests that are affected by state policies.  When their values and interests are offended by the actions of their government or other collective actors, they may choose to mobilize around overt opposition and collective action.  Street demonstrations, protests, boycotts, and destruction of property may be the result.  Anti-globalization protests in Toronto in 2010, anti-war protests in 1968 and 2004, demands for aggressive AIDS policies in the 1990s, anti-racism protests in 1968, French protests against President Sarkozy's policies in 1999, and anti-NATO protests in Strasbourg in 2009 -- each scene represents an extensive movement against the actions of governments, international organizations, and social institutions.

What are some of the goals of public protests?  One is obvious: to exert direct pressure on governments and other powerful organizations to change their policies and actions.  Organizers and followers often have very concrete goals in mounting a protest, with an explicit theory of how the protest action will lead to the possibility of change of policy.  This is most evident in the demonstrations that took place in France in 2009 in opposition to the government's neo-liberal economic reform policies.  Organizers, organizations, and unions had very specific notions about how mass protests in Paris, Dijon, Marseille, and Lyon could succeed in forcing the government to retreat.  In this case the action is purposive and instrumental: choose this strategy to bring about that result.

Another possible goal is more expressive than this description would suggest.  People may mobilize around a demonstration out of their simple desire to express their moral dissent; to offer a moral example to the world of the wrongness of the targeted policy.  Some strands of the US civil rights movement had this character; demonstrations served to cast a light on the fundamental injustice of US race relations and laws, and many supporters participated simply out of moral solidarity with these values.

A third possibility combines the expressive and instrumental types of collective action.  Leaders and followers invested in a particular issue may want to publicize their values and their critique in order to persuade the broader public to share these values.  So a goal of the demonstration is to illustrate the moral and political values that are involved, and to attempt to sway other citizens to share these values.  This was part of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s theory of change: a strategy of non-violent protest could change attitudes throughout the country and eventually lead to very substantial change in law and practice.  It also seems to be a part of the transnational movement of activists against neo-liberal globalization: help the mass of citizens of the developed world to see the harms created by the neo-liberal regime.

The occurrence of protest and demonstration is a commonplace.  But it is also a central focus of scientific study by scholars such as Charles Tilly, Sidney Tarrow, or Doug McAdam under the topics of social movements and social contention. Here are several important recent contributions.  Tarrow and Tilly published Contentious Politics in 2006.  Tarrow's New Transnational Activism focuses on the anti-globalization protests that have occurred since Seattle's WTO meetings in 1999. McAdam's Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 offers a detailed analysis of the mobilization processes that culminated in the US Civil Rights movement.  Each of these works, and dozens of others, have offered careful insights and theories about the mechanisms of social mobilization.

Social scientists have focused on several aspects of protest movements: for example, motivations of the followers; social characteristics of followers; characteristics of leaders; the organizations that serve to mobilize and coordinate protest; the networks of information and other resources that link separate organizations together; the nature of the grievances that stimulate prolonged protest movements; and the efficacy of protest movements.  Quite a few important ideas have come out of these research efforts.  For example, Charles Tilly introduced the important idea of "repertoires" of protest, making the point that different communities have developed different scripts for presenting their protests to the public and to the government.  And Tilly, Tarrow, and McAdam have argued for an innovative approach to the study of contention, in the form of a methodology of the range of social mechanisms that can be identified in a variety of instances of mobilization.

One important fact that comparative study of protest movements and organizations demonstrates, is the common feature of diversity of purposes, goals, and strategies among the individuals and groups who support a movement.  The US anti-war movement is a good example; the coalition that came together to create large demonstrations and public actions in various cities in the 1960s commonly represented a very wide range of political perspectives and goals, from Quakers to Progressive Labor activists.  This range of political positions reflected significant disagreement about the goals of protest; but it also represented serious disagreement about the strategies of protest as well.

A crucial dividing line among anti-war organizations was the use of deliberate destruction of property as a tool of protest.  Probably the majority of individuals and groups opposed the use of violence, whereas small organizations deliberately sought out opportunities for "trashing".  The slogan, "Days of Rage," captures this perspective.  This same divide was evident in the G20 demonstrations in Toronto last month, with Black Bloc activists deliberately finding opportunities for burning police cars and smashing shop windows.  (Here is a manifesto from the Wombles on the subject of violence in demonstrations.)  Peter Ackerman demonstrates in Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century that non-violent protest has a very wide range of strategies at its disposal, and that these mechanisms have often proven very effective in achieving the goals of the protest.

(Quite a few earlier posts have focused on examples of social mobilization and theories of how groups become engaged in collective action; these can be found in the collective action thread.)

Protest and the politics of dissent

There are several different moral and practical stances that people can take in relation to their social worlds.  The scenes above depict one of these possibilities: vociferous protest and active opposition to specific social and political policies.  Individuals and groups have ideas about justice and legitimacy.  And they have specific material interests that are affected by state policies.  When their values and interests are offended by the actions of their government or other collective actors, they may choose to mobilize around overt opposition and collective action.  Street demonstrations, protests, boycotts, and destruction of property may be the result.  Anti-globalization protests in Toronto in 2010, anti-war protests in 1968 and 2004, demands for aggressive AIDS policies in the 1990s, anti-racism protests in 1968, French protests against President Sarkozy's policies in 1999, and anti-NATO protests in Strasbourg in 2009 -- each scene represents an extensive movement against the actions of governments, international organizations, and social institutions.

What are some of the goals of public protests?  One is obvious: to exert direct pressure on governments and other powerful organizations to change their policies and actions.  Organizers and followers often have very concrete goals in mounting a protest, with an explicit theory of how the protest action will lead to the possibility of change of policy.  This is most evident in the demonstrations that took place in France in 2009 in opposition to the government's neo-liberal economic reform policies.  Organizers, organizations, and unions had very specific notions about how mass protests in Paris, Dijon, Marseille, and Lyon could succeed in forcing the government to retreat.  In this case the action is purposive and instrumental: choose this strategy to bring about that result.

Another possible goal is more expressive than this description would suggest.  People may mobilize around a demonstration out of their simple desire to express their moral dissent; to offer a moral example to the world of the wrongness of the targeted policy.  Some strands of the US civil rights movement had this character; demonstrations served to cast a light on the fundamental injustice of US race relations and laws, and many supporters participated simply out of moral solidarity with these values.

A third possibility combines the expressive and instrumental types of collective action.  Leaders and followers invested in a particular issue may want to publicize their values and their critique in order to persuade the broader public to share these values.  So a goal of the demonstration is to illustrate the moral and political values that are involved, and to attempt to sway other citizens to share these values.  This was part of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s theory of change: a strategy of non-violent protest could change attitudes throughout the country and eventually lead to very substantial change in law and practice.  It also seems to be a part of the transnational movement of activists against neo-liberal globalization: help the mass of citizens of the developed world to see the harms created by the neo-liberal regime.

The occurrence of protest and demonstration is a commonplace.  But it is also a central focus of scientific study by scholars such as Charles Tilly, Sidney Tarrow, or Doug McAdam under the topics of social movements and social contention. Here are several important recent contributions.  Tarrow and Tilly published Contentious Politics in 2006.  Tarrow's New Transnational Activism focuses on the anti-globalization protests that have occurred since Seattle's WTO meetings in 1999. McAdam's Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 offers a detailed analysis of the mobilization processes that culminated in the US Civil Rights movement.  Each of these works, and dozens of others, have offered careful insights and theories about the mechanisms of social mobilization.

Social scientists have focused on several aspects of protest movements: for example, motivations of the followers; social characteristics of followers; characteristics of leaders; the organizations that serve to mobilize and coordinate protest; the networks of information and other resources that link separate organizations together; the nature of the grievances that stimulate prolonged protest movements; and the efficacy of protest movements.  Quite a few important ideas have come out of these research efforts.  For example, Charles Tilly introduced the important idea of "repertoires" of protest, making the point that different communities have developed different scripts for presenting their protests to the public and to the government.  And Tilly, Tarrow, and McAdam have argued for an innovative approach to the study of contention, in the form of a methodology of the range of social mechanisms that can be identified in a variety of instances of mobilization.

One important fact that comparative study of protest movements and organizations demonstrates, is the common feature of diversity of purposes, goals, and strategies among the individuals and groups who support a movement.  The US anti-war movement is a good example; the coalition that came together to create large demonstrations and public actions in various cities in the 1960s commonly represented a very wide range of political perspectives and goals, from Quakers to Progressive Labor activists.  This range of political positions reflected significant disagreement about the goals of protest; but it also represented serious disagreement about the strategies of protest as well.

A crucial dividing line among anti-war organizations was the use of deliberate destruction of property as a tool of protest.  Probably the majority of individuals and groups opposed the use of violence, whereas small organizations deliberately sought out opportunities for "trashing".  The slogan, "Days of Rage," captures this perspective.  This same divide was evident in the G20 demonstrations in Toronto last month, with Black Bloc activists deliberately finding opportunities for burning police cars and smashing shop windows.  (Here is a manifesto from the Wombles on the subject of violence in demonstrations.)  Peter Ackerman demonstrates in Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century that non-violent protest has a very wide range of strategies at its disposal, and that these mechanisms have often proven very effective in achieving the goals of the protest.

(Quite a few earlier posts have focused on examples of social mobilization and theories of how groups become engaged in collective action; these can be found in the collective action thread.)

Protest and the politics of dissent

There are several different moral and practical stances that people can take in relation to their social worlds.  The scenes above depict one of these possibilities: vociferous protest and active opposition to specific social and political policies.  Individuals and groups have ideas about justice and legitimacy.  And they have specific material interests that are affected by state policies.  When their values and interests are offended by the actions of their government or other collective actors, they may choose to mobilize around overt opposition and collective action.  Street demonstrations, protests, boycotts, and destruction of property may be the result.  Anti-globalization protests in Toronto in 2010, anti-war protests in 1968 and 2004, demands for aggressive AIDS policies in the 1990s, anti-racism protests in 1968, French protests against President Sarkozy's policies in 1999, and anti-NATO protests in Strasbourg in 2009 -- each scene represents an extensive movement against the actions of governments, international organizations, and social institutions.

What are some of the goals of public protests?  One is obvious: to exert direct pressure on governments and other powerful organizations to change their policies and actions.  Organizers and followers often have very concrete goals in mounting a protest, with an explicit theory of how the protest action will lead to the possibility of change of policy.  This is most evident in the demonstrations that took place in France in 2009 in opposition to the government's neo-liberal economic reform policies.  Organizers, organizations, and unions had very specific notions about how mass protests in Paris, Dijon, Marseille, and Lyon could succeed in forcing the government to retreat.  In this case the action is purposive and instrumental: choose this strategy to bring about that result.

Another possible goal is more expressive than this description would suggest.  People may mobilize around a demonstration out of their simple desire to express their moral dissent; to offer a moral example to the world of the wrongness of the targeted policy.  Some strands of the US civil rights movement had this character; demonstrations served to cast a light on the fundamental injustice of US race relations and laws, and many supporters participated simply out of moral solidarity with these values.

A third possibility combines the expressive and instrumental types of collective action.  Leaders and followers invested in a particular issue may want to publicize their values and their critique in order to persuade the broader public to share these values.  So a goal of the demonstration is to illustrate the moral and political values that are involved, and to attempt to sway other citizens to share these values.  This was part of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s theory of change: a strategy of non-violent protest could change attitudes throughout the country and eventually lead to very substantial change in law and practice.  It also seems to be a part of the transnational movement of activists against neo-liberal globalization: help the mass of citizens of the developed world to see the harms created by the neo-liberal regime.

The occurrence of protest and demonstration is a commonplace.  But it is also a central focus of scientific study by scholars such as Charles Tilly, Sidney Tarrow, or Doug McAdam under the topics of social movements and social contention. Here are several important recent contributions.  Tarrow and Tilly published Contentious Politics in 2006.  Tarrow's New Transnational Activism focuses on the anti-globalization protests that have occurred since Seattle's WTO meetings in 1999. McAdam's Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 offers a detailed analysis of the mobilization processes that culminated in the US Civil Rights movement.  Each of these works, and dozens of others, have offered careful insights and theories about the mechanisms of social mobilization.

Social scientists have focused on several aspects of protest movements: for example, motivations of the followers; social characteristics of followers; characteristics of leaders; the organizations that serve to mobilize and coordinate protest; the networks of information and other resources that link separate organizations together; the nature of the grievances that stimulate prolonged protest movements; and the efficacy of protest movements.  Quite a few important ideas have come out of these research efforts.  For example, Charles Tilly introduced the important idea of "repertoires" of protest, making the point that different communities have developed different scripts for presenting their protests to the public and to the government.  And Tilly, Tarrow, and McAdam have argued for an innovative approach to the study of contention, in the form of a methodology of the range of social mechanisms that can be identified in a variety of instances of mobilization.

One important fact that comparative study of protest movements and organizations demonstrates, is the common feature of diversity of purposes, goals, and strategies among the individuals and groups who support a movement.  The US anti-war movement is a good example; the coalition that came together to create large demonstrations and public actions in various cities in the 1960s commonly represented a very wide range of political perspectives and goals, from Quakers to Progressive Labor activists.  This range of political positions reflected significant disagreement about the goals of protest; but it also represented serious disagreement about the strategies of protest as well.

A crucial dividing line among anti-war organizations was the use of deliberate destruction of property as a tool of protest.  Probably the majority of individuals and groups opposed the use of violence, whereas small organizations deliberately sought out opportunities for "trashing".  The slogan, "Days of Rage," captures this perspective.  This same divide was evident in the G20 demonstrations in Toronto last month, with Black Bloc activists deliberately finding opportunities for burning police cars and smashing shop windows.  (Here is a manifesto from the Wombles on the subject of violence in demonstrations.)  Peter Ackerman demonstrates in Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century that non-violent protest has a very wide range of strategies at its disposal, and that these mechanisms have often proven very effective in achieving the goals of the protest.

(Quite a few earlier posts have focused on examples of social mobilization and theories of how groups become engaged in collective action; these can be found in the collective action thread.)

Feasibility conditions on social reform

Several earlier posts have raised the issues of social change and social progress (post, post). People sometimes want society to be different (change), and they want it to be better (progress). But not all outcomes are possible, and some possible outcomes are not sustainable over time. So how should we think about sweeping prescriptions for social change? What constraints does social reality impose upon the reformer? And what kinds of moral and political constraints should be respected as we advocate for change?

Consider an analogy with the natural sciences and engineering.  Physics and the natural sciences set the boundary conditions on what kinds of structures can be built and used.  Engineering design involves acquiring a detailed knowledge of the natural properties of materials and structures, and then designing artifacts that satisfy human needs.  The human-built world is not determined by the laws of physics, since there are countless different technologies that could have satisfied human needs consistent with physics; but it is constrained by the laws of physics.  What is the corresponding relationship between the social sciences and social reform?

Let's begin by giving a schematic definition of a reform program. A program for reform consists of several things: a representation of the existing social world; a critique of some aspects of that world; a prescription for what the reformer believes would be a better social world; and a developed strategy for moving society from here to there. Reformers think that a specified set of changes will make for a better environment for some aspect of human life, for a group or for the population as a whole.  The representation of the current social world may include several different kinds of elements: representation of typical social behavior, representation of existing institutions and practices, and representations of things like justice, power, inequality, and repression.

For example, suppose one was an anti-racist reformer in the US in 1850 or 1950. The diagnosis of the present may be that current institutions and majority attitudes, behaviors, and practices systematically repress, demean, and stunt members of the racial minority. The reformer's goal may be the creation of a society in which racial oppression, discrimination, and bias do not exist. And the strategy may be to create powerful coalitions of players in society who will work effectively and quickly to disassemble racist laws and institutions and to educate the public to leave behind their racist attitudes and beliefs.

So what are some of the basic conditions of realism and feasibility that a legitimate program of reform must satisfy? For a proposed reform agenda to be rationally supportable, its goals must be feasible and accessible. The institutions, practices, and behaviors it postulates as an end state need to be consistent with what we know about how a society works. And there needs to be a possible pathway through which society can move from here to there.

In other words, the social reformer needs to demonstrate that --

• The described social arrangement can be implemented, given ordinary people and ordinary social processes and mechanisms; in other words, the social arrangement doesn't require a miracle to be achieved.
• The arrangement will have a significant likelihood of being sustainable and self-reproducing, given ordinary people and ordinary social processes. No miracles are needed to sustain the new society.
• There is a feasible pathway that can take us from here to there, consistent with ordinary people AND some set of moral constraints (democracy, commitment to legal processes, no illegal use of force). 
• The described social arrangement will be efficacious: it will have the social effects that it is planned to have.

A little more specifically, the program of reform needs to be consistent with our best understanding of how ordinary human beings behave.  It needs to create incentives that are consistent with ordinary human behavior; and the behaviors that result from these incentives need to reinforce the stability of the institutions that the program postulates. We don't need to offer a strong theory of universal human nature, in order to maintain that there are elements of motivation and psychology that are common among human beings and that will continue to drive their behavior in the future.

Second, the program needs to envision institutions that work correctly together: they successfully coordinate behavior, motivate citizens, raise public revenues, and maintain order as a coherent system. For example, we could have little confidence in a theory of the future that postulated a wide range of public services and a fiscal model that depended entirely on voluntary contributions by citizens to society's coffers. And we would likewise be skeptical about a vision of the future that aggregated local functions like trash collection and building inspections to the national level.

Third, we would want to specify that we need to have a theory of democratic feasibility: that there is a strategy of change that can be successfully executed within the constraints of a democratic society. No "dictatorship of the proletariat" on the road to a more just future; no use of violence by a minority party aiming to achieve its goals by force.

The social sciences can assist with each of these challenges.  Consider first the "ordinary behavior" condition.  Empirical studies of human behavior -- motivations, modes of reasoning, schemes of action -- provide a rich set of tools in terms of which to assess the likely behavior of individuals within a hypothetical social context.  Ethnography, social psychology, applied rational choice theory, and the philosophy of action all have much to contribute on this issue.

Turn next to the "institutional workings" condition.  One of the central tasks of the "new institutionalism" is to provide theories of the mechanisms and processes through which specific institutions interact with human actors to bring about social outcomes.  So institutionalists from sociology, political science, and economics have many of the tools necessary to provide an assessment of the likely workings of a specified set of hypothetical institutions.

The social sciences are also relevant to assessing the democratic feasibility requirement.  Policies are implemented by governments, and governments are subject to a variety of political constraints. Within a democratic electoral system governments are unavoidably concerned about the effects of various policies on the electoral blocks upon which they depend.  We can reason in some detail, as Adam Przeworski does in Capitalism and Social Democracy, about the feasibility of maintaining an electoral majority in favor of a given reform program over the period of time that would be required.

There is an important implication in all of this.  Envisioning a better future for our society is a good thing.  But in order to have a defensible plan for creating that future, we need to make the very best use possible of the social sciences in order to assess the feasibility, stability, and efficacy of the ideas for which we advocate.  Not all visions for the future can be realized; and some visions turn out to have unintended and unanticipated consequences that have proven disastrous.

Feasibility conditions on social reform

Several earlier posts have raised the issues of social change and social progress (post, post). People sometimes want society to be different (change), and they want it to be better (progress). But not all outcomes are possible, and some possible outcomes are not sustainable over time. So how should we think about sweeping prescriptions for social change? What constraints does social reality impose upon the reformer? And what kinds of moral and political constraints should be respected as we advocate for change?

Consider an analogy with the natural sciences and engineering.  Physics and the natural sciences set the boundary conditions on what kinds of structures can be built and used.  Engineering design involves acquiring a detailed knowledge of the natural properties of materials and structures, and then designing artifacts that satisfy human needs.  The human-built world is not determined by the laws of physics, since there are countless different technologies that could have satisfied human needs consistent with physics; but it is constrained by the laws of physics.  What is the corresponding relationship between the social sciences and social reform?

Let's begin by giving a schematic definition of a reform program. A program for reform consists of several things: a representation of the existing social world; a critique of some aspects of that world; a prescription for what the reformer believes would be a better social world; and a developed strategy for moving society from here to there. Reformers think that a specified set of changes will make for a better environment for some aspect of human life, for a group or for the population as a whole.  The representation of the current social world may include several different kinds of elements: representation of typical social behavior, representation of existing institutions and practices, and representations of things like justice, power, inequality, and repression.

For example, suppose one was an anti-racist reformer in the US in 1850 or 1950. The diagnosis of the present may be that current institutions and majority attitudes, behaviors, and practices systematically repress, demean, and stunt members of the racial minority. The reformer's goal may be the creation of a society in which racial oppression, discrimination, and bias do not exist. And the strategy may be to create powerful coalitions of players in society who will work effectively and quickly to disassemble racist laws and institutions and to educate the public to leave behind their racist attitudes and beliefs.

So what are some of the basic conditions of realism and feasibility that a legitimate program of reform must satisfy? For a proposed reform agenda to be rationally supportable, its goals must be feasible and accessible. The institutions, practices, and behaviors it postulates as an end state need to be consistent with what we know about how a society works. And there needs to be a possible pathway through which society can move from here to there.

In other words, the social reformer needs to demonstrate that --

• The described social arrangement can be implemented, given ordinary people and ordinary social processes and mechanisms; in other words, the social arrangement doesn't require a miracle to be achieved.
• The arrangement will have a significant likelihood of being sustainable and self-reproducing, given ordinary people and ordinary social processes. No miracles are needed to sustain the new society.
• There is a feasible pathway that can take us from here to there, consistent with ordinary people AND some set of moral constraints (democracy, commitment to legal processes, no illegal use of force). 
• The described social arrangement will be efficacious: it will have the social effects that it is planned to have.

A little more specifically, the program of reform needs to be consistent with our best understanding of how ordinary human beings behave.  It needs to create incentives that are consistent with ordinary human behavior; and the behaviors that result from these incentives need to reinforce the stability of the institutions that the program postulates. We don't need to offer a strong theory of universal human nature, in order to maintain that there are elements of motivation and psychology that are common among human beings and that will continue to drive their behavior in the future.

Second, the program needs to envision institutions that work correctly together: they successfully coordinate behavior, motivate citizens, raise public revenues, and maintain order as a coherent system. For example, we could have little confidence in a theory of the future that postulated a wide range of public services and a fiscal model that depended entirely on voluntary contributions by citizens to society's coffers. And we would likewise be skeptical about a vision of the future that aggregated local functions like trash collection and building inspections to the national level.

Third, we would want to specify that we need to have a theory of democratic feasibility: that there is a strategy of change that can be successfully executed within the constraints of a democratic society. No "dictatorship of the proletariat" on the road to a more just future; no use of violence by a minority party aiming to achieve its goals by force.

The social sciences can assist with each of these challenges.  Consider first the "ordinary behavior" condition.  Empirical studies of human behavior -- motivations, modes of reasoning, schemes of action -- provide a rich set of tools in terms of which to assess the likely behavior of individuals within a hypothetical social context.  Ethnography, social psychology, applied rational choice theory, and the philosophy of action all have much to contribute on this issue.

Turn next to the "institutional workings" condition.  One of the central tasks of the "new institutionalism" is to provide theories of the mechanisms and processes through which specific institutions interact with human actors to bring about social outcomes.  So institutionalists from sociology, political science, and economics have many of the tools necessary to provide an assessment of the likely workings of a specified set of hypothetical institutions.

The social sciences are also relevant to assessing the democratic feasibility requirement.  Policies are implemented by governments, and governments are subject to a variety of political constraints. Within a democratic electoral system governments are unavoidably concerned about the effects of various policies on the electoral blocks upon which they depend.  We can reason in some detail, as Adam Przeworski does in Capitalism and Social Democracy, about the feasibility of maintaining an electoral majority in favor of a given reform program over the period of time that would be required.

There is an important implication in all of this.  Envisioning a better future for our society is a good thing.  But in order to have a defensible plan for creating that future, we need to make the very best use possible of the social sciences in order to assess the feasibility, stability, and efficacy of the ideas for which we advocate.  Not all visions for the future can be realized; and some visions turn out to have unintended and unanticipated consequences that have proven disastrous.

Feasibility conditions on social reform

Several earlier posts have raised the issues of social change and social progress (post, post). People sometimes want society to be different (change), and they want it to be better (progress). But not all outcomes are possible, and some possible outcomes are not sustainable over time. So how should we think about sweeping prescriptions for social change? What constraints does social reality impose upon the reformer? And what kinds of moral and political constraints should be respected as we advocate for change?

Consider an analogy with the natural sciences and engineering.  Physics and the natural sciences set the boundary conditions on what kinds of structures can be built and used.  Engineering design involves acquiring a detailed knowledge of the natural properties of materials and structures, and then designing artifacts that satisfy human needs.  The human-built world is not determined by the laws of physics, since there are countless different technologies that could have satisfied human needs consistent with physics; but it is constrained by the laws of physics.  What is the corresponding relationship between the social sciences and social reform?

Let's begin by giving a schematic definition of a reform program. A program for reform consists of several things: a representation of the existing social world; a critique of some aspects of that world; a prescription for what the reformer believes would be a better social world; and a developed strategy for moving society from here to there. Reformers think that a specified set of changes will make for a better environment for some aspect of human life, for a group or for the population as a whole.  The representation of the current social world may include several different kinds of elements: representation of typical social behavior, representation of existing institutions and practices, and representations of things like justice, power, inequality, and repression.

For example, suppose one was an anti-racist reformer in the US in 1850 or 1950. The diagnosis of the present may be that current institutions and majority attitudes, behaviors, and practices systematically repress, demean, and stunt members of the racial minority. The reformer's goal may be the creation of a society in which racial oppression, discrimination, and bias do not exist. And the strategy may be to create powerful coalitions of players in society who will work effectively and quickly to disassemble racist laws and institutions and to educate the public to leave behind their racist attitudes and beliefs.

So what are some of the basic conditions of realism and feasibility that a legitimate program of reform must satisfy? For a proposed reform agenda to be rationally supportable, its goals must be feasible and accessible. The institutions, practices, and behaviors it postulates as an end state need to be consistent with what we know about how a society works. And there needs to be a possible pathway through which society can move from here to there.

In other words, the social reformer needs to demonstrate that --

• The described social arrangement can be implemented, given ordinary people and ordinary social processes and mechanisms; in other words, the social arrangement doesn't require a miracle to be achieved.
• The arrangement will have a significant likelihood of being sustainable and self-reproducing, given ordinary people and ordinary social processes. No miracles are needed to sustain the new society.
• There is a feasible pathway that can take us from here to there, consistent with ordinary people AND some set of moral constraints (democracy, commitment to legal processes, no illegal use of force). 
• The described social arrangement will be efficacious: it will have the social effects that it is planned to have.

A little more specifically, the program of reform needs to be consistent with our best understanding of how ordinary human beings behave.  It needs to create incentives that are consistent with ordinary human behavior; and the behaviors that result from these incentives need to reinforce the stability of the institutions that the program postulates. We don't need to offer a strong theory of universal human nature, in order to maintain that there are elements of motivation and psychology that are common among human beings and that will continue to drive their behavior in the future.

Second, the program needs to envision institutions that work correctly together: they successfully coordinate behavior, motivate citizens, raise public revenues, and maintain order as a coherent system. For example, we could have little confidence in a theory of the future that postulated a wide range of public services and a fiscal model that depended entirely on voluntary contributions by citizens to society's coffers. And we would likewise be skeptical about a vision of the future that aggregated local functions like trash collection and building inspections to the national level.

Third, we would want to specify that we need to have a theory of democratic feasibility: that there is a strategy of change that can be successfully executed within the constraints of a democratic society. No "dictatorship of the proletariat" on the road to a more just future; no use of violence by a minority party aiming to achieve its goals by force.

The social sciences can assist with each of these challenges.  Consider first the "ordinary behavior" condition.  Empirical studies of human behavior -- motivations, modes of reasoning, schemes of action -- provide a rich set of tools in terms of which to assess the likely behavior of individuals within a hypothetical social context.  Ethnography, social psychology, applied rational choice theory, and the philosophy of action all have much to contribute on this issue.

Turn next to the "institutional workings" condition.  One of the central tasks of the "new institutionalism" is to provide theories of the mechanisms and processes through which specific institutions interact with human actors to bring about social outcomes.  So institutionalists from sociology, political science, and economics have many of the tools necessary to provide an assessment of the likely workings of a specified set of hypothetical institutions.

The social sciences are also relevant to assessing the democratic feasibility requirement.  Policies are implemented by governments, and governments are subject to a variety of political constraints. Within a democratic electoral system governments are unavoidably concerned about the effects of various policies on the electoral blocks upon which they depend.  We can reason in some detail, as Adam Przeworski does in Capitalism and Social Democracy, about the feasibility of maintaining an electoral majority in favor of a given reform program over the period of time that would be required.

There is an important implication in all of this.  Envisioning a better future for our society is a good thing.  But in order to have a defensible plan for creating that future, we need to make the very best use possible of the social sciences in order to assess the feasibility, stability, and efficacy of the ideas for which we advocate.  Not all visions for the future can be realized; and some visions turn out to have unintended and unanticipated consequences that have proven disastrous.

International social science

Last month the International Social Science Council (ISSC) launched a major review of the status of the social sciences worldwide (link).  The report was commissioned and partially funded by UNESCO.  The full report is available as a PDF file, and it is an important piece of work.  It includes review essays by leading social scientists and chiefs of social science research organizations in Europe, North America, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean, and it makes an effort to provide a fairly comprehensive snapshot of the current state of affairs in the institutions, funding, and patterns of collaboration that currently drive social science research programmes in almost all regions of the world.  (It is interesting to observe that there is not a single mention of social science research in Israel.)

The primary focus of the report is on the institutional settings within which social science research takes place globally: for example, funding systems, universities and institutes, peer review systems, and publication systems.  To what extent are these institutions, in various regions of the world, succeeding in supporting and encouraging the kinds of social science research that will further the policy and informational needs of the publics they serve?  And to what extent are there substantial differences across regions of the world with respect to the depth and effectiveness of these institutional supports for the social sciences?

Here are three high-level changes in the social sciences that are noted in the report:

Three changes in the environment of social science production are particularly likely to affect their content, role and function. These are first, globalization, leading to the parallel internationalization of some public concerns and of social science research itself; second, changes in the institutional and social organization of social sciences; and third, the increased role of new information technology (IT) in the production and dissemination of social sciences. (1)

A more pervasive finding that structures many chapters in the report is the idea of "divides" within and across the world's communities of social scientists.  Most fundamental is the gap in resources and institutional capacity that exists between North and South with respect to social science research:

For any observer of social sciences worldwide, the most striking divide is between countries and regions. There is not much in common between a social science department in a well-endowed university of the global North and a social science research institute in a Southern country suffering from economic and political instability. (3)

(Here is a map indicating widely different levels of spending on tertiary education across the globe:)

But the report also highlights divides across the practices of the social sciences that reflect real differences in intellectual commitments:

From an epistemological point of view, social sciences have been diverse and are characterized by a multiplicity of methods, approaches, disciplines, paradigms, national traditions and underlying political and social philosophies. (3)

Before undertaking such a survey, it is necessary to have a working conception of the definition and role of the social sciences.  The report takes a pragmatic approach; the social sciences are "the disciplines whose professional association is part of ISSC" (3).  But here is the closest the report comes to framing the intellectual task of the social sciences:

The social sciences are concerned with providing the main classificatory, descriptive and analytical tools and narratives that allow us to see, name and explain the developments that confront human societies. They allow us to decode underlying conceptions, assumptions and mental maps in the debates surrounding these developments. They may assist decision-making processes by attempting to surmount them. And they provide the instruments to gauge policies and initiatives, ‘and to determine what works and what does not’. (9)

Another organizing thread in the work of this large team of collaborators is the idea that the social sciences are most valuable when they make a contribution to the solution of important social and political problems.  They specifically refer to a set of common challenges that are of concern to virtually all the regional research communities surveyed here:

Challenges such as environmental change, poverty, financial crisis and inequality, as well as trends affecting human societies such as ageing, marginalization and the rise of cities as strategic economic spaces in the global economy are occurring everywhere but take on different forms according to local contexts. The authors discuss a wide array of challenges and trends, but other challenges such as gender issues, public health concerns, security, food crisis, migrations, diversity and integration, and burning issues and trends could also have found a place in this section. (9-10)

The greatest value and interest of this report is the degree of detail it is possible to glean from the summary reports provided by the regional associations of the social sciences.  This gives a cumulatively detailed impression of the ways in which the social sciences are framed in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America, as well as North America and Europe.  Here is a nice example from Huang Ping's survey of the status of the social sciences in China, where Ping provides historical context for Chinese social science:

In terms of what we see today, the status of the social sciences in China can be traced back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the first generation of Chinese students and scholars returned from Western countries, mostly the UK and the USA, after completing their degrees or their research.

After the Second World War and since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, social sciences in China have developed along three traditions: Chinese scholarly academia, especially Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism; focusing on economics in line with Soviet influences and Marxist studies; and later, Western approaches.

During the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), social sciences almost disappeared and were hardly taught. After the opening-up process initiated in 1978, social sciences, along with science and research in general, were resumed and given a mandate to support the reform process. The Soviet influence gradually disappeared, and Western, especially US, social science approaches became the most influential. Sociology, for example, had been banned since 1952 and was reintroduced in 1979. During the past decade, traditional Chinese academic traditions have been reintroduced in universities and have caught the interest of an increasing number of students. (73)

The report does not explicitly attempt to map the range and diversity of research priorities in different regions of the world; but it is possible to begin to do so by paying close attention to the surveys offered by the regional associations for social science research. Topics vary across regions. What is more difficult to assess is the degree to which epistemologies, theories, and intellectual frameworks vary as well -- though Sandra Harding's contribution points in this direction. (See an earlier posting discussing work by Gabriel Abend on "Styles of Epistemology" (link).)

Particularly interesting for me are short pieces by Saskia Sassen ("Cities in today's global age"), Craig Calhoun ("Social sciences in North America"), Akhil Gupta ("Construction of the global poor"), David Harvey ("A financial Katrina?"), Jon Elster ("One social science or many?"), and Sandra Harding ("Standpoint methodologies and epistemologies: A logic of scientific inquiry for people").

In short, this is a genuinely interesting and detailed review of the status of the social sciences in the world today, and anyone with an interest in the "sociology of the social sciences" and the globalization of social knowledge will want to read it carefully.