Support from citizens and social movements is widely viewed as a necessary condition for a New Economy transition.
The Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth, for instance, argues for “…building countervailing power through alliances between trade unions, social movements, feminist and decolonial organisations, environmental justice groups, social and solidarity economy actors, and impoverished communities, at national and transnational levels.
These alliances can push for reforms that simultaneously tackle poverty, inequality and ecological breakdown, and resist efforts by powerful interests to dilute or reverse them.”
The Global Justice Report and Beyond Capitalism plan include similar language.
To find out more, last week I joined the annual conference of the Institute for Protest and Social Movements Research in Berlin. Over two days, I discovered a diverse, active and welcoming community.
These are seven selected takeaways that could be of value from a New Economy perspective.
- Social movements are not always progressive. Well-funded far-right networks are increasingly effective, both online and in person. One researcher from Germany presented detailed findings on far-right online organising, including training courses for new members on how to spread memes and set up bots. Over time, these members can increasingly be activated for in person engagement.
- Movement building usually requires a positive narrative. In a breakout session, I took advantage of the interactive ‘fishbowl’ format to mention New Economy narratives and frameworks, such as Anti-Fascist Economics and Doughnut Economics. Although there was some interest, these do not yet seem to have much organic resonance with social movement researchers.
- For movements to be sustainable, ‘social integration is more important than goal alignment’. Even where citizens strongly support a goal, their engagement will decay over time unless there is a structure to support it.
This is particularly relevant for longer term goals where movement volunteers don’t feel they are getting ‘something back’ in terms of progress made.
Engagement does not have to mean organising regular large-scale protests; in-person planning meet-ups or open lectures can be enough to keep the core members of movements active, for example in between election periods.
- Bilateral social ties play a key role, specifically whether individual members of a movement have a direct link to at least one other person they can reach out to if they have a question, be it about logistics or broader strategy.
- The strength of personal ties in movements is not primarily based on the amount of time spent together, or personal identity factors. Strong ties are built on a sense of shared, common obligation to others i.e. a vulnerable population or those affected by a particular issue.
- Individual leaders and organisers are critical, for example in setting up events and maintaining multiple bilateral ties. The most common reason for individual organisers to burn out is infighting within their own movement, more than workload or external pressures e.g. from police surveillance.
- In social movement research, a transformational movement is one where the ties between its members are maintained over time, even as goals change. An example from Spain was shared, where the original Indignados movement first evolved into defending women’s rights and is now shifting towards housing issues, with many of the same people and groups involved.
I came away with the sense that there could be a lot of value in building long-term bridges between New Economy initiatives and social movement researchers. Central assumptions around large-scale citizen mobilization, for example, could be examined and broken down into more detailed theories of change.
A first concept note to kickstart that connection is here (google doc). If there is interest from either New Economy initiatives or social movement researchers, get in touch!