Being costly, seeming worthy: Does authenticity matter for social movement success?

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Does protest matter? This remains a perennial question of social movement scholarship; we still debate whether and how social movements cause social and political change. My research contributes to this debate by expanding on the least applied approaches of the three giants of social movement theory, namely resource mobilisation, political opportunity structure, and framing processes theories. The latter, which investigates the cultural and 'meaning-making' work of social movements, has been used only sporadically to explain the consequences of protest, and when used, has arguably not reached convincing conclusions. Yet what framing theory does, although not always explicitly, is remind us that we need to take into what social movements are asking for (claims), and how they are asking for it (frames), not just whether they have resources they can mobilise or political opportunities they can take advantage of. I build on this to show that the claiming and framing strategies of social movements do help explain their outcomes, and can directly lead to positive outcomes even under unfavourable political circumstances. As my DPhil thesis shows, this depends very much on both the material and symbolic costs that social movements can impose, weighed against the cost that meeting their demands would present for their targets. Thus, for example, I was able to explain how indigenous protesters in Peru we able to get decrees opening up their land to extractive industry overturned in 2009, despite a President in power that described them as 'savages'. They were able to do so through materially costly disruption, and by imposing high enough symbolic costs through the combination of their claiming (protecting our 'ancestral' land), framing strategies (arguing for ancestral rights as guardians of the Amazon and displaying seemingly authentic indigeneity), and the fact that heavy repression turned public opinion to their advantage. What needs further research in the above trajectory is the role of perceived authenticity for social movements. We know from Latin America that indigenous leaders and activists are always immersed in authenticity battles as they need to convince supporters, constituents, opponents, and the public in general that they are genuine representatives of their purported constituents, that they have legitimate goals, and that they use acceptable means to try and achieve them. This is not confined to indigenous struggles; yet the dynamics of authenticity battles have not been researched in Northern scholarship on social movements in general. My DPhil thesis was able to show that the external resonance of indigenous movements' claims and frames matters for their outcomes. It was not able to, due to lack of comparable cross-national and over-time data on public opinion, fully evaluate the nature of the relationship between movement strategies and public opinion. In particular, it could not test whether frame coherence-the coherence between claims and frames-mattered for movement outcomes. We know from political theory and philosophy that perceived coherence-between identity and actions, between manifestos and policies, etc.-influences whether an individual or a politician are seen as authentic, and thus also trustworthy and legitimate. I argue that this also matters for social movements and their consequences; yet this needs further research. How do social movements try to signal authenticity? What combinations of claims, frames and tactics are perceived as authentic? Does being perceived as authentic guarantee positive outcomes? In order to seek answers to these questions, I propose to consolidate my current research, carry out a limited amount of new research, and prepare for the next major research project on social movements and authenticity in the UK, as detailed above and below, and in the attached supporting documents.