3 - Explaining Variation in the Level of Opposition to Energy Projects

Summary

In Chapter 1, we spelled out four principal research questions that we hoped to address in the book: How much emergent collective action do we see across the twenty communities we are studying? What causal conditions explain variation in the level of mobilization in these communities? Net of other factors, what influence, if any, does the level of mobilized opposition have on the outcome of the proposed project? Finally, why did opposition to one kind of energy project – liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals – grow into broader regional movements in some parts of the country but not others? In this chapter, we take up the first two of these questions. We aim to establish something of a baseline of just how much emergent collective action we see across the twenty communities we are studying and then move to see if we can identify certain mixes of factors – or “recipes” in the language of fuzzy set/Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs/QCA) – that help account for variation in level of mobilization across these locales. We begin with a basic description of the level and forms of emergent collective action we found in the twenty communities that we have come to know so well throughout the past few years.

ESTABLISHING A BASELINE

A newcomer to the United States would be forgiven if, in reading the social movement literature, she or he imagined that our communities were awash in protest activity. In a 2005 article, McAdam and colleagues (2005: 2) argued that the field’s initial engagement with and continued interest in the movements of the 1960s had “created a stylized image of movements that threatens to distort our understanding of popular contention . . . in the contemporary U.S. . . . This stylized view tends to equate movements with:

• Disruptive protest in public settings

• Loosely coordinated national struggles over political issues

• Urban and/or campus-based protest activities

• Claim making by disadvantaged minorities.”