Introduction to the Special Issue: Exploring the Policy–Mobilization Nexus: How Policies and Mobilizations Shape One Another

Abstract

Although public policies and social mobilizations often shape one another, policy studies and social movement studies have focused on distinct dimensions of the “policy–mobilization nexus.” Such segmented perspectives generate blind spots and partial accounts of both the policy process and social mobilization dynamics. This special issue unpacks the policy–mobilization nexus and brings together papers that analyze the interactions between public policy and protest in different policy domains (family, housing, education, and health) in four countries (Chile, Quebec, Spain, and the United States). It makes three contributions. First, it stresses the contentious nature of the policy-making process and shows that many social actors combine disruptive and conciliatory modes of action. Second, it challenges standard arguments according to which social movements shape the policy process only indirectly, through agenda-setting. Finally, it takes temporal dynamics seriously and stresses the need to treat policies not as an output or outcome but as a process with no clear starting and end points.