Banning indirect boycotts: Contentious interactions and the role of the state in marketplace activism

Abstract

In 2019, the prime ministers of the United Kingdom and Australia both declared their intent to ban indirect, or secondary, boycotts. In the United Kingdom, the ban was directed against public bodies engaging in the “boycott, divest, and sanction” (BDS) campaign against Israel. In Australia, the proposed ban was directed against environmental action groups. Research on market-based activism to date has focused primarily on conceptualizing the use of the market by nonstate actors to achieve social change, with less attention paid to the role of the state in these dynamics. State efforts to curtail social movements’ repertoires of contention require careful scrutiny to understand the state's role in legitimizing or delegitimizing political activism and to reveal the complex power dynamics between corporations, social movements, and the state. This article analyzes two key instances of the state declaring an intent to prevent activists from protesting through the market. By investigating how indirect boycotts were problematized by state actors, we aim to reveal the rationale behind the state's intervention in marketplace politics. Our findings indicate that opposition to the political cause behind the boycott, rather than a problematization of the strategy itself, drives state intervention.