The Institutionalisation of Social Movements: Co-Optation and Democratic Policy-Making
| Author | Valesca Lima |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929920913805 |
| Date | 01 May 2021 |
| Published date | 01 May 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920913805
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(2) 245 –261
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929920913805
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The Institutionalisation
of Social Movements:
Co-Optation and Democratic
Policy-Making
Valesca Lima
Abstract
Over the past 30 years, urban policy in Brazil has undergone a major transformation, both in
terms of regulatory frameworks and the involvement of citizens in the process of policy-making.
As an intense process of institutional innovation and mobilisation for decent public services took
place, academics started to consider the impact of institutionalisation on the autonomy of social
movements. Using empirical evidence from a city in the northeast of Brazil, this article addresses
the wider literature on citizen participation and social movements to examine specifically the
problem with co-optation. I examine the risks linked to co-optation, risks that can undermine
the credibility of social movements as agents of change, and explore the tensions that go beyond
the ‘co-optation versus autonomy’ divide, an issue frequently found in the practices of social
movements, in their dealings with those in power. In particular, this article explores the learning
processes and contentious relationships between mainly institutionally oriented urban movements
and local government. This study found that the learning of deliberative skills not only led to
changes in the objectives and repertoires of housing movements, but also to the inclusion of new
components in their objectives that provide room for creative agency and which, in some cases,
might allow them to maintain their autonomy from the state.
Keywords
participatory democracy, housing, institutionalisation, policy councils
Accepted: 27 February 2020
Introduction
Brazilian cities have a rich history of social movements engaging with public policy-
making. For this reason, the relationship between these movements and policy-making
has become one of the central themes in Brazilian studies on social movements (Abers
et al., 2014). The centrality of this theme to the studies of autonomy and democratic inno-
vation is evidenced in the numerous experiences of participatory democracy that involve
Department of Sociology, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland
Corresponding author:
Valesca Lima, Maynooth University, Social Sciences Institute/Department of Sociology, Iontas Building, Co
Kildare, Ireland W23 F2H6.
Email: valesca.lima@mu.ie
913805PSW0010.1177/1478929920913805Political Studies ReviewLima
research-article2020
Article
246 Political Studies Review 19(2)
citizens in the process of policy-making. Those experiences have implications for govern-
ment performance and the collective action of social movements. Generally, the study of
the integration of social movement demands has developed into studies about how insti-
tutionalisation impacts Social Movement Organisations (SMOs) and the consequences
for the movements’ ability to influence the government decision-making process (Lavalle
et al., 2019).
The construction of Brazil’s ‘architecture of participation’ saw social movements take
on a major role in pushing for new citizenship rights and new policies for minority groups
(Abers and Bülow, 2011; Dagnino and Teixeira, 2014; Tatagiba, 2011). After a phase
where studies focused on what was perceived as the inherent bureaucratisation of institu-
tionalised social movements (Albuquerque, 2019), more recent work has concentrated on
the conditions that limit the influence and participation of social movements in democratic
institutions (Bronstein et al., 2017; Lavalle et al., 2016) and on relations with the state
through institutionalised channels, re-focusing attention on the effects of these interactions
on social movements and their (self-declared) autonomy (Oliveira and Dowbor, 2018).
Democratic innovations have the potential to make the participatory process more
accessible. The question of how SMOs affect public policy when included in decision-
making or how they are changed by their inclusion is one that scholars have puzzled over
for a long time (Abers and Bülow, 2011; Albuquerque, 2019; Dinerstein et al., 2013;
Fominaya, 2015). The risk of co-optation is ever-present in cooperative practices involv-
ing political elites, one that might absorb those groups’ agency for social change – an
issue frequently found in the practices of social movements in terms of how they relate
with those holding power (Gamson, 1990; Selznick, 1949). A primary concern in social
movement literature is how to conceptualise and explain co-optation (Trumpy, 2008).
Intriguingly, the issue of ‘non-co-optation’ has received much less attention (Holdo,
2019; Murphree et al., 1996; Nogueira, 2018) in scholarly work on participatory institu-
tions where co-optation has resulted from the institutionalisation of social movements
(Druck, 2006; Gohn, 2008; Lavalle et al., 2019; Meyer and Tarrow, 1998). Therefore, it
remains a stimulating area for research, and additional studies on the institutionalisation
of social movements and autonomy are needed.
On this issue, this article explores the tensions that go beyond the ‘co-optation versus
autonomy’ divide by elaborating and making clearer which practices can be viewed as
expressing autonomy and/or its opposing counterpart, co-optation. Much of the literature
on participatory democracy in Brazil has been dominated by cases of participatory budg-
eting. This study examines a management policy council from the critical perspective of
co-optation. More specifically, this article investigates under what conditions movements
confront the state and when they cooperate with institutions. I argue that this integration
has not only led to changes in the interaction between society and state, especially in
terms of the scope of housing demands and repertoires, but it has also provided some
room for creative agency when it comes to the participation of SMOs through learning
experiences. To explore the learning processes that underline citizen participation, I use
empirical data to examine the changes social movements go through at the sub-national
level as a consequence of their integration in participatory institutions, in terms of how
they change political repertoires, discourses and organisations in order to confront and/or
cooperate with the state. The findings should make a refreshing contribution to the under-
standing of the conditions in which social movements confront or cooperate with institu-
tions. Discussions on the learning of new skills can be enriched theoretically and
empirically by an examination of social movement’s capacity for creativity and agency,
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