Introduction

Although it is not always the case, social movements frequently sport a somewhat troubled relationship with the state. Some of that troubled relationship may be owed, in part, to the fact that much social movement activism is largely extra-institutional, occurring outside of the normal, routinized, and even codified mechanisms for doing politics.

Made up of individual actors and organizations that share some salient dimensions of collective identity who are working in a somewhat organized and sustained way over time toward a common goal of social, political, or cultural change, social movements don’t just exhibit uneasy relationships with the state and its various manifestations on regional and local levels. The same often holds true for the dealings of social movements with other institutions beyond the state itself.