The radical flank effect refers to the positive or negative effects that radical activists for a cause have on more moderate activists for the same cause.
Contents
- History
- Positive
- Negative
- Predictors of positive flank effects
- Game theoretic formulation
- Violent radical flank
- References
According to Riley Dunlap, the idea of a radical flank effect "has a lot of credibility among social-movement scholars".
History
In 1975, Jo Freeman introduced the term "radical flank" with reference to more revolutionary women's groups, "against which other feminist organizations and individuals could appear respectable."
The term "radical flank effect" was coined by Herbert H. Haines. In 1984, Haines found that moderate black organizations saw increased rather than decreased funding as the radical black movement emerged. In his 1988 Black Radicals and the Civil Rights Mainstream, 1954-1970, Haines challenged the prevailing view that confrontational and militant black activists created a "white backlash" against the more moderate civil-rights movement. Rather, Haines argued, "the turmoil which the militants created was indispensable to black progress" and helped mainstream civil-rights groups.
Haines measured positive outcomes based on increases in external income to moderate organizations and legislative victories. While nearly half of the income data was estimated or missing due to the refusal of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Congress of Racial Equality to divulge their complete financial records, it was more extensive than the data used by Doug McAdam in his classic work on resource mobilization. Haines' data was thorough for the moderate organizations (such as the NAACP) which comprised the dependent variable for his research.
Positive
Negative
Predictors of positive flank effects
It's difficult to tell without hindsight whether the radical flank of a movement will have positive or negative effects. However, following are some factors that have been proposed as making positive effects more likely:
Game-theoretic formulation
Devashree Gupta developed a game-theoretic model of radical flank effects. In addition to distinguishing positive vs. negative flank effects on moderates, she suggested also considering effects on radicals:
Her extensive-form game involved a choice by moderates of whether to clearly distinguish themselves from radicals, and then a choice by the external actors being lobbied as to whether to grant concessions:
Violent radical flank
In the radical-flank literature, "radical" may mean either more extreme in views and demands or more extreme in activist methods, possibly including the use of violence.
Studies of civil resistance have typically found that nonviolent activism is ideal, since violence by a movement makes state repression seem legitimate. That is, violence yields a negative radical flank effect. Indeed, states sometimes seek to label nonviolent movements as violent or incite them to violence in order to justify suppression.
Barrington Moore, Jr., in books such as Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy and A Critique of Pure Tolerance, observed the prominent use of violence which preceded the development of democratic institutions in England, France and the United States. A survey of Moore's critics notes that they were generally "impressed by Moore's case for progressive violence, but eager to move on to other topics, instead of considering the implications of these issues."
In a study of 53 "challenging groups", social movement analyst William Gamson found that groups that were willing to use "force and violence" against their opponents tended to be more successful than groups that were not.
In a study of 233 campaigns, neither Kurt Schock and nor Erica Chenoweth found support for a positive violent radical flank effect and also found that violence decreased mass mobilization.
Chenoweth and Schock's data set was limited to "ideal types of campaigns...that rely solely on nonviolent or violent tactics." She does not study "mixed campaigns" of both violence and nonviolence, although it is documented that most real-life campaigns are varied in this way. William Gamson's data set included some groups that threatened and prepared for violence without fully engaging in it.
Francis Fox Piven writes that the use of in violence in social movements is often under-reported by activists cultivating a nonviolent image, as well as by social movement scholars who are sympathetic to them.
The African National Congress believe that both nonviolence and armed conflict were important in ending Apartheid. John Bradford Braithwaite concludes from this that when violent factions already exist, moderates shouldn't necessarily shun them, but moderates shouldn't seek to create violent factions.