Was It Worth the Effort? The Outcomes and Consequences of Social Movements
Author(s)
Giugni, Marco G.
Abstract
If we trust our intuitions, the last big European cycle of protest caused such fundamental changes in the social and political structures that we are still wondering about the kind of world we are now living in. In the eyes of a neutral observer, the democracy movements that shook Eastern Europe in 1989 were clearly instrumental in bringing about the new order. Mass actions and street demonstrations in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania have brought about the fall of the Communist regimes in those countries and, together with popular mobilizations in the Baltic Republics later on, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. That the movements must have played a significant role can be seen in the impressive growth of popular mobilizations in those countries. Take the example of East Germany. Oberschall (1996) reports an impressive increase in the number of participants in protests and demonstrations in Leipzig, where the key events took place during 1989. Whereas the celebration of the anniversary of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg on January 15 saw the presence of 150-200 participants, the protest marches from Nikolai church to the center, which (starting from October 16) took place every Monday until Christmas, mobilized from 110,000 to 450,000 people. Yet even the most relentless optimists would concede that, without major changes in the structures of power, the protests and mass demonstrations would hardly have had such dramatic consequences. In fact, one can argue that in the absence of such changes the movements themselves would not take on such a big scale. Two major transformations in the states’ structures gave a big boost to the democracy movements in Easter Europe and helped them change our world: Gorbachev’s perestroika and the cracks in the Communist states’ alliance system. Movement mobilization and state breakdown combined in a complex way to bring about a revolutionary outcome.
