Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change: Women's Groups and the Transformation of U.S. Politics, 1890-1920

TLDR

Dominant theories suggest social movements rarely cause change, contrary to common belief. The article introduces organizational repertoires to explain how challenging movements produce institutional change. Marginalized groups develop alternative organizational models, illustrated by women’s groups in the United States at the turn of the century. Alternative models are more likely adopted by political actors when they resemble familiar, previously nonpolitical, organizational forms.

Abstract

Although social movements are often presumed to cause change, the dominant theoretical accounts lead to the opposite conclusion. To explain how challenging movements do produce institutional change, this article introduces the concept of organizational repertoires. Groups marginalized by existing political institutions have an incentive to develop alternative models of organization. These alternative models, in turn, are more likely to be adopted by other political actors to the extent that they embody familiar, but previously nonpolitical, forms of organization. This argument is illustrated with an analysis of political innovation by women's groups in the United States at the trun of the century.