Social Movement Insiders: The Impact of Institutional Activists on Affirmative Action and Comparable Worth Policies

We challenge the assumption within resource mobilization theory that polity members and social movement activists are distinct entities by offering the concept of “institutional activists .” Institutional activists are social movement participants who occupy formal statuses within the government and who pursue social movement goals through conventional bureaucratic channels. Using regression analyses we examine the impact of institutional activists and social movement organizations (SMOs) on the comprehensiveness of two U.S. state policies: affirmative action, pursued by the civil rights movement; and comparable worth, pursued by the women's movement. We find that SMOs were decisive in adoption of affirmative action, but not comparable worth policies. In contrast, institutional activists were important for the passage of comparable worth but not affirmative action policies. These findings suggest that resource mobilization theory would better capture the impact of social movements on policy outcomes by recognizing activists who work as insiders on outsider issues.