Understanding strategy in contentious collective action: a research agenda

Luke Yates - University of Manchester
Understanding strategy in contentious collective action: a research agenda

Abstract
Strategy is central to work on collective action but is undertheorised and rarely directly investigated. We propose a research agenda for addressing this. The article suggests examining strategy as adjective, noun, and verb: strategic action, a qualifier to refer to goal-directed or effective activity; strategies, varieties of future orientation that guide practices; and strategizing, involving practices by which actors coordinate, respectively. We begin by discussing extant literature, which understands strategic action in very broad terms, as effective, and/or goal-directed action. To develop this understanding and advance the agenda, we recommend understanding strategies as future orientations with a specific configuration of dimensions, while arguing that many other future orientations lead to social outcomes. Dimensions allow for comparison and historicising of future-oriented documents and statements, and exploring how the political content of future orientations, coordinates, relate to action, actors and outcomes. Another line of inquiry is in analysing the elements of coordinating practices; and investigating both dedicated and emergent modes of coordinating, also opening up further opportunities for comparison, historicising, and investigation of their relationship with particular types of action, actor and outcomes. The paper thereby contributes new ways of investigating which activities matter most in political organising and mobilisation, how we should understand the role of ideas, documents and decisions about the future, and what forms of coordinating collective action are possible and effective. It presents a research agenda for thinking about strategy analytically and critically.