 Paving the Way: the Rise of Direct Action against Road‐building and the Changing Character of British EnvironmentalismBrian Doherty Political Studies, 1999, vol. 47, issue 2, 275-291 Abstract: Sustained protests against the building of new roads in Britain since 1992 signal the emergence of a new social movement dimension in British environmentalism. The growth of direct action has occurred outside the existing environmental pressure groups and this more radical green politics has undermined the view that the British state was able to prevent confrontational environmental protest. Small numbers of protesters have been able to make a major impact on the political agenda through a combination of technical ingenuity, tactical astuteness and determination. Models of political opportunity structures have become dominant in explaining the emergence and character of social movements but because they lay too much emphasis on the calculation of costs and benefits by movement actors they are of little help in analysis of this case. Rather, the case of the anti‐roads movement suggests that further attention needs to be paid to the identities of the movement's founders in explaining their actions and lends credibility to the (much criticized) claim that new social movements are qualitatively new. Date: 1999 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:polstu:v:47:y:1999:i:2:p:275-291 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Political Studies is currently edited by Matthew Festenstein and Martin Smith More articles in Political Studies from Political Studies Association |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.