Tactics and Strategic Action

Abstract

We discuss the dominant approaches to the analysis of social movement tactics and strategies. If there is broad agreement among scholars about their importance to the performance and understanding of collective action, there is considerably less consensus on how best to explain the decisions over tactics and strategy that social movements make, the extent to which decisions reflect individual or group preferences, or the importance that should be accorded to the micro and macro levels of analysis. The debates concerning these questions provide the main focus of our discussion, from contentious politics to actor-centered and interactionist approaches.