Collective Bbhavior Research in the Netherlands: Prom Residual to Partnership

Abstract

Till recently, the study of collective behavior did not pose as a distinct field in Dutch social science. During the era of pillarization and consociational democracy (1927–196?) the main thrust of social and political research involved organizational factors in social and political life rather than the irregular dynamics of panics, crazes and hostile outbursts, Noninstitutional, unscheduled phenomena were not en vogue among opinion leaders and social scientists alike.

In the mid-sixties social and political life underwent drastic changes. Riots, demonstrations and other kinds of turmoil became popular themes for discussion, partisan analysis and, only gradually, serious research. Few students of collective behavior were able to present an interesting theoretical or conceptual perspective, most of them sticking to Smelser and Gurr.

The late seventies and eighties have seen the rise of research in the so-called new social movements: groups and groupings that have settled outside the neo-corporatist system. Neither Smelser nor Gurr are still the top-dogs. McCarthy and Zald's resource mobilization and Tilly's structural approach have become embraced as the more promising perspective.

New social movements have turned out to be a recalcitrant object of research. For solid pieces of research one should rather pay attention to new attempts to get theoretical and empirical grip on the functioning of long-established movements.

The theoretical re-orientation towards questions concerning the strategies, costs and benefits, and effectiveness of collective behavior has invited Dutch scholars to take more interest in examining the political and governmental context of collective behavior. A growing number of studies on decisionmaking presents collective behavior as one amidst many other competing explanatory factors. Collective behavior is about to lose its self-contained status. It becomes part of a context of both input and output factors, the latter including the “old enemy” of collective behavior: the authorities and governmental bureaucracies. It may go all the Day from a residual category to a fully recognized dimension of social and political process.