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80 (Melucci 1989, 78-79)
(Melucci 1989, 78-79)
Two general points emerge from these considerations. First, it is necessary to distinguish between the mobilizing and latency phases of collective action. While mobilization may occur for very important objectives, it is still of a limited duration. ’Political entrepreneurs’ therefore cannot hope to represent the mobilized forces beyond the realization of the particular goal in question. And as a result of the mobilization, there is no reason to expect any necessary increase in the organizational or electoral strength of the ’representatives’. Mobilization is directed primarily at obtaining clearly defined results, through which, in turn, it can gather solid support and produce change. The remaining question is how the political system can give continuity and effectiveness to these sporadic and discontinuous mobilizations. In response, it is perhaps necessary to draw a sharper distinction than in the past between policy formation and established interest-based organizations such as political parties and trade unions. It might also be suggested that the point of contact between movements and political systems is increasingly found in policies rather than in organizations. We could consider the ability to wrest policy formation from the almost exclusive control of professional and institutionalized political bodies as both a measure of the effectiveness of the movements and an indicator of the degree of openness of the political system.
Second, there is a need for public spheres of representation (for example the media, the universities, the social services) in which it is possible to express the conflicts and demands that develop in civil society. These public spheres would provide social actors with the opportunity to appear and to make themselves heard, without losing their particular character or autonomy. Through these channels, the questions raised by collective action could become the subject of policy-making negotiations, thereby having effects on the social system as a whole, without institutionalizing the actors of movements. In these intermediate areas specific forms of provisional and ad hoc representation could operate. Within these areas, umbrella organizations, distinct from the institutional actors of the political system, could play a fundamental role in the mobilization phase of movements (as happens, for example, in the peace and ecological mobilizations; see Diani and Lodi, 1986).
Rather than reaffirm the Leninist model, which assigned movements the fate of either taking state power or failing completely (e.g. in trade unionism), it becomes possible to prefigure other roles for collective action: the movements produce reforms, provide new elites for the political system and the market, while at the same time serving to locate and reveal relations of power. In this way, the movements enable society to address and face the larger questions affecting human life in complex societies - issues which are often disguised behind themes of redistribution and exchange or neutralized by the allegedly ’technical’ nature of decision-making procedures. [Melucci, Alberto. 1989. Nomads of the Present. London: Hutchinson Radius.]
