Collective Efficacy

Abstract Although it would be hard to deny that people who take part in protest activities are aggrieved, grievances do not provide a sufficient reason to participate in collective action. Resource mobilization theorists argue that grievances abound, whereas collective action does not. Therefore, they reason, the key question that needs to be addressed is not whether people are aggrieved, but why some aggrieved people become mobilized, while others do not. Resource mobilization and political process theorists have suggested respectively that the availability of resources and the presence of opportunities play a key role. Groups that have more resources and more opportunities are more likely to succeed in mobilizing collective action. Furthermore, Klandermans (1997) has shown that people are more likely to participate in movement activities when they believe that this will help to redress their grievances at affordable costs. Simon and colleagues (1998) have labeled this the instrumental pathway to movement participation. For the instrumental pathway the key component is collective efficacy—an individual's expectation that collective action participation can make a difference and bring about the desired changes. The more effective an individual believes collective action participation to be, the more likely s/he is to participate.