Ronald Pagnucco

• College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University

In this essay we summarize early findings of our work in progress on mapping the human rights movement in Kenya. We begin with a brief history of the human rights movement in Kenya, and then present our preliminary findings on the number and main objectives of human rights non-governmental organizations (HRNGOs) in Kenya today. Our essay is a repor...

Recent research on social movements emphasizes the importance of the political opportunity structure (POS) for movement development and impact. The POS for the peace movement, which is a contender in the foreign policy arena, is much more limited than it is for social movements working for changes in domestic policies. In this essay, the authors, b...

Transnational Social Movements and Global Social Politics examines a cast of global actors left out of the traditional studies of international politics. It generates a theoretically informed view of the relationships between an emerging global civil society - partly manifested in transnational social movements - and international political institu...

This paper summarizes the results of a mailed survey sent to nearly 300 transnational human rights organizations, of which more than half responded. The survey was designed to identify the geographic distributions of human rights organizations, their political activities, their work with international agencies, their organizational structures and r...

This study analyzes framing processes and their relationships with ongoing social movement change. We examine peace frames found among U.S. peace movement organizations (PMOs) in its period of contraction at the end of the Cold War. On the basis of analysis of a unique two-wave survey of U.S. peace movement organizations in 1988 and 1992, we assess...

Many studies of social movements have been state‐centric, ignoring social movements’ long history and current practice of activism that transcends state boundaries. The last three decades, however, have seen a dramatic growth in transnational activism in such issue arenas as peace, human rights, women's rights, and the environment. Similarly, the d...

The post-Cold War period has been a time of rapid change in the international system. One major shift is a dramatic increase in the demands placed upon the United Nations. This increased reliance on the UN suggests that there may be a shift in opportunities for this and other international institutions to have a greater effect on the dynamics of gl...

This article analyzes the 1989 Chinese student movement in Beijing using the political process model that was used by Doug McAdam (1982) in his study of the U.S. civil rights movement. Discussing McAdam's three main variables—the structure of political opportunities, indigenous organizational strength, and cognitive liberation processes—as they rel...