Patterns of Mobilization in Local Movement Organizations: Leadership and Strategy in Four National Organization for Women Chapters

This article focuses on the organizational strategies of four local chapters of the National Organization for Women (NOW) across three decades. The goal is to explain differences in chapters' abilities to remain active and to survive over time by examining their overall patterns of mobilization. The authors argue that the ability to maintain organizational stability and collective action is influenced by internal organizational characteristics and strategies, such as leadership, mobilizing tactics, and organizational structure, as well as by external factors. Two of the chapters, New York City and Chicago NOW, have remained relatively stable throughout their histories and continue to survive. The other two, in Cleveland, Ohio, and Bloomington, Indiana, experienced dramatic ups and downs during their histories and ultimately declined. The authors argue that leadership and organizational choices influence these patterns of chapter mobilization.