Political Process and Popular Protest: The Mobilization against Free Trade in Canada

The mobilization to defeat the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement is used as a point of departure for reflections on the role political processes play in social movement mobilization. Previous articles in this Journal presented a resource mobilization-political opportunities paradigm in the study of social movements. This article expands this paradigm's analytic reach to a country that has contributed little research to the ongoing debate about social movement mobilization. Adopting a political process perspective, political institutions, political opportunities, and social and political organizations shaped the emergence and mobilization of the popular campaign. This case can strengthen a generalized understanding of those political factors most conducive to the interesting interplay and outcome of movement, party, and electoral politics.