Opportunity, Culture and Agency

Abstract

Students of social movements dispute the causal weight they should accord political opportunities, political enculturation and human agency in influencing strategic action. They have made little progress advancing the debate on empirical grounds. The authors of this article reviewed English and Arabic newspaper accounts, read organizational histories and documents and interviewed key informants to explain variation in strategic action by the two main Palestinian militant organizations, Fatah and Hamas, during the second intifada or uprising against the Israeli state and people (2000—5). The authors show how perceived political opportunities and political enculturation influenced the strategic action of Fatah and Hamas leaders but find little independent effect of agency leading them to question whether recent claims about the supposed primacy of human agency in social movement strategic action may be exaggerated.