Social movements are often an important presence on the long road of peace processes, yet the unique part they play in moving such processes along has received little attention. More research is needed on this pivotal factor of the way wars end. A deeper understanding of these dynamics will benefit all who have a stake in seeing conflict terminated quickly and justly.

Some social-change theorists see the confluence of critical communities—intellectuals, mainly, who formulate the ideas challenging the status quo—and social movements, which absorb and transform those ideas into an action agenda, as the necessary precondition of pervasive change in the public’s attitudes and ultimately in politicians’ actions. The social movements are crucial, not only because they create or manifest a "public demand" for change, but because they themselves are carriers of new cultural values, new ideas and principles of the political culture, which nourish the roots of public demands. The intellectuals sometimes detect and sometimes stir that inchoate demand, translating it into the historical and analytical framework that appeals to the gatekeepers in the news media, educational institutions, and policy circles. "The creation of new values," writes Thomas Rochon, a leading theorist of how social change arises, "begins with the generation of new ideas or perspectives among small groups of critical thinkers: people whose experiences, reading, and interaction with each other help them to develop a set of cultural values that is out of step with the larger society. The dissemination of those values occurs through social and political movements in which the critical thinkers may participate, but whose success is determined to a far greater degree by the course of collective action in support of the new values."

In societies beset by conflicts, a demand for the end of the war will be conveyed in part through such collective action driven by new values. The question for new research is: To what extent is "peace"—a legal or quasi-legal agreement between warring parties that ends hostilities short of outright military victory—a result of the public demands generated by social-change movements? The evidence is very suggestive that such movements are indispensable to the origination and success of peace processes, but it is an under-studied phenomenon, despite its obvious importance for policy leaders, donors, and transnational civil society.

It is widely acknowledged that the public’s wishes—particularly a weary public—can spur leaders to alter the terms of a conflict. As in the unraveling of the Cold War, however, the precise relationship between public opinion and the actions of decision makers in ending conflict is rarely straightforward. Public opinion is passive and inert. To be a compelling instrument of change, it must be shaped and mobilized into a broad and forceful expression. Typically, civil society is the arena in which burgeoning public sentiments are cultivated, given voice, and combined with other "action repertoires" to reorient social values. This is what I mean by a public demand. It seems apparent that this idea distills much of what occurred in transforming movements like the nuclear freeze campaign in the 1980s, and also—as Rochon, Doug MacAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and other theorists show—in the civil rights era of the 1960s, the feminist politics of the 1970s and afterwards, and the anti-Vietnam-war movement of the 1960s. As Tarrow puts it in reference to what he and Charles Tilly have labeled contentious politics, movements are "triggered when changing political opportunities and constraints create incentives for social actors who lack resources of their own . . . When backed by dense social networks and galvanized by culturally resonant, action-oriented symbols, contentious politics leads to sustained interaction with opponents." Typically, a society faces no greater circumstances of change than war, and the formulation of what theorists call "collective-action frames"—the way social movements arouse and convey the public demand—is particularly fluent in wartime because of the social and political trauma that mass violence brings. In short, all the elements for the creation of influential social movements and powerful public demands are present in societies beset by war.

The social-movement theorists have only occasionally applied such ideas to movements outside the United States or Europe, where political mechanisms, access to decision makers, the conduits of information, etc., can be quite different. More to the point, such scholars rarely look specifically at social movements and peace processes—indeed, it is virtually uncharted terrain. Peace movements (mainly, again, in the West) have earned some useful exploration, but they tend to be treated as isolated protest and much of the scholarly work looks at internal dynamics, not at larger scale effects. Social movements that have crystallized around conflicts, and are directed toward peace processes, have been ignored or overlooked.

Still, social movement theory is very useful as a theoretical (and methodological) base for understanding the importance of public demands and peace processes. Two aspects of this theory are central: first, how social movements affect leaders’ thinking and action on war termination; and second, the role of ideas and values in shaping the social movement itself and the larger discourse about war and peace. Rochon’s theory of value generation and value diffusion as necessary precursors to pervasive social and political change matches my own observations very closely. "Critical communities engage in the identification and elaboration of group interests. This is not only a matter of specifying the interest itself, but also of embedding that interest in a value structure, Gestalt, or discourse," Rochon explains in Culture Moves. "Movements mobilize thousands of people behind the ideas of the critical community. In so doing, they cannot use the ideas developed in critical networks as off-the-shelf packages. Some critical ideas lend themselves better to mass mobilization than others; many critical ideas are destined never to be embraced beyond the restricted network of thinkers in which they originated. At a minimum, the ideas of a critical community must be repackaged in a way that connects them with mobilizable social groups." This is precisely what was occurring in the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s among the advocates for an end to the nuclear arms race, a topic I have explored extensively.

In the last decade, several relatively (or partially) successful, mediated resolutions of conflicts have included Northern Ireland, Israel-Palestine, Guatemala, and southern Africa (Namibia, Mozambique, and South Africa). Where successful peace agreements were made, a powerful demand for peace amplified the willingness and capacity of political leaders to search for solutions that fell short of the original war aims of the leadership. The demand was conveyed through numerous channels, not only as a moral claim, but as an expression of exhaustion, grief, anger, national interests, and other sentiments or arguments.

Are these cases, examples of Rochon’s two-stage process of values formation and dissemination, roughly speaking, the in-tandem work of critical thinkers and social activists? To verify such a claim, one would need to identify five factors or epiphenomena to explain why decision makers in some settings are motivated to negotiate agreements. The factors are:

(1) a critical community of intellectuals who informally work in concert to nurture social values that promote, for example, the legitimization of an insurgent group, or preference for nonviolent solutions over military solutions;

(2) the rise of activist movements to adopt these values and introduce them, first within their own circles and then with increasing intensity through a variety of techniques into the national or international discussion about the conflict;

(3) the growing concordance of measured attitudes in the public that support the new social values and goals, and other indicators of broad acceptance, such as the "mitosis effect" of the social movement itself—its rapid replication in many forms;

(4) a noticeable embrace by non-governing elites—leaders of religious groups, business, news media, universities, etc.—of new social values or something akin to those values; and

(5) new initiatives from opposition political parties or similar groups in the political culture that reflect the new social values.

If all five occur, it constitutes—through a cumulative and dynamic reorientation of the national discourse—the public demand. The outcome of this pattern is change in the policy of political decision makers, such as the decision to enter into a peace process or to negotiate more flexibly.

These factors must occur in combination to add up to a public demand. Intellectual discourse, even coherent and inventive critical thinking, is potentially feeble without social movements to enliven and inject the ideas into the public domain. Social movements devoid of new ideas that connect with concerns of citizens are usually marginal to political power and decision making. Public opinion itself is unlikely to reflect social-change agendas without being informed by a new discourse and social-change agents. Disenchantment of some elites without popular force is weak (and elite contention tends to favor strong national institutions, like the military). It is the confluence of these constituents that signal a change in social values and hence the foundation for acceptable—indeed, popular—political action. My hypothesis is that each successful peace process (even those that might falter later) exhibit the characteristics of this values change, resulting in an alteration of political dynamics and the creation of "space" to negotiate a deal. In fact, it is apparent that many political leaders, faced with protracted conflict and increasing costs of war, search for dignified ways out of their dilemma; the public demand generated by social movements frequently provides just such room to move toward a settlement.

The failure of "hurting stalemates," in William Zartman’s phrase, to be brought to a conclusion through negotiated peace agreements is also illuminated by this analytical framework: Peace activists might exist and seasoned negotiators may be in ample supply, but the absence of a public demand condemns such efforts. There may be any number of reasons why a public demand does not form, including repression of dissent or rigid and widely accepted social values that cannot be challenged effectively. Whatever its cause, the absence of a public demand is a strong indicator that a particular conflict is not amenable to outside efforts at negotiation. The number of examples of this absence of a public demand, and the possibility of direct consequences for peace settlements, are many: they include Cyprus since 1974, the Kurdish-Turkish civil war up to the capture of the rebel Öcalan in 1998, and the Serbian aggression in Kosovo until NATO intervention and the fall of Milosevic. It may also be true of lapsed successes, notably, the Oslo accord in Israel-Palestine. Among the many interesting features of these negative examples is the ultimately weak role played by transnational movements. While undeniably a dynamic force in global governance nowadays, transnational NGOs could not influence national or rebel leaders sufficiently to bring about a peace process in many if not all of these cases. A distinctly national social movement seems to be necessary to create a (national) public demand.

While the negative examples may be illustrative, the positive examples are likely to be more so, and present richer opportunities for research. Some work that is highly suggestive of the role of social movements in peace processes has been done on Northern Ireland, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Guatemala, and Israel. But this work, which ranges widely with respect to empirical rigor, has not been systematically collected and synthesized into a coherent framework. We also have a growing body of evidence on dissident activity in the Soviet Union opposing the Soviet role in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Work on American opposition to the war in Vietnam is plentiful, but, again, an uncontested frame for understanding the impact on policy decisions has yet to be built, and new data on the actions of policy makers is being generated.

More precise understanding how wars end, and can be ended, would be an enormous aid to those involved in conflict resolution, democratization, civil society building, transnational movements, and international relations generally—including U.S. policy makers and diplomats. The U.S. Government, for example, supports in various ways political actors inside countries in conflict in an effort to bring that conflict to an end; understanding how social movements and critical intellectuals are indispensable components of such resolutions is valuable information. This is particularly relevant to democratization efforts, a key strategy of U.S. foreign assistance. Support for civil society actors from the U.S. agency for International Development is vast, but recent assessments show that the agency has not evaluated its grant making adequately and does not operate with a theory of social change. Public and private donors, whose constituency is civil society and educational institutions, would benefit dramatically from empirical work demonstrating how public demands are shaped and implemented. For example, a number of donors aim their grants toward elites without paying heed to the broader social forces from "below" that may be necessary to changes in policy. Because transnational civil-society groups have created many dense social networks and promote norms globally, they present particularly good opportunities to use this analysis, particularly because international NGOs are often part of the story. Taken together, these central actors in global governance and American foreign policy have a functional interest in the results of a well-designed and comprehensive inquiry.

If, as Sidney Tarrow insists, we have entered a "movement society" that is global in scope, we need to understand how social movements arise and affect politics, international relations, social development, and so forth—and not least, how they affect issues of war and peace.

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