Brokerage in the Independence MovementAbstract
This paper is a study of the consequences of brokerage for movements, particularly for the role of political parties within social movements. I find that brokerage creates opportunities for minor groups to play a crucial role in mobilisation, which comes at a cost to a movement’s structure. I make my case with a study of brokerage in action based on activist interviews, events data and network data collected from the Scottish independence movement. Results demonstrate the likelihood of the governing Scottish National Party participating in movement events only increases with the number of participating movement organisations. As the movement organisations transitioned from a referendum campaign to an autonomous movement under-resourced, peripheral groups took the lead in brokering the Nationalist movement.
