Radical flank effect


The radical flank effect refers to the positive or negative effects that radical activists for a cause have on more moderate activists for the same cause.
According to Riley Dunlap, the idea of a radical flank effect "has a lot of credibility among social-movement scholars".

History

In 1975, Jo Freeman introduced the term "radical flank" with reference to more revolutionary women's groups, "against which other feminist organizations and individuals could appear respectable."
The term "radical flank effect" was coined by Herbert H. Haines. In 1984, Haines found that moderate black organizations saw increased rather than decreased funding as the radical black movement emerged. In his 1988 Black Radicals and the Civil Rights Mainstream, 1954-1970, Haines challenged the prevailing view that confrontational and militant black activists created a "white backlash" against the more moderate civil-rights movement. Rather, Haines argued, "the turmoil which the militants created was indispensable to black progress" and helped mainstream civil-rights groups.
Haines measured positive outcomes based on increases in external income to moderate organizations and legislative victories. While nearly half of the income data was estimated or missing due to the refusal of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Congress of Racial Equality to divulge their complete financial records, it was more extensive than the data used by Doug McAdam in his classic work on resource mobilization. Haines' data was thorough for the moderate organizations which comprised the dependent variable for his research.

Positive and negative effects

Positive

It's difficult to tell without hindsight whether the radical flank of a movement will have positive or negative effects. However, following are some factors that have been proposed as making positive effects more likely:
Devashree Gupta developed a game-theoretic model of radical flank effects. In addition to distinguishing positive vs. negative flank effects on moderates, she suggested also considering effects on radicals:
Moderates gainModerates lose
Radicals gainOverall movement strengthened Movement becomes radicalized, driving away moderates; negative radical flank effect
Radicals loseModeration of movement with mild concessions; positive radical flank effect Overall movement weakened

Her extensive-form game involved a choice by moderates of whether to clearly distinguish themselves from radicals, and then a choice by the external actors being lobbied as to whether to grant concessions:
In the radical-flank literature, "radical" may mean either more extreme in views and demands or more extreme in activist methods, possibly including the use of violence.
Studies of civil resistance have typically found that nonviolent activism is ideal, since violence by a movement makes state repression seem legitimate. That is, violence yields a negative radical flank effect. Indeed, states sometimes seek to label nonviolent movements as terrorist and violent, or incite them to violence through provocation and agents provocateurs, in order to justify suppression.
Barrington Moore, Jr., in books such as Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy and A Critique of Pure Tolerance, observed the prominent use of violence which preceded the development of democratic institutions in England, France and the United States. A survey of Moore's critics notes that they were generally "impressed by Moore's case for progressive violence, but eager to move on to other topics, instead of considering the implications of these issues."
In a study of 53 "challenging groups", social movement analyst William Gamson found that groups that were willing to use "force and violence" against their opponents tended to be more successful than groups that were not.
In a cross-national quantitative analysis of 106 maximalist campaigns, Erica Chenoweth and Kurt Schock examined armed flank effects. They found no general pattern of armed flank direct effects across 106 cases. However, in the case studies they found evidence for both positive and negative armed flank effects.
Francis Fox Piven writes that the use of in violence in social movements is often under-reported by activists cultivating a nonviolent image, as well as by social movement scholars who are sympathetic to them.
Some recent studies have compared the violent flank with the diversity of tactics effect, and found both to have positive effects in movement campaigns.
The African National Congress believe that both nonviolence and armed conflict were important in ending Apartheid. John Bradford Braithwaite concludes from this that when violent factions already exist, moderates shouldn't necessarily shun them, but moderates shouldn't seek to create violent factions.