Abstract

As environmentalists work to implement local sustainability policies, what forces shape advocacy outcomes? Here I discuss policymaker responses to environmental organizing in a mid-size North American city.

Ethnographic research reveals how city governments invoke policy paradoxes – policies designed to invite ambiguous and contradictory interpretations—that effectively deflect and demobilize the power potential of movements. Where social movements research has long emphasized necessary and favorable mechanisms of movement power, I explain how strategic agreement with movement ideals becomes institutionalized.

I describe how ‘policy guardrailing’—segregated pathways for new policies that protect established practices—fosters allusions, illusions, and delusions of civic power.