Instrumentality and/or Identity? Explanation of Participation in Collective Action in the Gabonese Repressive Context Based on the Dual-Pathway Model of Social Movement Participation

Abstract

The dual-pathway model of social movement participation posits that engagement in social movements is done through an instrumental pathway (by evaluating the costs and benefits of participation) or an identification pathway (by becoming aware of the similarity and destiny shared with members of the same social category as oneself); these pathways are mutually exclusive. In the present research, this postulate, formalized and tested until now exclusively in a democratic context, is tested in a repressive context, which differs from the democratic context due to the quasi-systematic recourse of the institutional authorities to coercive tactics to prevent the expression of dissident discourse and conduct. The data were collected during a student social movement from 389 Gabonese students (232 men and 152 women), aged between 16 and 33 (M = 23.9, SD = 3.20). They were administered self-reported measures, focusing on instrumentality, identity, and intention to participate in protest action. The results report that the instrumental and identification pathways simultaneously predict the intention to participate in protest action. They are therefore not mutually exclusive, as the model suggests.