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Coordination outside formalorganization: consensus-baseddecision-making and occupation in theOccupy Wall Street movementGianmarco Savioaa Department of Sociology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook,NY 11794 4356, USAPublished online: 04 Feb 2015.

To cite this article: Gianmarco Savio (2015) Coordination outside formal organization:consensus-based decision-making and occupation in the Occupy Wall Street movement,Contemporary Justice Review: Issues in Criminal, Social, and Restorative Justice, 18:1, 42-54, DOI:10.1080/10282580.2015.1005509

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Coordination outside formal organization: consensus-baseddecision-making and occupation in the Occupy Wall Street

movement

Gianmarco Savio*

Department of Sociology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794 4356, USA

(Received 30 April 2013; accepted 12 October 2014)

Previous work has shown that a vital component for successful collective actionis formal organization, in particular because it facilitates internal coordination.But how is coordination achieved in the absence of formal organization? Toanswer this question, this article presents ndings drawn from an ethnographicstudy on Occupy Wall Street (OWS) in New York City. It rst introduces theconcept of autonomy to discuss the particular challenge faced within thedecentralized structure of OWS of developing coordination. It then shows howthe practice of holding mass assemblies and the occupation of Zuccotti Parkitself each served, in incidental and unintentional ways, as mechanisms of coor-dination. These ndings conrm previous work on the importance of coordina-tion and build upon it by demonstrating that not only is coordination possibleoutside formal organization, but that it is also in some cases achieved withoutconscious intention. This suggests the utility of moving beyond an overlyrational understanding of social action by acknowledging the inevitability ofunforeseen outcomes.

Keywords: social movements; coordination; organization; Occupy movement;consensus decision-making; occupation

All social movements face the challenge of developing coordination, or unied action,oriented towards a common goal. Typically, formal organizations address this chal-lenge through features, such as a hierarchical structure and a clear division of labor(McAdam, 1982; Michels, 1915). But how is coordination achieved in the absence offormal organization? In this article, I draw upon ethnographic evidence from OccupyWall Street (OWS) in New York City to show how movement participants achievedcoordination without formal organization and, in fact, rather unintentionally.

The rapid spread of the Occupy movement in the fall of 2011 represents thecase of a large-scale social movement structured without formal organization. Whileparticipants generally sought to avoid speaking for the movement as a whole orlabeling it in any way, the movements structure and values reected a strong anar-chist undercurrent. Participants thus put into place a pregurative decentralizedstructure which sought to be as nonhierarchical as possible (Breines, 1989; Epstein,1991; Graeber, 2002, 2011a, 2011b; Polletta, 2002; Sitrin, 2012). In particular, par-ticipants in OWS invoked the concept of autonomy to refer to the ability to act

*Email: gianmarco.savio@stonybrook.edu

2015 Taylor & Francis

Contemporary Justice Review, 2015Vol. 18, No. 1, 4254, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10282580.2015.1005509

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according to ones free will, outside the connes of larger coordinating anddecision-making structures. Autonomy served as a general guiding principle and forsome participants, a primary reason for their involvement; at the same time, how-ever, it posed challenges to coordination. In this sense, the tension in OWSbetween autonomy and coordination is an instantiation of the broader challenge innonhierarchical organizing of allowing freedom of action, while at the same timedeveloping effective structures for collective organizing.

In spite of this challenge, OWS nevertheless developed forms of coordination.In this article, I illustrate how the movements assembly-based decision-makingstructure and the occupation of Zuccotti Park served as forms of coordination. Inparticular, while the assemblies were intended to serve as the spaces for decisionsconcerning the entire movement, their coordinating function was in fact more aresult of their unintended role as symbols of the movements emphasis on participa-tion and inclusiveness; in turn, while the action of occupation facilitated uniedaction among participants, coordination was not initially its primary goal. Buildingupon previous work describing formal organization as a mechanism for coordina-tion (McAdam, 1982; McCarthy & Zald, 1977; Michels, 1915; Schwartz, 1976),then, these ndings conrm the importance of coordination, but also suggest thatcoordination can take place outside the boundaries of formal organization, and insome cases, can be achieved somewhat incidentally. More generally, this widerview of coordination is useful for providing an insight into how diverse groupscohere and come to act collectively. Ultimately, the mass assemblies and occupationproved critical for sustaining the vitality of the movement; after the assemblieswere dissolved and the occupation evicted, it became increasingly difcult forOWS participants to forge large-scale collective action. This suggests that coordina-tion outside the connes of formal organization, while possible, is neverthelessfragile and tenuous.

Background

While organization has been identied as an important feature contributing to thesuccess of social movements (Caniglia & Carmin, 2005; Gamson, 1975; McAdam,1982; McCarthy & Zald, 1977; Young & Schwartz, 2012; Zald & Ash, 1966), theassumption that coordination within organizations is itself important for movementsuccess has been largely implicit. An important exception is Schwartzs (1976)book, Radical Protest and Social Structure: The Southern Farmers Alliance andCotton Tenancy, 18801890, where he argues that social movement organizations,in order to be successful, must work in the interests of their members. Moreover,truly effective organization requires organizational discipline the willingness ofthe bulk of members to agree to act in concert, to coordinate [their] activities, andthen to change their behavior together (1976, p. 133). Coordination is essential formovement success because it enables movement organizations to act in the collec-tive interest of their members.

Other work on the internal structure of social movement organizations has bothdirectly and indirectly spoken to the importance of coordination. For example,Michels (1915) Political Parties, a pioneering work on the role of organizationwithin social movements, argued that while the size of large social movementorganizations requires the development of oligarchic structure, oligarchy also leadsto goal displacement, where the goals of movement leaders displace the goals of

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movement constituents. At the same time, different aspects of Michels frameworkhave been modied and challenged (Gerlach & Hine, 1970; Piven & Cloward,1977; Tarrow, 1998; Zald & Ash, 1966). In particular, Schwartz, Rosenthal, andSchwartz (1981) argue that goal displacement is not inevitable and that organizationscan manage to maintain a harmony of interests between leaders and constituents.

Insofar as this is possible, and insofar as participants vehemently rejected anymove in the direction of a more explicit hierarchical structure, the horizontalstructure of OWS represented an attempt to guard against oligarchization and mini-mize leadership autonomy (Schwartz et al., 1981, p. 24). Thus, for example, theyimplemented features, such as rotating leadership, and principles, such as step up,step back, a way of encouraging traditionally marginalized voices to speak, whileasking those who have spoken a lot to step back. Many participants also generallypromoted and embraced the concept of autonomy, which was often used to referto the ability for individuals and groups to act according to their free will. Whilethis form of organizing worked to guard against the tendency for movement organi-zations to develop oligarchical structures, it also made coordination particularlychallenging, as I describe below.

Methods

The data presented here are drawn from over 100 h of ethnographic observationscarried out between September 2011 and September 2012. Settings included directactions, assemblies, working group meetings, and other movement-related gather-ings. Observations included a combination of mass gatherings and smaller workinggroups so as to attain both breadth and depth, and to sketch the relation betweenthe whole and its parts.

While some contexts allowed for occasional note-taking, eldnotes were writtenup after every occasion in the eld, and were subsequently reread and coded toidentify recurring patterns. Access to eld sites was generally not an issue, as alarge majority of meetings were well publicized and open to the public.1 In occa-sions where the opportunity presented itself, the researcher presented himself as agraduate student writing his dissertation on OWS, and if solicited further, sharedthat he was interested in the organizational structure of the movement.

In reference to data collected from a single case, Minkoff and McCarthy notethat case study research is, in some ways, the most compelling approach to study-ing strategic decision-making and organizational change since it takes us inside theblack box of organization, though they go on to say that such research needs tobe comparative and, to the extent possible, historical or longitudinal in order tocapture the implications of transformation for organizational survival and success(Minkoff & McCarthy, 2005, p. 303). In this sense, the studys apparent focus on asingle case may raise questions about its generalizability. In reality, however, OWSis best understood not as a single group, but rather, as a collection of numerous(albeit overlapping) smaller working groups and afnity groups. As a result, itallowed for internal comparisons across time and context, and even more so as therelatively long-term ethnographic component of the study allowed me to capturethe evolution of the structure of OWS (which, as other scholars have noted aboutall pregurative, horizontal organizations, is best understood as a continual work inprogress (Graeber, 2009; Holloway, 2002, 2010; Juris, 2008; Sitrin, 2006, 2012);

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thus, the progression of events within the movement provided the basis forcomparisons to be made between different temporal moments.

Overall, the ethnographic component, which aims at thick description (Geertz,1973), provides depth and insight into the social fabric and milieu, in which actorsmove within their world; rst-hand experience provides the researcher with a rich-ness of information inaccessible to scholars forced to rely on second-hand historicalaccounts or post-facto recollections. As suggested above, ethnography also allowsthe researcher to capture changes over time. While the bulk of the evidence for thestudy was obtained through participant observation, supplemental data was alsoobtained through interviews and informal discourse analysis of a variety of writtentexts, which included a number of ofcial and unofcial documents (online and inprint), email listservs of different working groups, tweets, text message alerts,images, videos, and websites. This supplemental data served to triangulate dataobtained through participant observation as well as providing a more enrichedaccount. Overall, these qualitative methods enabled an in-depth perspective into themovement.

Autonomy and decentralization in OWS

On August 2nd, 2011, following a call put out in adbusters magazine to OWS, anumber of groups in New York came together to hold what was advertised as aGeneral Assembly. As OWS activists later described it, the event had been pre-planned and taken over largely by a veteran protest group called the WorkersWorld Party, which had proceeded to set up their banners, megaphones, and makespeeches. After some heated exchanges, a group of antiauthoritarian activists brokeoff from the event and formed a consensus-based assembly not far from the conver-gence, which eventually came to attract a majority of those present. Participantsthen organized themselves into working groups (outreach, action, and facilitation),which broke off and later reported back on their decisions. This decision-makingformat set the stage for the formation of the New York City General Assembly(NYCGA), the body nominally responsible for introducing consensus-based deci-sion-making and mass assemblies as a regular feature of the movement. As themovement grew, participants sought to maintain its nonhierarchical aspirations,reecting and following in a long and evolving tradition and organizational reper-toire (Clemens, 1993; Tilly, 1986, 1995), which includes Zapatismo, the antinuclearmovement, the womens movement, and participatory democratic organizationssuch as SNCC and SDS (Epstein, 1991; Graeber, 2011a, 2011b; Polletta, 2002;Sitrin, 2006).

Accompanying these aspirations was a widespread feeling that participantsshould be free to do what they want, and that no one ought to be forced to doanything against their will. As mentioned above, participants frequently invokedthe concept of autonomy as a primary value in expressing this sentiment. Whileautonomy has been used variously to refer to independence from the state,political parties, capitalism, and/or the global economic system (Bhm, Dinerstein,& Spice, 2010), in the context of OWS, participants also used the concept todenote the freedom to operate independently of any form of collective decision-making, such as the mass assemblies. To quote a comment posted on an unofcialdocument:

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one of the big questions around ad hoc project teams is around autonomy. peopleshould feel free to create autonomous project teams with only people they trust if theywant. if they want to open their project team and put out a call to join them, thatshould be a choice as well. afnity is a natural self-organizing principle of humanbeings that has not been a big enough part of OWS.

Thus, groups that made decisions independently of the movements mass assem-blies, the General Assembly and the Spokes Council, were understood as actingautonomously. While autonomous action is in theory possible in all movementorganizations, within the decentralized organizational structure of OWS, autonomyassumed a particularly central role.

The appeal of autonomy

While the most apparent benet of autonomous action is that it grants individualsand groups the feeling that they are free to engage in any action they desire, manyparticipants also invoked this feeling in explaining their involvement in the move-ment. Here is an account from one activist, who became extensively involved,describing his rst day visiting the Zuccotti Park encampment in early October 2011:

And I just went up to the Info desk, and Im just waiting. Someone, really kind ofseeming disoriented, [was] trying to give info to all the people coming up [t]here. Shewas helping this woman, and after she left, the rst thing she said to meis: Imsorry theres a table in front of me; I just need [something] to put stuff on; Im not incharge here. And that right there kind of opened it up for me

And so I hit the ground running. Im like: Can I get a pack of pamphlets or some-thing? And I ran back up to Harlem, knocking on doors I had never canvassedbefore. I organized once arally at my high school, and that was the extent of myactivism. But something that day just lit me on re, and I was just running back andforth, talking to strangers. I went through that stack of 100 in like an hour; went back,got another 100, and kept going.

And it was that ability to just to be able to work, without having to answer to anyone,just telling someone Id like to help in this way and someone saying thats com-pletely okay; go do that! Theres something that transformed me and changed my lifeentirely.

In explaining his involvement in OWS, the activist in this excerpt cited a numberof organizational features of the movement, including its inclusive character andthe related freedom to work without having to answer to anyone. While this free-dom translated into autonomous actions carried out by both subgroups and individ-uals, the former proved more consequential, simply due to their scale.

In some cases, engaging in autonomous action was simply more efcient thangoing through formal structures of decision-making and coordination, such as theGeneral Assembly, as consensus-based decision-making can be notoriously time-con-suming. As one actively involved participant in the PR working group explained:

A: I hardly ever went to the General Assembly. Hardly ever, ever went.Q: Why [not]?A: Mostly, I would havewanted to go. It was a matter of hours in the day. I

mean the rst two months, I did not sleep more than ve hours a day, for

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two months. I mean, it was insaneI was doing, doing, doing: writing pressreleases, all sorts of damage control, negotiations, reghting, you knowthere were just so many things going on, that [the] General assemblies to mewere more symbolic than real.

In expressing his doubt regarding the very effectiveness and functionality of theGeneral assemblies as real centers for decision-making and action, the participantin the above excerpt implies that it was indeed never necessary to bring any pro-posals to the mass assemblies in any case. Similarly, autonomous action allowedindividuals and groups to directly address certain areas of need without having togo through any formal, and in some cases, cumbersome, process. Just as it wasimpossible within such a structure to prevent any action from taking place, autono-mous action invited no formal consequences, and was, in fact, encouraged.

With decisions being made from both inside and outside the mass assemblies,decision-making within the movement in reality took place in two parallel arenas one formal, the other informal with the relationship between the two never quiteclaried. This is how one interviewee described the relationship between the massassemblies and autonomous action:

Decentralization allows groups to operate autonomously and they dont need to bringevery decision to us. So for example, Kitchen doesnt need to come to the GeneralAssembly every night and make us reach consensus for what theyll make for dinner;we empower them to make that decision. And it seems very obvious in that case, butother working groups didnt necessarily see that

The thing about consensus is that it takes so long to reach a decision that really, youshould only be bringing up proposals that concern everyone.

Clearly, it would have proven impossible for every single action to be approved ordecision to be made through formal consensus. Yet as the above excerpt shows, thecriteria for what kinds of decisions ought to be brought forward and discussed inthe assemblies were relatively unclear. In practice, while some groups proposeddecisions that were deemed unnecessary to discuss in the assemblies, others simplydecided to act autonomously, without going through the trouble of obtaining theconsensus of the assemblies. While the mass assemblies served as the formal are-nas, in which decisions concerning everyone were to be made, the tasks of com-municating a particular set of autonomous actions and coordinating with otherswere ultimately left to the discretion of the actors themselves.

Decentralization and the challenge of coordination

Even as it aided in the recruitment of some, autonomy represented the more gen-eral challenge of creating coordination in a decentralized structure. For example,many occupiers themselves regularly cited the lack of transparency and availabilityof public information as areas which needed improvement. To give another exam-ple, despite the crowd of people that regularly congregated in Zuccotti Park amonth into the occupation, information about the meeting times and places of thevarious working groups part of the NYCGA was either lacking or unreliable.Similarly, decentralization meant that subgroups could occasionally work towards

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contradictory or overlapping objectives. On more than one occasion, for example, Iobserved different direct actions (for example, marches for two separate causes)scheduled at the same time.

The movements decentralized structure also posed challenges related to repre-sentation. Without needing to obtain the consensus of all participants, individualsand groups within the movement ran as political candidates, wrote books, andfounded independent organizations that claimed to work towards the same goals.2

In addition, while some may have perceived it as a strength, the lack of any ofcialspokespersons increased the risk for the movement to be misconstrued in themedia; subgroups that chose to engage in property destruction, for example, insome cases, arguably tarnished the reputation of the movement as a whole.

Much of these challenges stemmed from the general inability to formallyenforce any rule or prevent any action from taking place. Within a movement thatlargely claimed to have no demands, for example, a controversial Demands work-ing group was formed. As one user in one of the online forums of the NYCGAwebsite rhetorically asked, If anyone can form a working group, and add it to thiswebsite, then what would stop someone from starting a Threats working group?The reason why we can have such plurality and ourishing debate in the workinggroups, as someone articulated in response to this post, is because no group hasany authority to represent the movement whatsoever.3 This issue manifested itselfas well in relation to the ongoing internal debate about whether the movementshould explicitly embrace nonviolence or instead encourage a diversity of tactics.As one interviewee put it,

a lot of people ended up saying they werent into diversity of tacticsBut whetherthey believed it or not, they actually couldnt do anything about it. Because the diver-sity of tactics [advocates] were right about the following: in a movement thatsentirely volunteer and where you have no sources of authority, you actually cantenforce anything. So really, you have to embrace diversity of tactics.

The inevitable prevalence of autonomous action thus raised questions about thebasis of authority, legitimacy, and control within the movement. To give anotherexample: in the rst month of the encampment at Zuccotti Park, the GeneralAssembly came to an agreement, out of respect for surrounding neighbors, thatdrumming in the park be limited to four hours a day during certain designatedtimes. Some drummers did not acknowledge the agreement, however, and drum-ming continued throughout the day. The fact that the movement was technicallyunable to prevent or sanction individuals or groups who undertook certain actionsalso explains why much time in assemblies was dedicated to ofcially disavowingcertain autonomous actions carried out in the name of the movement. All of theabove instances therefore illustrate the challenge, particularly in a decentralizedmovement such as OWS, of producing coordinated and unied action.

Forms of coordination: mass assemblies and the occupation of space

Even while many of the particular issues discussed above were never fullyresolved, the presence of the mass assembly structure and the occupation ofZuccotti Park served quite unintentionally as coordinating mechanisms thattemporarily facilitated unied action.

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Movement as mass assembly

In OWS, consensus-based decision-making served as the formal foundation forbuilding unanimity and agreement around particular issues. Deliberation and dialogare a fundamental aspect of consensus-based decision-making, the idea being thatas people use reason to attempt to persuade one another, a common conception ofthe collective good is ultimately developed; deliberation can be effective in commu-nicating the priorities and goals of the people in the room (della Porta, 2005a,2005b, 2009). As Francesca Polletta states in Freedom is an Endless Meeting, Byrequiring that participants take seriously each others concerns and priorities, theprocess balances individual initiative with solidarity, both of which are critical tosuccessful collective action (2002, p. 9). In these ways, the consensus-based deci-sion-making model represents a space in which individuals can feel included andempowered to express themselves. A common defense of this form of decision-making in OWS was that even if the process may take longer than other forms ofdecision-making, the nal outcome is more fullling to all participants, since itconsiders and incorporates each of their perspectives.

Apart from the movements numerous working groups, the movements massassemblies (namely the General Assembly and Spokes Council) were intended toserve as the primary instruments of coordination. As mentioned above, they served,in theory, as the spaces, where, in the words of participants, decisions that concernthe entire movement took place. During the assemblies, individuals and representa-tives from different working groups could bring forward proposals and discussmovement-wide concerns. They were also a place where general announcementscould be made, and where working groups could report back on their activities.Insofar as they served a forum for collective decision-making and informationcirculation, the assemblies were thus indeed intended as formal coordinatingmechanisms.

The assemblies did function as coordinating mechanisms, but more as the resultof their unintended function as symbols of the movements general emphasis onparticipation and inclusiveness. As one scholar actively involved in the movementhas described it:

General assemblies at Zuccotti Park in New York City operated as a brilliant theater,dramatically juxtaposing a visibly participatory peoples movement against what OWSparticipants and sympathizers perceived to be a rotted political system that has effec-tively disenfranchised most Americans. The downside is that General assemblies werenot functional forums for actual decision making. Because they were so cumbersomeand easily derailed, many of the most active OWS organizers, myself included, even-tually stopped going to them. (Smucker, 2013, p. 220)

In this excerpt, Smucker asserts that in reality, the assemblies did not serve theirintended purpose as spaces for collective decision-making. While the decisionsmade within them did have an impact, this impact was overshadowed by theautonomous decisions made outside of them. As mentioned above, there was noobligation for individuals or working groups to bring forward proposals to theassemblies. In fact, while the assemblies formally served as the spaces in whichparticipants made collective decisions about the disbursement of donated funds, thisdid not prevent participants from securing money through alternative means. Thecumbersome dimension of the process, exacerbated by the large attendance at

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assemblies which frequently numbered in the hundreds, also increased the incentivefor participants to make decisions outside of them.

Regardless of whether or not they served their purported function, however, theassemblies nevertheless served an important, though less intended, symbolic func-tion. The assemblies represented spaces, in which movement participants coulddevelop a sense of and discuss the issues that were of concern to the movement asa whole; even as many decisions were made outside of them, proposals passed inthe assemblies represented, as best as they could, the collective will of movementparticipants. Because they moreover physically congregated the largest number ofpeople apart from the larger rallies and the occupation itself, the assemblies in theseways represented as the symbolic center of the movement.

The assemblies also functioned, along with other practices, such as the miccheck, as rituals, which fostered a sense of collective identity simply through com-mon participation. And like the mic check, the assemblies provided a space inwhich participants felt like they could express themselves, feel included, and affectthe movements trajectory. The assemblies were thus a signicant component of themovements symbols of inclusiveness and participation, which together presented astriking contrast, as indicated in the above excerpt, to the broader political system,in which participation was limited or seen as inconsequential. In representing themovements togetherness and unity, the symbolic role of the assemblies was thusequally if not more important than their purported function.

Over time, however, consensus-based decision-making at the assembly levelproved unsustainable, echoing previous work which has illustrated the instability ofconsensus, particularly in larger groups (see, for example, Cornell, 2011; Gitlin,1980; Polletta, 2002). Indeed, as attendance at the assemblies in OWS expanded innumber, bitter disputes and disruptive behavior raised questions about the role andsuitability of holding them. Among other assertions, participants at the assembliesheld that they were overly bureaucratic and focused on process, and accused facil-itators of holding a disproportionate amount of power and exploiting their posi-tions. While some participants later came to attribute the problems to theunexpected massive inux of funds, others contended there was no need to forgeagreements around issues that did not require agreement. In the winter of 2012,both of the movements mass assemblies, the General Assembly and Spokes Coun-cil, were discontinued.

The dissolution of the assemblies ensured a situation where all decisions andactions within the movement were carried out autonomously, either in workinggroups or informal afnity groups. Even as many participants agreed with their dis-solution, it was nevertheless discouraging to others who felt that the movementsformal structure of collective decision-making had failed (some of whom tried toresurrect them, with limited success). Ultimately, while the prevalence of autono-mous action limited their intended purpose, the symbolism of the assemblies never-theless had worked, albeit less intentionally, to unite movement participants andsustain their commitment.

Movement as occupation

In the meetings held before the occupation of Zuccotti Park on September 17th,participants came to a consensus around a handful of issues, such as whether ornot to have police liaisons. Overall, however, planning was limited mostly to

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staging the occupation itself. On the rst day of the occupation, the assembly thatconvened decided that they would occupy the park indenitely, and change itsname to Liberty Plaza. Beyond these decisions, however, no other common agendaor vision was agreed upon. As the number of participants in the park grew andbecame more diverse in the following weeks and months, the occupation continuedas literally that which had brought everyone together. As the movement spread toother cities, the tactic of occupation served as a commonality, which united move-ment participants across the thousands of occupations in the broader movement asa whole, even serving as the basis from which the name of the movement wasderived. Insofar as it served as the unifying thread across all participants, the occu-pation was the movement.

It only became especially clear after the eviction that the movement had deriveda number of resources spatially concentrated in the park itself. During any givenday, participants made speeches and engaged in political conversations with mem-bers of the public and each other. The park was a particularly welcoming but alsomobilizing space, as more moderate individuals over time found themselves wonover by the more radical views of their comrades. The space of the park alsoallowed informal forms of coordination to take place by virtue of the simple factthat participants shared the same physical space.

The occupation served important symbolic functions as well. The movementsongoing presence in a physical space granted it a continuous visibility such thatafter the eviction, many outsiders wondered where the movement had gone. Par-ticipants ability to sustain the occupation, despite a previous attempt to keep themout of the park, tentatively signaled the movements power and potential capacityfor disruption. The occupations proximity to Wall Street sent a message not onlyto outsiders, but to insiders as well: for example, while after the eviction, theattempt was made to occupy another space a mile to the north of Zuccotti Park,some came to disagree with this action, in part because it took the [movements]focus away from Wall Street. Finally, insofar as it enabled people to engage inpolitical conversations about societal problems in public space, the occupation rep-resented a kind of public sphere (Habermas, 1962).

For all of the above reasons, the eviction not only dealt a severe blow to themovements spatially centralized resources and eliminated its physical and symbolicpresence immediately following the occupation, for example, the very basis ofthe existence of a number of occupation-based working groups, such as Town Plan-ning, was challenged. More importantly, it removed a primary common thread the collective action of occupation that brought movement participants together.Unsurprisingly, the eviction gave rise to questions both within the movement andthe media about its future direction. While internal differences were manageableduring the occupation, the movements identity crisis, to use the words of oneinterviewee, became all the more apparent after the eviction.

Internal diversity is common and indeed often useful in many social movements(Young & Schwartz, 2012); yet as the above discussion suggests, what distin-guishes social movements from what might otherwise be a eld of autonomous andisolated organizations is precisely a common line of action. Especially as a resultof the way the movement was organized accompanied by little more than a set offormal and informal coordinating mechanisms, rather than any more formal form oforganization the occupation assumed particular importance as a unitingframework. In contrast to formal organizations, whose primary goal is to reproduce

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themselves over time, OWS exhibited a much more fragile and temporary structure.For its duration, the eviction, the commonality of occupation was sufcient forincorporating the movements diversity, sustaining commitment, and ensuring uni-ed action. Following the eviction, however, diversity gave way to factionalization,and the uncertain future course of action facilitated skepticism among less involvedconstituents.

Conclusion

Building internal unity and coordination is a constant challenge within all socialmovements. The case of OWS illustrates the challenge of coordination, particularlywithin a decentralized organizational structure: while the freedom to act autono-mously may have served as a motivation for the participation of some, autonomyalone was inadequate for producing unied action. Many OWS participants in factacknowledged that at least a minimal amount of coordination was necessary toachieve collective goals, and that horizontal structure should not be understood tomean that individuals can do whatever they want, without concern for how theiractions affect the larger group. But as I have shown, developing the appropriatekinds of coordination proved challenging.

For their duration, the mass assemblies and the ongoing occupation of ZuccottiPark served as unintentional, informal, and temporary coordinating mechanisms.While the mass assemblies were consciously designed to serve as the spaces formovement-wide decision-making, the inevitability and abundance of autonomousactions outside of them limited their intentional purpose, and their impact as such.The assemblies did play a role in bringing people together and fostering collectiveaction; however, this was more as a result of their less intended, symbolic role.Likewise, even while some may have acknowledged the occupation of ZuccottiPark as a general asset, the extent to which the movements core energy and vitalityrested upon its continued existence was unforeseen.

Both the assemblies and the occupation therefore provided the movement witha variety of largely unintended benets. At the same time, neither mechanismproved sustainable over a long period of time: while, on the one hand, the per-ceived suitability of the assemblies diminished, especially as they grew in size, thecontinued existence of the occupation proved contingent on the movements abilityto prevent a forced eviction by the police. Following the dissolution of each, theproduction of unied action and sustained commitment required a suitably alterna-tive coordinating mechanism to replace them. But the lack of such a mechanismcontributed to the gradual demobilization of participants. The benets of the assem-blies and occupation were gained only as long as they could be sustained.

Previous work has shown that while formal organization facilitates internalcoordination, it is also susceptible to oligarchization (McAdam, 1982; McCarthy &Zald, 1977; Michels, 1915; Morris, 1984; Schwartz, 1976; Young & Schwartz,2012; Zald & Ash, 1966). In contrast, I have shown how OWS participants devel-oped forms of coordination outside of formal organization which, while helpingto guard against oligarchization, also revealed themselves to be particularly fragile.Since successful collective action requires the ability to engage in sustained conten-tion over time, the challenge especially for decentralized movements thus involvesdeveloping effective mechanisms of coordination which are sustainable over timewhile at the same time guarding against oligarchization.

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In identifying and describing how the assemblies and occupation unintentionallyserved as mechanisms of coordination, I have shown that coordination can be theincidental or secondary result of collective action. This nding suggests, in contrastto work emphasizing the rational dimension of social movement organization, thatscholars adopt a perspective that acknowledges that action, even when seeminglyrational, may result in unintended, and sometimes unforeseeable, consequences. Inaddition, these ndings build upon previous work on the importance of organiza-tion in collective action by showing that coordination and unied action are possi-ble without formal organization. In this way, they suggest a broader understandingof social cohesion one in which formal organization is not necessary. But theyrepresent only a rst step. How exactly diverse groups are able to act collectively,especially outside of formal organization, remains a puzzle well worthinvestigating.

Notes1. In contrast to previous movements, such as the global justice movement (Graeber,

2009), the common sentiment took police surveillance in all contexts for granted, andtherefore participants were usually open to the presence of researchers, journalists, andother outsiders.

2. Consider, for example, the respective cases of George Martinez, the book OccupyingWall Street, and the Movement Resource Group.

3. See http://www.nycga.net/groups/accountability-transparency/forum/topic/what-happened-with-the-demands-wg/?topic_page=5.

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Abstract Background Methods Autonomy and decentralization in OWS The appeal of autonomy Decentralization and the challenge of coordination

Forms of coordination: mass assemblies and the occupation of space Movement as mass assembly Movement as occupation

ConclusionNotesReferences