| This dissertation examines the question of how political identities are generated via social movement framing and related mobilizational processes. It argues that social movements can transform political identities by constructing frames, which (1) generate popular mobilization, (2) prompt public debate, and (3) put pressure on decision-makers. The concept of framing is operationalized via the standard trichotomy of prognosis, diagnosis and motivational appeals. The phenomenon of resonance is seen as an intermediate mechanism through which the three components of framing lead to the three political processes of mobilization, debate and pressure. In the actual analysis, the model is elaborated to include interactive and iterative aspects of frames including frame articulation, frame adaptation, framing channels and framing targets. However, the core of the argument is that framing is a ubiquitous social phenomenon, which deserves attention when explaining political identity change.; Secondly, the model is also tested via an examination of how social movement theory applies to two particular political contexts: a nationalist independence struggle and democratic transition.; The choice of empirical case study---Estonia during the years 1987--1992---stems from the curious way in which Estonians today view their political identity as on the one hand conditioned by their most recent experience under Soviet rule, but on the other hand as more fundamentally anchored in a "legal continuity" with their first period of independence during 1918--1940. This latter understanding of political reality was precisely the product of a social movement and its framing efforts, to wit, the Citizens' Committees and the Congress of Estonia. The dissertation examines how the leaders of this movement generated, amplified and sustained a frame of "legal restorationism", which insisted that Estonia was an independent state illegally occupied by the Soviet Union and that the entire context of Soviet rule as well as Estonia's extrication from it had to be viewed in those terms. This was in contrast to the Estonian Popular Front, whose frame was oriented toward the building of a new Estonia.; In a conclusion, I examine five longer-term consequences of legal restorationism. |
