Di Alto
2003 APSA paper
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perception that outsiders have of the movement and its potential for success, and the level of external
support that movements receive.
Despite the prominence of conflict within social movements there has been comparatively
little sustained attention given by sociologists and political scientists in the social movement
literature to the study of the effects of intramovement conflict. Writing in the mid-1950s, Coser
noted that in general the study of “conflict has been very much neglected indeed as a field of
investigation” (1956: p. 16). In the 1960s, Zald and Ash (1966) lamented that “schismogenesis and
factionalization has received but little attention from sociologists” (p. 336) and argued that “the
problems…of factions and schisms…deserve greater attention than they have been given” (p. 340).
The following decade Killian (1972) observed that much popular attention and interest was given to
the divisions within the Black Revolution and argued that the effects of “extremism” on the
movement deserved more sociological and academic investigation. In the 1980s, Haines (1984)
reflected that “a neglected topic in social movement theory is the effect of factionalism within
movements” (p. 31). Later that decade, McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald (1988) noted that we don’t
know much about “the dynamics of collective action past the emergence of a movement” (p. 728)
suggesting that scholars turn their attention to internal movement dynamics. And in the 1990s, Frey,
Dietz, and Kalof (1992) continued the longstanding refrain of scholars that “the importance of
factionalism has not been much discussed in the literature at this point” (p. 381) and urged that
“students of social movements would be well advised to direct more attention to organizational
problems of internal movement politics and factionalism” (p. 384). In the new millennium the
subject of intramovement conflict continues to remain an important one for social movement
scholars.
This paper picks up where the intellectual tradition of the study of intramovement conflict
has left off and focuses on a social movement that has been the subject of little attention by social
movement scholars thus far—the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. The Hawaiian sovereignty
movement is an ideal case study for the subject of intramovement conflict as it is characterized by a
dramatic ideological split between two main factions concerning the form that self-determination
should take.
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One branch of the movement pursues a government-to-government relationship with
the United States, much like that that Native Americans have. This branch, therefore, pursues self-
determination within the United States legal framework. According to Dudley & Agard (1990),
some people from these groups back this form of sovereignty because
they think that America will never allow secession from the Union. The
Convention