Although we know much about social movement recruitment, very little research focuses on member retention over time. Using the Plowshares

We report the findings of our research on differing levels of movement involvement by focusing on participation in a high-risk/cost campaign mobilized by Nicaragua Exchange, a solidarity organization in the U.S.-Central America peace movement of the 1980s. Our data confirm the importance of relational ties in high-risk activism, yet raise questions about the relevance of biographical availability and the unique functions of organizational ties. We argue that McAdam's model is an important advance in our understanding of the factors that facilitate high-risk/cost activism, yet its micro-structural approach does not sufficiently account for human agency and individual abilities to negotiate and overcome barriers to activism.

Leaders are central to social movements, yet scholars have devoted relatively little attention to understanding the concept of leadership or its effects on movements. In this article, we explore leadership's influence on movement dynamics by examining Nigeria's Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), the Catholic Left-inspired Plowshares movement, the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, and the liberation movement in El Salvador. Building on Bourdieu, Putnam, and the existing literature on social movement leadership, we argue that these movements' leaders possessed "leadership capital" having cultural, social, and symbolic components. We then turn our attention to the conditions under which leadership capital affects three key processes in movement development: mobilization of aggrieved parties, activation of third-party supporters, and responses to repression. We conclude by calling for more comprehensive, systematic, and comparative investigation of factors influencing leadership in domestic and transnational movements.

As social problems become increasingly global, activists are working across state boundaries and forming transnational social movements. However, there is little information that illuminates how groups are able to overcome ethnic, class, ideological and cultural differences that could be obstacles to collaboration. Through an analysis of the story of Salvadoran martyr Archbishop Romero, I demonstrate how this narrative fostered solidarity between the progressive Central American church and U.S. Christians. By symbolically mirroring the social ontology of Christianity and melodramatically presenting the Salvadoran conflict with moral clarity, Romero's life story facilitated the construction of a transnational collective identity and provided a model of action. The moral credibility of the narrators, and the context in which Romero's story was told, influenced many Christians' decision to prioritize this religious identity over their national allegiance.

Based upon qualitative interviews with thirty‐two Central American peace activists, this article elaborates the process of “cognitive liberation” through the application of frame analysis. In addition, I seek to explain the diffusion of this social‐psychological state from Central to North America. Attention is given to the role of the church as a common cultural link that functioned as a micro‐mobilizing context, which provided missionaries who served as “meso‐mobilizing actors.” The term frame contradictions is introduced to specify the condition in which irreconcilable differences between a movement's frame and its opponent's frame are exposed, thereby facilitating frame adoption. I conclude that some type of cultural link is necessary for the development of a common frame that can integrate groups cross‐nationally and that can provide agents of mobilization to serve as a synapse through which frames can be transmitted from one country to another.