Leaders play a crucial role in social movements. Why some people are willing to be leaders in collective protest is an important question to understand the leadership dynamics of contentious politics. Previous studies on social movements have identified several factors to explain the emergence of leaders. However, they treat the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of leaders as static, which will not change during the whole process of collective resistance. By examining the motivations of leaders in homeowners’ rights protection movement in Beijing, this study finds that the motivations of leaders remain in a dynamic process in which the leader’s motivations may change over time as the external conditions change. Based on the perspective of dynamic process, this study regards the motiva...[ Read more ]

Leaders play a crucial role in social movements. Why some people are willing to be leaders in collective protest is an important question to understand the leadership dynamics of contentious politics. Previous studies on social movements have identified several factors to explain the emergence of leaders. However, they treat the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of leaders as static, which will not change during the whole process of collective resistance. By examining the motivations of leaders in homeowners’ rights protection movement in Beijing, this study finds that the motivations of leaders remain in a dynamic process in which the leader’s motivations may change over time as the external conditions change. Based on the perspective of dynamic process, this study regards the motivation of homeowner-leader as a combination, which in general can be classified into two categories: the “motivations for public interests” and the “motivations for self-interests”. The “motivations for public interests” include public spiritedness, sense of social justice, social responsibility, community expectation, network embeddedness, and high level of rights consciousness and political efficacy. The “motivations for self-interests” include controlling public affairs and public funds, running one’s own business, and earning extra benefits. These two kinds of motivations play their respective roles in different situations of homeowners’ rights protection movement. According to the motivations of homeowner-leaders, an ideal typology with three types of homeowner-leader is generated: the public spiritedness leader, the homeowner movement entrepreneur, and the speculator leader. Driven by these motivations, homeowner-leaders adopt some strategies to realize their aims, which, based on their purposes, can also be distinguished as the “strategies for public interests” and the “strategies for self-interests.” The “strategies for public interests” include resisting rightfully, conducting self-imposed censorship, building extensive networks, running informal politics, and promoting professionalization and institutionalization. The “strategies for self-interests” include providing paid service and combining business with public benefit activities. One consequence of these motivations and strategies is the professionalization of the homeowners’ rights protection movement in Beijing.