Tempering Temperance? A Contingency Approach to Social Movements’ Entry Deterrence in Scottish Whisky Distilling, 1823–1921

What makes social movements successfully deter entry in contested industries? We develop a contingency framework explaining how their success depends on the internal fit between movements’ private and public politics strategies with the tactics of mass and elite mobilization. We also highlight the importance of how these tactics fit with external conditions like the cognitive legitimacy of the industry and industry countermobilization. When movements rely on a private politics strategy to condemn an industry in the eyes of the public, social movement mass will be decisive. Alternatively, when movements use a public politics strategy to push for regulatory intervention, the mobilization of elites is crucial. We develop our understanding of external contingency factors by exploring how cognitive legitimacy residuals from local ancestral populations affect both mass-driven private politics and elite-driven public politics, and how national-level industry countermobilization efforts affect elite-driven public politics strategies. We test these ideas in a historical study of the Scottish whisky distilling industry during the rise of temperance movements (1823-1921). We contribute to the social movements literature by showing how movements’ entry deterrence in contested industries depends on the internal fit between their strategies and mobilization tactics, as well as on their engagement with external contingencies.