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This article is an exploratory study of heretical social movement organizations (HSMOs) and the challenges that they face in framing their issue positions. It examines how identity communities' core issue positions serve to demarcate the boundaries of authentic group membership, making "heretics" out of community organizations that have contrary positions. It also analyzes how these organizations finesse their heretical status by utilizing specific framing strategies. It illustrates these processes using data on two social movement organizations involved in the American abortion controversy, Catholics for a Free Choice, a Catholic pro‐choice organization, and Feminists for Life of America, a feminist pro‐life organization, during the period between 1972 and 2000.I begin by demonstrating the Catholic and feminist communities' use of an abortion litmus test to maintain community boundaries. I, then, describe the two organizations' use of value amplification and boundary framing to frame their "heretical" issue positions both within and against their identity communities, respectively. I conclude by discussing the trend toward orthodoxy in many identity communities and the role of heretical social movement organizations in challenging this trend.

Analyzes the variable impact of social movements during the transitions to democracy in Latin American & Eastern Europe focusing on the case of Chile. It is shown that the transition from authoritarian to democratic regimes opens opportunities for social movements to press for social change, but also presents social movements with certain constraints. While social movements usually expand the impulse to democratization, achievement of certain levels of democracy ends in the demobilization of these movements, especially in situations in which there is a close relationship between political parties & social movements & in which political elites have a commitment to stable democracy. As social movements demobilize, authoritarian elites are often left with considerable power & influence. Thus, while demobilization of social movements increases the stability of democracy, if traditional power relations remain in place, this stability will ultimately be threatened. D. Ryfe