What Scott taught

The Movement Action Plan is a "strategic framework", outlined by US activist Bill Moyer in his book Doing Democracy.

A veteran of the civil rights and peace movements, Moyer was shocked to discover that the organisers of one of the largest nonviolent direct actions in US history - the 1977   nonviolent blockade of the Seabrook nuclear plant by over 1,400 people - felt that they had failed in their efforts.

Moyer became interested in helping social change activists to understand the dynamics behind movement success. The result was the Movement Action Plan (or MAP), first published in the mid-1980s.

Moyer also identified four "activist roles" that he believed were important to social change: rebel, reformer, citizen and change agent. Observing that conflict within social movements was frequently sparked by differing ideas about the best way to make change, Moyer argued that successful movements needed the involvement of all four roles, and that each played a critical role in different stages in the life of a movement.

Shortly before his death in 2002, Moyer and co-authors JoAnn McAllister, Mary Lou Finley and Steve Soifer published the book Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements.

> Find out more about the Movement Action Plan

"One of the chief limitations of the effectiveness of activists and their social movements has been the lack of strategic analytical theories and methods ... There are strategic models and step-by-step, how-to-do-it models for performing almost every human task except that of understanding and waging social movements."

- Bill Moyer