Strategic Adaptation of Women’s Movements in Fragile Political Contexts: Tactics and Political Opportunities in South Sudan, 2011–2021

Abstract

Women’s movements in fragile and conflict-affected states confront an unusual strategic problem: they must pursue institutional change while the political institutions they seek to influence are themselves unstable, militarised and repeatedly reconfigured. This article examines how women’s movements in South Sudan adapted their strategic repertoires across the country’s first decade of independence (2011–2021). Drawing on a mixed-methods sequential explanatory study of 314 participants in Juba, Wau and Malakal—including 258 structured surveys, 42 key-informant interviews and 14 focus group discussions—the article analyses the relative use and perceived effectiveness of advocacy and dialogue, capacity building and leadership development, engagement with transitional processes, and economic initiatives with coalition building. The findings show that advocacy and dialogue was the most frequently reported broad strategy (75.0%), while capacity building and leadership development received the highest effectiveness rating (4.5/5.0). Engagement changed across political periods: constitutional advocacy dominated the early independence phase, peace and humanitarian advocacy intensified during civil war, and quota implementation and institutional monitoring gained prominence during the R-ARCSS period. Inferential results further indicate a significant association between age and strategy preference (χ² = 23.847, p = 0.021, Cramer’s V = 0.284), while organisational size was positively associated with higher mean strategy-effectiveness scores up to the 101–200 member category. The article develops the concept of strategic adaptation to describe the movement’s capacity to combine multiple tactics, learn across crises and shift strategic emphasis as political opportunities opened and closed. It argues that movement effectiveness in fragile states depends less on a single ‘best’ tactic than on maintaining a diversified repertoire that links elite advocacy, leadership development, coalition protection and timely engagement with transitional institutions. The findings contribute to social movement and African feminist scholarship by showing how collective action is sustained when political opportunity structures are volatile rather than stable.