Abstract
The author uses the concept of Clausewitzian action logic-that is, a social movement as the continuation of a struggle outside the political arena-to explain the current state of collective immobility among social reform groups in Taiwan. Resource mobilization theory is employed to discursively analyze major activist texts of the 1980s-a time of recovery for the opposition party following a Kuomintang crackdown in what is now referred to as the Kaohsiung Incident of 1979. It is suggested that opposition groups gradually followed an instrumental strategy of using social movements to bargain with the authoritarian ruler. Ever since the opposition party won control of the central government in 2000, social issues have, to a large extent, been excluded form the reform agenda- a result of "'Clausewitizan enchantment."