The first step in this sort of conceptual analysis is to establish definitions of the key terminology. An agreed-upon definition of institutions is ‘a hard thing to pin down’ (Mohr and Friedland, 2008). A precise definition is unnecessary here given the rather coarse grain of this analysis, which only contrasts institutions with individuals in society, but two useful definitions are ‘an organization or other formal social structure that governs a field of action’ (Rojas, 2013) and the refreshingly short ‘a relatively self-contained social system’ (Silverblatt, 2004). So these include governments, corporations, and NGOs as well as more diffuse entities such as family, property, and other collections of social norms that provide structure to social life. This paper also refers to the groups of people who populate formal institutions as institutions in themselves, such as U.S. residents who populate the U.S. as a country, and less formalized collections of people, such as the environmental movement. The institutional approach therefore focuses on changing the behaviour of these entities, such as if activists are able to prevent new stores from being opened by a retail chain (Ingram et al., 2010).

Our choice of definition here is analogous to Haslanger (2005)’s ‘ameliorative approach’ in which the purposes of relevant groups (e.g., social movement actors working to end industrial animal agriculture) are factored into the development of the concept. We use inductive and abductive methods, both of which have been used to study grand challenges—‘specific critical barrier(s) that, if removed, would help solve an important societal problem with a high likelihood of global impact through widespread implementation’—similar to this context, to ensure that our theoretical development of the institutional approach incorporates the numerous relevant practical considerations highlighted in our case study (Eisenhardt et al., 2016; George et al., 2016; Augustine et al., 2019).

Thus, the institutional approach requires a shift from commonplace activist messaging in the farmed animal movement. The standard message, ‘Go vegan’, is typically targeted at individuals. A corresponding message within the institutional approach would be, ‘End animal farming’. For organizations that favour a more moderate message, an individual-oriented message like, ‘Eat less meat’, could be changed to, ‘Less meat in school cafeterias’.Footnote 3

The institutional approach also implies changing how activists invest their time. Popular grassroots tactics today include handing out leaflets and staging protests in restaurants and grocery stores to encourage individuals to change their diets. Institutional tactics include investing in ‘cell-cultured meat’ and trying to convince corporations to insist on higher welfare standards in their supply chain.

There is a wide spectrum here, given that most tactics have both individual and institutional characteristics. For example, an organization may run an institution-oriented campaign for cage-free eggs and also hope the discussion of animal cruelty will encourage some consumers to reduce egg consumption. Or, a documentary may be produced and distributed to the public with the intent of encouraging a wide variety of changes in society. These individual changes can effect or be prerequisites for institutional changes and vice versa.Footnote 4 A single campaign, especially a large one, can utilize institutional and individual tactics for various aims. Tactics can also vary in whether they focus on the wellbeing of animals, either welfare or rights, or other issues of factory farming, such as environmental and human health effects, though animal wellbeing (welfare, rights, or otherwise) has been the primary activist focus to date and thus is my focus here.

The arguments herein are grounded in the ideas of effective altruism, a community of scholars and activists addressing the goal of maximizing one’s positive impact on the world (Reese, 2018a, p. xiii). For example, among effective altruists who care about animals, there has been a focus on the plight of farmed animals because they make up the vast majority of domestic animals, despite being less salient in everyday human life than other animals like cats and dogs. Effective altruism provides a framework for addressing the increasing demands for empirically focused, intellectually rigorous research on animal advocacy, including the wellbeing of wild animals (Smith and Reese, 2016; Reese, 2018b). In other contexts, effective altruism proponents such as Peter Singer have set up organizations such as The Life You Can Save to evaluate the most cost-effective ways to increase human welfare (Singer, 2015). Thus the current research addresses the question, ‘How can social movements navigate the trade-off between individual and institutional tactics to most effectively achieve their goals?’

An important distinction to draw is that between institutional change and the ‘systemic change’ approach often discussed within the field of effective altruism (Snow, 2015; Gabriel, 2017). Systemic change typically refers to either fixing an issue at a deeper level further down the causal chain, such as addressing the causes of poverty rather than directly alleviating the suffering of people in poverty, or it refers to fundamental transformations of society, such as the end of capitalism, that would affect a wide range of social issues (Berkey, 2018; Broi, 2019; Dietz, 2019; Kissel, 2017). The institutional distinction might be a more fundamental or systemic change than individual change, but the relationship between the two axes is unclear because both individuals and institutions can effect changes and be changed at superficial or fundamental levels.

Institutional change can be undertaken from a variety of ideological perspectives. For example, if one is an anti-capitalist, then one may seek to not just end industrial animal agriculture, but to ensure it is not replaced with a comparable market system. This may even require metaformative steps prior to work on any specific manifestation of capitalism, whether the food system, transportation, energy, or other morally pertinent sectors. On the other hand, from a pro-capitalist perspective, one may be particularly eager to displace industrial animal agriculture via market forces, such as encouraging large food companies to embrace and develop high-quality, affordable animal-free food technology.

Finally, this paper treats the individual–institutional axis as correlated with but separate from other common distinctions between movement strategies, such as whether the focus is on improving the lives of animals (welfare), reducing the number of animals being used (reduction), or maximizing the likelihood that no animals are used at some point in the future (abolition).