A political movement is a collective attempt by a group of people to change government policy or social values. Political movements are usually in opposition to an element of the status quo, and are often associated with a certain ideology. Some theories of political movements are the political opportunity theory, which states that political movements stem from mere circumstances, and the resource mobilization theory which states that political movements result from strategic organization and relevant resources. Political movements are also related to political parties in the sense that they both aim to make an impact on the government and that several political parties have emerged from initial political movements. While political parties are engaged with a multitude of issues, political movements tend to focus on only one major issue.
Identity politics is politics based on a particular identity, such as ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, denomination, gender, sexual orientation, social background, caste, and social class. The term encompasses various often-populist political phenomena and rhetoric, such as governmental migration policies that regulate mobility and opportunity based on identities, left-wing agendas involving intersectional politics or class reductionism, and right-wing nationalist agendas of exclusion of national or ethnic "others."
Intersectionality is a sociological analytical framework for understanding how groups' and individuals' social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, height, age, and weight. These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing.
“Feminist political ecology” examines how power,gender, class, race, and ethnicity intersect with environmental ‘crises’, environmental change and human-environmental relations. Feminist political ecology emerged in the 1990s, drawing on theories from ecofeminism, feminist environmentalism, feminist critiques of development, postcolonial feminism, and post-structural critiques of political ecology. Specific areas in which feminist political ecology is focused are development, landscape, resource use, agrarian reconstruction, rural-urban transformation, intersectionality, subjectivities, embodiment, emotions, communication, situated knowledge, posthumanism, deconstructing theory-practice dichotomies, ethics of care and decolonial feminist political ecology. Feminist political ecologists suggest gender is a crucial variable – in relation to class, race and other relevant dimensions of political ecological life – in constituting access to, control over, and knowledge of natural resources.
In many countries, women have been underrepresented in the government and different institutions. This historical tendency still persists, although women are increasingly being elected to be heads of state and government.
Feminism is a broad term given to works of those scholars who have sought to bring gender concerns into the academic study of international politics and who have used feminist theory and sometimes queer theory to better understand global politics and international relations as a whole.
State feminism is feminism created or approved by the government of a state or nation. It usually specifies a particular program. The term was coined by Helga Hernes with particular reference to the situation in Norway, which had a tradition of government-supported liberal feminism dating back to the 1880s, and is often used when discussing the government-supported gender equality policies of the Nordic countries, that are linked to the Nordic model. The term has also been used in the context of developing countries where the government may prescribe its form of feminism and at the same time prohibit non-governmental organizations from advocating for any other feminist program. In this sense it is possible to distinguish between a liberal state feminism found in Western democracies such as the Nordic countries, and a somewhat more authoritarian state feminism that is often also linked to secularism, found e.g. in certain Middle Eastern countries.
Shirin M. Rai, is an interdisciplinary scholar who works across the political science and international relations boundaries. She is known for her research on the intersections between international political economy, globalisation, post-colonial governance, institutions and processes of democratisation and gender regimes. She was a professor of politics and international studies at the University of Warwick, and is the founding director of Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Centre for International Development (WICID).
Voting behavior refers to how people decide how to vote. This decision is shaped by a complex interplay between an individual voter's attitudes as well as social factors. Voter attitudes include characteristics such as ideological predisposition, party identity, degree of satisfaction with the existing government, public policy leanings, and feelings about a candidate's personality traits. Social factors include race, religion and degree of religiosity, social and economic class, educational level, regional characteristics, and gender. The degree to which a person identifies with a political party influences voting behavior, as does social identity. Voter decision-making is not a purely rational endeavor but rather is profoundly influenced by personal and social biases and deeply held beliefs as well as characteristics such as personality, memory, emotions, and other psychological factors. Voting advice applications and avoidance of wasted votes through strategic voting can impact voting behavior.
Sexism in American political elections refers to how sexism impacts elections in the United States, ranging from influences on the supply, demand, and selection of candidates to electoral outcomes. Sexism is inherently a product of culture, as culture instills a certain set of beliefs or expectations for what constitutes appropriate behavior, appearance, or mannerisms based on a person's sex. Sexism in American political elections is generally cited as a socially-driven obstacle to female political candidates, especially for non-incumbents, raising concerns about the representation of women in the politics of the United States. Such prejudice can take varying forms, such as benevolent or hostile sexism—the latter stemming from fears of women threatening the power or leadership of men.
Feminist institutionalism is a new institutionalist approach that looks at how gender norms operate within institutions and how institutional processes construct and maintain gender power dynamics. Feminist institutionalism focuses on how institutions are gendered and how their formal and informal rules play a part in shaping political life. It offers a new way of interpreting the formation of institutions that goes beyond traditional views by accounting for the gendered stigma and gendered outcomes that comes with institutions. As a result, feminist institutionalism is changing the face of various institutions by providing awareness into their very own dynamics of inclusion and exclusion.
Political narrative is a term used in the humanities and political sciences to describe the way in which storytelling can shape fact and effect understandings of reality. However, political narrative is not only a theoretical concept, it is also a tool employed by political figures in order to construct the perspectives of people within their environment and alter relationships between social groups and individuals. As a result, fiction has the potential to become fact and myths become intertwined into public discourse. Political narrative is consequential in its ability to elicit pathos, allowing the narrative to be influential through the value it provides rather than the truth that is told.
Georgina Nicola Alexandra Waylen, is a British political scientist, specialising in comparative politics, political economy, and gender and politics. Since April 2012, she has been Professor of Politics at the University of Manchester. She previously taught at the University of Sheffield, the University of Salford and the University of East Anglia. She was a visiting scholar at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University from 2016 to 2017, and has been a visiting professor in the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics since 2018.
The Victoria Schuck Award is an annual prize granted by the American Political Science Association to the author of the best book published in the previous year on the topic of women and politics. The award is named in honor of the political scientist Victoria Schuck. Although a number of area-specific sections of the American Political Science Association have dedicated book awards, the Schuck Award is one of only a few awards given directly by the Association rather than by a subsection of it.
S. Laurel Weldon is a Canadian and American political scientist, currently a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University. She is a democratic and feminist theorist, known for studies of the cross-national evolution of women's rights, policies on the prevention of violence against women, and the inclusion of women in political decision-making. Weldon's work has been noted for contributing to both substantive political theory and empirical methods.
Mala Htun is an American political scientist, currently a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico. Htun studies comparative politics, particularly women's rights and the politics of race and ethnicity with a focus on Latin America.
Mona Lena Krook is an American political scientist. She is a Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, where she is also the Chair of the Women and Politics Ph.D. Program. She studies the political representation of women, particularly gender quotas in governments and the phenomenon of violence against women in politics.
Susan Franceschet is a Canadian political scientist. She is a professor of political science at The University of Calgary. She studies the representation of women both in legislatures and government cabinets, gender quotas for the minimum representation of women in government, and the interaction of gender and public policy. She has written about women's participation in the politics of Chile.
Professor Sarah Childs is a British Professor who has worked at Bristol University, Birkbeck, Royal Holloway and the University of Edinburgh where she holds their Personal Chair of Politics and Gender.
