Political movement

Last updated September 27, 2024

A political movement is a collective attempt by a group of people to change government policy or social values.^[1] Political movements are usually in opposition to an element of the status quo,^[2] and are often associated with a certain ideology.^[3] Some theories of political movements are the political opportunity theory, which states that political movements stem from mere circumstances,^[4] and the resource mobilization theory which states that political movements result from strategic organization and relevant resources.^[2] 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.^[5] While political parties are engaged with a multitude of issues, political movements tend to focus on only one major issue.^[6]^[7]

Political movement theories

Some of the theories behind social movements have also been applied to the emergence of political movements in specific, like the political opportunity theory and the resource mobilization theory.^[2]^[8]

Political opportunity theory

The political opportunity theory asserts that political movements occur through chance or certain opportunities and have little to do with resources, connections or grievances in society.^[4]^[8] Political opportunities can be created by possible changes in the political system, structure or by other developments in the political sphere and they are the driving force for political movements to be established.^[4]

Resource mobilization theory

The resource mobilization theory states that political movements are the result of careful planning, organizing and fundraising rather than spontaneous uprisings or societal grievances. This theory postulates that movements rely on resources and contact to the establishment in order to fully develop. Thus, at the beginning and core of a political movement there lies a strategic mobilization of individuals.^[2]^[9]

Relation to political parties

Political movements are different from political parties since movements are usually focused on a single issue and they have no interest in attaining office in government. A political movement is generally an informal organization and uses unconventional methods to achieve their goals.^[6] In a political party, a political organization seeks to influence or control government policy through conventional methods,^[6] usually by nominating their candidates and seating candidates in politics and governmental offices.^[7]

However, political parties and movements both aim to influence government in one way or another^[6] and both are often related to a certain ideology. Parties also participate in electoral campaigns and educational outreach or protest actions aiming to convince citizens or governments to take action on the issues and concerns which are the focus of the movement.^[7]

Some political movements have turned into or launched political parties. For example, the 15-M Movement against austerity in Spain led to the creation of the populist party Podemos ^[10] and the labor movements in Brazil helped form the Brazilian Workers' Party.^[11] These types of movement parties serve to raise awareness on the main issue of their initial political movement in government, since the established parties may have neglected this issue in the past.^[5]

Political scientists Santos and Mercea argue that, in recent years, "the rise of movement parties across Europe has disrupted traditional notions of party politics and opened up new avenues for citizen engagement and political mobilisation. Movement parties are the reflection of a wider socio-political transformation of increasing interconnection between electoral and non-electoral politics". They identify four types of movement parties: green/left-libertarian, far-right, eclectic, and centrist.^[12]

For groups seeking to influence policy, social movements can provide an alternative to formal electoral politics. For example, the political scientist S. Laurel Weldon has shown that women's movements and women's policy agencies have tended to be more effective in reducing violence against women than the presence of women in the legislatures.^[13]

High barriers to entry to the political competition can disenfranchise political movements.^[14]

Examples

Some political movements have aimed to change government policy, such as the anti-war movement, the ecology movement, and the anti-globalization movement. With globalization, global citizens movements may have also emerged.^[15] Many political movements have aimed to establish or broaden the rights of subordinate groups, such as abolitionism, the women's suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, feminism, gay rights movement, the disability rights movement, the animal rights movement, or the inclusive human rights movement. Some have represented class interests, such as the labour movement, socialism, and communism, while others have expressed national aspirations, including both anticolonialist movements, such as Rātana and Sinn Féin, as well as colonialist movements such as Manifest destiny. Political movements can also involve struggles to decentralize or centralize state control, as in anarchism, fascism, and Nazism.

Famous recent social movements can be classified as political movements as they have influenced policy changes at all levels of government. Political movements that have recently emerged within the US are the Black Lives Matter Movement, and the Me Too Movement. While political movements that have happened in recent years within the Middle East is the Arab Spring. While in some cases these political movements remained movements, in others they escalated into revolutions and changed the state of government.^[16]

Movements may also be named by outsiders, as with the Levellers political movement in 17th century England, which was named so as a term of disparagement. Yet admirers of the movement and its aims later came to use the term, and it is this term by which they are most known to history.^[17]

Mass movements

A mass movement denotes a political party or movement which is supported by large segments of a population. Political movements that typically advocate the creation of a mass movement include the ideologies of communism, fascism, and liberalism. Both communists and fascists typically support the creation of mass movements as a means to overthrow a government and create their own government, the mass movement then being used afterwards to protect the government from being overthrown itself; whereas liberals seek mass participation in the system of representative democracy.

The social scientific study of mass movements focuses on such elements as charisma, leadership, active minorities, cults and sects, followers, mass man and mass society, alienation, brainwashing and indoctrination, authoritarianism and totalitarianism. The field emerged from crowd or mass psychology (Le Bon, Tarde a.o.), which had gradually widened its scope from mobs to social movements and opinion currents, and then to mass and media society.

One influential early text was the double essay on the herd instinct (1908) by British surgeon Wilfred Trotter. It also influenced the key concepts of the superego and identification in Massenpsychologie (1921) by Sigmund Freud, misleadingly translated as Group psychology. They are linked to ideas on sexual repression leading to rigid personalities, in the original Mass psychology of fascism (1933) by Freudo-Marxist Wilhelm Reich (not to be confused with its totally revised 1946 American version). This then rejoined ideas formulated by the Frankfurt School and Theodor Adorno, ultimately leading to a major American study of the authoritarian personality (1950), as a basis for xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Another early theme was the relationship between masses and elites, both outside and within such movements (Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, Robert Michels, Moisey Ostrogorski).

Bibliography (Mass movements)

Hoffer, Eric, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements , New York, NY: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2002.
Marx, Gary, T. & McAdam, Douglas, Collective behavior and social movements, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1994.
Van Ginneken, Jaap, Mass movements – In Darwinist, Freudian and Marxist perspective, Apeldoorn (Neth.): Spinhuis. 2007.
Wilson, John, Introduction to social movements, New York: Basic, 1973.

Related Research Articles

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. Opposed to anarchism, democracy, pluralism, egalitarianism, liberalism, socialism, and Marxism, fascism is placed on the far-right wing within the traditional left–right spectrum.

Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and controls the public sphere and the private sphere of society. In the field of political science, totalitarianism is the extreme form of authoritarianism, wherein all socio-political power is held by a dictator, who also controls the national politics and the peoples of the nation with continual propaganda campaigns that are broadcast by state-controlled and by friendly private mass communications media.

Right-wing politics is the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position based on natural law, economics, authority, property, religion, biology, or tradition. Hierarchy and inequality may be seen as natural results of traditional social differences or competition in market economies.

A social movement is a loosely organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social or political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to resist or undo one. It is a type of group action and may involve individuals, organizations, or both. Social movements have been described as "organizational structures and strategies that may empower oppressed populations to mount effective challenges and resist the more powerful and advantaged elites". They represent a method of social change from the bottom within nations. On the other hand, some social movements do not aim to make society more egalitarian, but to maintain or amplify existing power relationships. For example, scholars have described fascism as a social movement.

The left–right political spectrum is a system of classifying political positions, ideologies and parties, with emphasis placed upon issues of social equality and social hierarchy. In addition to positions on the left and on the right, there are centrist and moderate positions, which are not strongly aligned with either end of the spectrum. It originated during the French Revolution based on the seating in the French National Assembly.

The term new social movements (NSMs) is a theory of social movements that attempts to explain the plethora of new movements that have come up in various western societies roughly since the mid-1960s which are claimed to depart significantly from the conventional social movement paradigm.

Syncretic politics, or spectral-syncretic politics, combine elements from across the conventional left–right political spectrum. The idea of syncretic politics has been influenced by syncretism and syncretic religion. The main idea of syncretic politics is that taking political positions of neutrality by combining elements associated with left-wing politics and right-wing politics can achieve a goal of reconciliation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fascism and ideology</span>

The history of fascist ideology is long and it draws on many sources. Fascists took inspiration from sources as ancient as the Spartans for their focus on racial purity and their emphasis on rule by an elite minority. Fascism has also been connected to the ideals of Plato, though there are key differences between the two. Fascism styled itself as the ideological successor to Rome, particularly the Roman Empire. From the same era, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's view on the absolute authority of the state also strongly influenced fascist thinking. The French Revolution was a major influence insofar as the Nazis saw themselves as fighting back against many of the ideas which it brought to prominence, especially liberalism, liberal democracy and racial equality, whereas on the other hand, fascism drew heavily on the revolutionary ideal of nationalism. The prejudice of a "high and noble" Aryan culture as opposed to a "parasitic" Semitic culture was core to Nazi racial views, while other early forms of fascism concerned themselves with non-racialized conceptions of the nation.

Resource mobilization is the process of getting resources from the resource provider, using different mechanisms, to implement an organization's predetermined goals. It is a theory that is used in the study of social movements and argues that the success of social movements depends on resources and the ability to use them.

What constitutes a definition of fascism and fascist governments has been a complicated and highly disputed subject concerning the exact nature of fascism and its core tenets debated amongst historians, political scientists, and other scholars ever since Benito Mussolini first used the term in 1915. Historian Ian Kershaw once wrote that "trying to define 'fascism' is like trying to nail jelly to the wall".

Mass mobilization refers to mobilization of civilian population as part of contentious politics. Mass mobilization is defined as a process that engages and motivates a wide range of partners and allies at national and local levels to raise awareness of and demand for a particular development objective through face-to-face dialogue. Members of institutions, community networks, civic and religious groups and others work in a coordinated way to reach specific groups of people for dialogue with planned messages. In other words, social mobilization seeks to facilitate change through a range of players engaged in interrelated and complementary efforts.

Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. Although the term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, politics is observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. Politics consists of "social relations involving authority or power. The definition of "politics" from "The Free Dictionary" is the study of political behavior and examines the acquisition and application of power. Politics study include political philosophy, which seeks a rationale for politics and an ethic of public behavior, and public administration, which examines the practices of governance.

Political opportunity theory, also known as the political process theory or political opportunity structure, is an approach of social movements that is heavily influenced by political sociology. It argues that success or failure of social movements is affected primarily by political opportunities. Social theorists Peter Eisinger, Sidney Tarrow, David S. Meyer and Doug McAdam are considered among the most prominent supporters of the theory.

Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Political scientists have created many typologies describing variations of authoritarian forms of government. Authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic and may be based upon the rule of a party or the military. States that have a blurred boundary between democracy and authoritarianism have some times been characterized as "hybrid democracies", "hybrid regimes" or "competitive authoritarian" states.

Criticism of democracy, or debate on democracy and the different aspects of how to implement democracy best have been widely discussed. There are both internal critics and external ones who reject the values promoted by constitutional democracy.

Advocacy groups, also known as lobby groups, interest groups, special interest groups, pressure groups, or public associations, use various forms of advocacy or lobbying to influence public opinion and ultimate public policy. They play an important role in the development of political and social systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corporatism</span> Political ideology which advocates the organization of society by corporate groups

Corporatism is a political system of interest representation and policymaking whereby corporate groups, such as agricultural, labour, military, business, scientific, or guild associations, come together on and negotiate contracts or policy on the basis of their common interests. The term is derived from the Latin corpus, or "body".

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.

Latin American feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and achieving equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for Latin American women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. People who practice feminism by advocating or supporting the rights and equality of women are feminists.

The anti-gender movement is an international movement that opposes what it refers to as "gender ideology", "gender theory", or "genderism", terms which cover a variety of issues, and do not have a coherent definition. Members of the anti-gender movement are largely on the right-wing and far-right political spectrum, such as right-wing populists, social conservatives, and Christian fundamentalists. It has been linked to a shift away from liberal democracy and towards right-wing populism. Anti-gender rhetoric has seen increasing circulation in trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) discourse since 2016. Different members of the anti-gender movement variously oppose some LGBT rights, some reproductive rights, government gender policies, gender equality, gender mainstreaming, and gender studies academic departments. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has linked the anti-gender movement to the risk of "extreme violence" against the LGBTQI+ community. UN Women has described the anti-gender, gender-critical and men's rights movements as extreme anti-rights movements that "use hateful propaganda and disinformation to target and attempt to delegitimize people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, gender expressions, and sex characteristics."

References

↑ Meyer, David S. (1997). Coalitions & Political Movements: The Lessons of the Nuclear Freeze. Lynne Rienner Publishers. pp. 164–166. ISBN 978-1-55587-744-6.
1 2 3 4 Rochon, Thomas R. (1990). "Political Movements and State Authority in Liberal Democracies". World Politics. 42 (2): 299–313. doi:10.2307/2010467. ISSN 1086-3338. JSTOR 2010467. S2CID 153900090.
↑ Nicholas, Ralph W. (1973). "Social and Political Movements". Annual Review of Anthropology. 2 (1): 63–84. doi:10.1146/annurev.an.02.100173.000431. ISSN 0084-6570.
1 2 3 Koopmans, Ruud (1999). "Political. Opportunity. Structure. Some Splitting to Balance the Lumping". Sociological Forum. 14 (1): 93–105. doi:10.1023/A:1021644929537. ISSN 0884-8971. JSTOR 685018. S2CID 148013872.
1 2 Kitschelt, Herbert (2006). "Movement Parties". Handbook of Party Politics. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. p. 282. doi:10.4135/9781848608047. ISBN 978-0-7619-4314-3.
1 2 3 4 Hague, Rod; Harrop, Martin; McCormick, John (2019). Comparative Government and Politics. London: Red Globe Press. p. 317. ISBN 978-1-352-00505-9.
1 2 3 McDonald, Neil A. (1955). The Study of Political Parties. Short studies in political science,26. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company. hdl:2027/mdp.39015003545509.
1 2 Goodwin, Jeff; Jasper, James M. (2004). Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, Meaning, and Emotion. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 80–81. ISBN 978-0-7425-2596-2.
↑ Inwegen, Patrick Van (2018). "Non-Violence in Ireland's Independence". In Christian Philip Peterson; William M. Knoblauch; Michael Loadent (eds.). The Routledge History of World Peace Since 1750. New York: Routledge. pp. 273–283. doi:10.4324/9781315157344-22. ISBN 978-1-315-15734-4. S2CID 187589251 . Retrieved 2020-10-06.
↑ Della Porta, Donatella; Fernández, Joseba; Kouki, Hara; Mosca, Lorenzo (2017). Movement Parties Against Austerity. Cambridge: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-5095-1149-5.
↑ van Cott, Donna Lee (2005). From Movements to Parties in Latin America: The Evolution of Ethnic Politics. Cambridge: University Press. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-521-70703-9.
↑ Santos, Felipe G.; Mercea, Dan (20 January 2024). "Young democrats, critical citizens and protest voters: studying the profiles of movement party supporters". Acta Politica. doi: 10.1057/s41269-023-00321-7 . ISSN 0001-6810.
↑ Weldon, S. Laurel (November 2002). "Beyond Bodies: Institutional Sources of Representation for Women in Democratic Policymaking". The Journal of Politics. 64 (4): 1153–1174. doi:10.1111/1468-2508.00167. S2CID 154551984.
↑ Tullock, Gordon. "Entry barriers in politics." The American Economic Review 55.1/2 (1965): 458-466.
↑ George, Susan (2001-10-18). "The Global Citizens Movement. A New Actor For a New Politics". Transnational Institute. Retrieved 2020-05-13.
↑ Bendix, Reinhard; Huntington, Samuel P. (March 1971). "Political Order in Changing Societies". Political Science Quarterly. 86 (1): 168. doi:10.2307/2147388. ISSN 0032-3195. JSTOR 2147388.
↑ Plant, David (2005-12-14). "The Levellers". British Civil Wars and Commonwealth website. Archived from the original on 13 May 2008. Retrieved 2020-05-11.

Political movement

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