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.
An organization in a political movement that is led by a communist party is termed a mass organization by the party and a "Communist front" by detractors.[citation needed]
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.
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. 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.
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.
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. In a political party, a political organization seeks to influence or control government policy through conventional methods, usually by nominating their candidates and seating candidates in politics and governmental offices.
However, political parties and movements both aim to influence government in one way or another 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.
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 and the labor movements in Brazil helped form the Brazilian Workers' Party. 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.
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.
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.
High barriers to entry to the political competition can disenfranchise political movements.
Examples
Some political movements have aimed to change government policy, such as the anti-war movement, the ecology movement, alter-globalization and the anti-globalization movement. With globalization, global citizens movements may have also emerged. 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.
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.
Mass movements
This section does not cite any sources. (March 2024) |
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.
See also
- General
- Political spectrum, political science, political history (gestalt, political thought history), political sociology (political opportunity, resource mobilization), political structure
- States
- Sovereignty (sovereign state), nation state, federated state, member state, nation, The Estates, Rechtsstaat
- People
- John Locke, Georg Hegel, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Thomas Hobbes, Michel Foucault, Alexis de Tocqueville
- Political philosophy
- Autonomy (social identity), collective action, democracy, economic freedom, egalitarianism, equality before the law, equal opportunity, free will, social framing, gender equality, intellectual freedom, liberty, justice (moral responsibility), political freedom (assembly, association, choice, speech), political representation (representative democracy), political legitimacy, racial equality, rights (civil liberties), social cohesion, social equality
- Political views
- Conservatism, environmentalism, fascism, feminism, liberalism, Marxism, nationalism, socialism, list of political ideologies
- Other
- Conservatism in the United States, Constitutional Movement, contentious politics, environmental movement, green politics, political aspects of Islam, political activism, political protest, sanctuary movement, Tea Party movement.
- Crowd psychology
- Collective behavior
- Cult
- Elite theory
- Iron law of oligarchy
- Leadership
- Minority influence
- Sect
- Social movement
- Non-state actor
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Hague, Rod; Harrop, Martin; McCormick, John (2019). Comparative Government and Politics. London: Red Globe Press. p. 317. ISBN 978-1-352-00505-9.
- 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.
- 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.
Further reading
- Harrison, Kevin, and Tony Boyd. Understanding Political Ideas and Movements: a Guide for A2 Politics Students. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003.
- Opp, Karl-Dieter. Theories of Political Protest and Social Movements: a Multidisciplinary Introduction, Critique, and Synthesis. London: Routledge, 2015.
- Snow, David A., Donatella Della Porta, Bert Klandermans, and Doug McAdam. The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
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 The mid 19th century Scandinavism political movement led to the modern use of the term Scandinavia An organization in a political movement that is led by a communist party is termed a mass organization by the party and a Communist front by detractors citation needed Political movement theoriesSome 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 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 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 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 Relation to political partiesPolitical 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 In a political party a political organization seeks to influence or control government policy through conventional methods usually by nominating their candidates and seating candidates in politics and governmental offices However political parties and movements both aim to influence government in one way or another 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 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 and the labor movements in Brazil helped form the Brazilian Workers Party 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 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 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 High barriers to entry to the political competition can disenfranchise political movements ExamplesSome political movements have aimed to change government policy such as the anti war movement the ecology movement alter globalization and the anti globalization movement With globalization global citizens movements may have also emerged 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 Ratana and Sinn Fein 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 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 Mass movementsThis section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed March 2024 Learn how and when to remove this message 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 amp 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 See alsoGeneral Political spectrum political science political history gestalt political thought history political sociology political opportunity resource mobilization political structure States Sovereignty sovereign state nation state federated state member state nation The Estates Rechtsstaat People John Locke Georg Hegel Karl Marx Max Weber Thomas Hobbes Michel Foucault Alexis de Tocqueville Political philosophy Autonomy social identity collective action democracy economic freedom egalitarianism equality before the law equal opportunity free will social framing gender equality intellectual freedom liberty justice moral responsibility political freedom assembly association choice speech political representation representative democracy political legitimacy racial equality rights civil liberties social cohesion social equality Political views Conservatism environmentalism fascism feminism liberalism Marxism nationalism socialism list of political ideologies Other Conservatism in the United States Constitutional Movement contentious politics environmental movement green politics political aspects of Islam political activism political protest sanctuary movement Tea Party movement Crowd psychology Collective behavior Cult Elite theory Iron law of oligarchy Leadership Minority influence Sect Social movement Non state actorReferencesMeyer David S 1997 Coalitions amp Political Movements The Lessons of the Nuclear Freeze Lynne Rienner Publishers pp 164 166 ISBN 978 1 55587 744 6 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 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 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 Hague Rod Harrop Martin McCormick John 2019 Comparative Government and Politics London Red Globe Press p 317 ISBN 978 1 352 00505 9 McDonald Neil A 1955 The Study of Political Parties Short studies in political science 26 Garden City New York Doubleday amp Company hdl 2027 mdp 39015003545509 Goodwin Jeff Jasper James M 2004 Rethinking Social Movements Structure Meaning and Emotion Rowman amp 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 Fernandez Joseba Kouki Hara Mosca Lorenzo 2017 Movement Parties Against Austerity Cambridge John Wiley amp 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 Further readingHarrison Kevin and Tony Boyd Understanding Political Ideas and Movements a Guide for A2 Politics Students Manchester Manchester University Press 2003 Opp Karl Dieter Theories of Political Protest and Social Movements a Multidisciplinary Introduction Critique and Synthesis London Routledge 2015 Snow David A Donatella Della Porta Bert Klandermans and Doug McAdam The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements Chichester West Sussex Wiley Blackwell 2013
