Political Linkage: Factors Work Through These Links to Influence Political Policy

1. Political Linkage:Factors Work Through These Links to Influence Political Policy Social Movements

2. What Are Social Movements? • Definition:loosely organized collections of people and institutions who act outside established institutions to promote or resist social change • Significant role in the struggle for democracy • Political instruments of political outsiders • Mass grassroots phenomena

3. What Are Social Movements? • Social movements • Are populated by folks who share a sense of grievance • Tend to occur when a significant number of people define their own problems in general social terms • Form when aggrieved people believe that the government can be moved to action on their behalf

4. Factors That Encourage The Creation of Social Movements • Mostly structural in nature • Social distress • Resources for mobilization • Supportive environment • Sense of efficacy among participants • Catalyst

5. Tactics of Social Movements • Collective action: involves masses of people acting together • Unconventional tactics • Mass demonstrations • Strikes & boycotts • Civil disobedience: disobeying a law that one thinks is in violation of a higher law (think of natural rights here) and being willing to take the punishment for one’s disobedience

6. What Are Social Movements? • Tactics • Unconventional and disruptive • Why? • Outsiders usually lack the financial and political resources that insiders have, so • They must take advantage of what they do have: energy, numbers, and commitment

7. Major Social Movementsin the United States • Abolitionist • Populist • Women’s suffrage • Civil rights • Anti-war (Vietnam) • Environmentalism • Women’s rights • Religious (the two Great Awakenings) • Abortion rights/Pro Life

8. Social Movements in aMajoritarian Democracy • How are they democratic? • Encourage popular participation • Scope of conflict • The politics of the many rather than of the few • How are they anti-democratic? • Minority phenomena • Disruptive • First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances

9. Social Movements in aMajoritarian Democracy • Overcoming Political Inequality • Allows those without resources to enter the game of politics • Collective-action and mass mobilizations can • Serve as a substitute for economic and political resources • Help increase political equality

10. Social Movements in aMajoritarian Democracy • Social movements and gridlock • Often takes the energy of a movement to overcome the anti-majoritarian aspects of American government • Movements of which we are very proud have been more often the result of disruptive minorities • Examples?

11. Why Social Movements Succeed or Fail • A social movement will have little impact if it • Has few followers • Has little support among the general public • Is unable to affect significantly everyday life or the election prospects of politicians • Stimulates the formation of a powerful countermovement

12. Why Social Movements Succeed or Fail • Why some movements are repressed • Those committed to radical changes in society threaten widely-shared values and interests of the powerful • Examples • Labor movement in early 19th and 20th centuries • Radical wing of the anti-war movement • Black Power wing of the civil rights movement

14. Why Social Movements Succeed or Fail • Partially successful social movements • These have enough power and public support to get a favorable response that tends to land somewhere in the middle • The government responds to the grievance, but not in a radical way • Examples?

15. Why Social Movements Succeed or Fail • Characteristics of successful social movements • Many supporters • Widespread public sympathy • Does not challenge the basic social & economic order • Wield some electoral clout

17. Measuring the Successof a Social Movement • Legislative and constitutional amendments are indicators that • The social movement in question has made a major impact on politics and policy • Members of the movement are well respected • There have been changes in fundamental values in America • There is increased representation in decision-making bodies

18. Critical Thinking • Given that social movements are often quite disruptive and are full of conflict for the participants and for society, do they do more harm than good? Be prepared to defend your answer!

19. Critical Thinking • Is American politics so dominated by interest groups that social movements are the only hope for preserving democracy? Again, be prepared to defend your answer