Campaign Activists Research Articles

(Un)leashed potentials: an activist-centered perspective on the political mobilization of motorcycle taxi drivers in eastern DRC

ABSTRACT The re-emergence of competitive elections in Africa has sparked new interest in political mobilization on the continent. Much of this literature focusses on political actors and the strategies they use to mobilize. If the campaign activists are reviewed at all, they are often categorized by their ethnic or religious affiliation. Thereby, abilities and potentials for political participation, which are important within conceptual literature on political mobilization, are side-lined. This article uses an activist-centered perspective to review the political mobilization of motorcycle taxi drivers, eastern Congo. Based on empirical research in 2020 and 2021, it evaluates the mobilization potentials of the so-called motards and their deployment during political action. The article finds that motards possess unique potentials for participating in political campaigns due to their mobility and large social networks but only partially deploy them. While their mobility potential is widely utilized, the mobilization of their social networks is hampered by a lack of allegiances and infrequent contacts with politicians. Based on the research findings, the article advocates expanding the perception of political mobilization in Africa by reflecting on the preconditions of mobilizability such as enabling potentials, interactions with activists and aligned political strategies.

The fast and the victorious: Mobility, motorcyclists and political mobilisation in Uganda

AbstractAs in other African countries, activists in Uganda play an important role during political campaigns. Monetary handouts, called ‘transport refund’, often facilitate their participation. Although these handouts often cover more than just the costs of transportation, the label indicates that mobility is seen as an important financial item for campaign activists. Despite this, little has been published about the role that mobility plays in the processes of political mobilisation in Africa. This article therefore examines mobility as an important yet neglected aspect of political mobilisation by evaluating the role of motorcycle taxi riders during elections in Uganda. Usually referred to as Boda‐Bodas, they are essential short‐distance transport providers in the country. Beyond that, being Boda‐Boda has become a way of survival, a form of social organisation, and a promise that every youth can make a living if he dares to face the dangers of the country's accident‐prone roads. Politicians have since discovered the potential of these bold young men and recruit them en masse ahead of elections. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2022, this paper examines the unique mobilities inherent in Boda‐Bodas. It finds that characteristic mobilities enable their movements as transport providers and argues that these mobilities also enhance political rallies. Boda‐Boda motorcycle riders have therefore become a crucial activist group during political campaigns in Uganda.

Nudity, feminists, and Chinese online censorship: A case study on the anti-domestic violence campaign on SinaWeibo

Chinese feminist activists are actively participating in the Chinese online public sphere. In this study, we examine a case – the Anti-Domestic Violence with Nude Photos Campaign (裸照反家暴活动) – and the response of Chinese online censorship to this campaign. Campaign activists used nude photos to mobilize the public’s support. According to the existing theoretical perspectives such as the collective action potential theory, this kind of online campaign with pornographic elements and the potential to mobilize people is very likely to be censored. Counter to this expectation, we found that not all of the original photos were removed. Our finding suggests that the interactive manner in which activists responded to the public on SinaWeibo’s discussion threads matters in terms of the degree of censorship. This study complements the existing studies on the Chinese online censorship system, echoes scholars’ call for studies on censorship from a more interactive angle, and furthers our understanding of the Chinese feminist movement.

Queering abortion rights: notes from Argentina

In recent years, there have been calls in activist spaces to ‘queer’ abortion rights advocacy, to incorporate non-normative notions of gender identity and sexuality into abortion struggles and services. Argentina provides an interesting site in which to examine these developments, since there is a longstanding movement for abortion rights in a context of illegal abortion and a recent ground-breaking Gender Identity Law that recognises key trans rights. In this paper, we analyse public documents from the abortion rights movement’s main coalition – the National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe and Free Abortion – alongside interviews with 19 Campaign activists to examine shifts and tensions in contemporary abortion rights activism. We trace the incorporation of trans-inclusive language into the newly proposed abortion rights bill and conclude by pointing to contextual factors that may limit or enhance the further queering of abortion rights.

Impact and significance of the 2016 ‘Campaign to Change the Male Face of Parliament’ in Iran

Iranian women have never represented more than 5.9% of sitting parliamentarians in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This compares poorly with relevant regional and global averages. In the lead up to the 2016 parliamentary elections, the women’s movement took action to address the low representation of women in the legislature by launching the ‘Campaign to Change the Male Face of Parliament’. The Campaign did not reach its goal of achieving 50 seats for women in the 2016–2020 Parliament. It was also subject to some criticism for effectively (or apparently) legitimising what many women view as a broken form of government unable to promote and protect women’s rights in any meaningful sense. However, the Campaign was an important exercise in democracy and had significant higher-order impacts on voter behaviour and women’s capacities. Through personal communication with three Campaign activists, this profile provides an authoritative account of the Campaign experience and its impact and significance for the future of women’s empowerment in Iran.

Godless Democrats and pious Republicans?: party activists, party capture, and the "God gap"

Do Evangelical activists control the Republican Party? Do secular activists control the Democratic Party? In Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans?, Ryan Claassen carefully assesses the way campaign activists represent religious and non-religious groups in American political parties dating back to the 1960s. By providing a new theoretical framework for investigating the connections between macro social and political trends, the results challenge a conventional wisdom in which recently mobilized religious and Secular extremists captured the parties and created a God gap. The new approach reveals that very basic social and demographic trends matter far more than previously recognized and that mobilization matters far less. The God gap in voting is real, but it was not created by Christian Right mobilization efforts and a Secular backlash. Where others see culture wars and captured parties, Claassen finds many religious divisions in American politics are artifacts of basic social changes. This very basic insight leads to many profoundly different conclusions about the motivations of religious and non-religious activists and voters.

From Tehran to Los Angeles to Tehran: Transnational Solidarity Politics in the One Million Signatures Campaign to End Discriminatory Law

From Tehran to Los Angeles to Tehran:Transnational Solidarity Politics in the One Million Signatures Campaign to End Discriminatory Law Catherine Sameh (bio) The One Million Signatures Campaign to End Discriminatory Law began in Iran in 2006, after two years of crackdowns by hard-liners within the government.1 As public protests for changes in women’s rights vis-à-vis family law became less possible, activists began a new strategy to raise awareness about women’s compromised legal status and to bring about reforms in family law. The goals of the campaign were initially to collect one million signatures through door-to-door direct contact, gatherings, and the Internet “in support of changes to discriminatory laws against women” and to promote dialogue and discussion among women and men in meetings and public seminars and conferences (Change for Equality 2006). The collection of signatures was the first phase of the campaign; in the second phase, campaign activists hope to work with supportive legal experts to draft new legislation to replace unjust laws. The laws they seek to challenge are mostly family laws pertaining to custody, marriage, inheritance, and divorce, among other issues. While the campaign uses novel tactics, like street theater and door-to-door petitioning, women’s political participation in Iran has a long history. As scholars (Afary 1996; Paidar 1995) have argued, women were key players in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11, shaping a national struggle to reform the corrupt Qajar dynasty (1796–1925) and organizing a women’s movement with more long-term goals of emancipation. The Pahlavi era (1925–79) saw the state-building project as intertwined with questions of gender and women’s status (Najmabadi 1998; Paidar 1995). As Paidar asserts, the project of modern statehood was a coercive one, and [End Page 166] many reforms for women, such as compulsory unveiling, in 1936, were instituted violently. Moreover, as Najmabadi (1998) argues, the constitutional period and the era of the Pahlavis each enabled and constrained women’s possibilities, through the regulation of women’s bodies and gendered ideologies. The shah’s top-down implementation of political change included limited reforms in health, fertility, and education that benefited primarily middle- and upper-class women. By 1976, the literacy rate among rural women was only 16.5 percent, a mere 15 percent increase over twenty years (Paidar 1995, 162). Even for middle- and upper-class women, ideas about the patriarchal control of women in the family remained dominant. By the late 1970s, deep resentment of the shah’s modernizing program, which was not only coercive but also shut out vast sectors of society, had infiltrated many corners of Iran. The 1979 revolution was a broad-based oppositional movement against the corrupt dictatorship of the shah, and its ideological theorists mobilized a discourse of gender equality that gave women a key role in the revolution and postrevolutionary society. Ali Shari’ati, the popular leftist Islamic theorist of the revolution, gave frequent lectures based on his book Fatima Is Fatima. Drawing on the founding period of Islam, Shari’ati argued that women should emulate Fatima, the prophet Muhammad’s daughter, who was “the center of a family of fighters. She took on responsibilities and became socially engaged, equally to men but in a different way” (quoted in Keddie 2003, 205). As Keddie argues, Shari’ati formulated this “separate but equal” doctrine as an antidote to the West’s notion of a liberated woman, hyperindividualistic and sexually objectified, but also in response to women’s seclusion within patriarchal notions of Islam. In this sense, he appealed to national anti-imperialist sentiments that ran deep during the reign of the shah (205). Like Shari’ati, but from a conservative or traditionalist perspective, Ayatollah Khomeini argued for women’s freedom within Islam. He asserted, “As for women, Islam has never been against their freedom. It is, to the contrary, opposed to the idea of woman-as-object and it gives her back her dignity” (qtd. in Sanasarian 1982, 117). Khomeini, too, drew on a growing critique of “Westoxification,” the consumerist, sexually exploitative, and individualist trends thought to be promoted by the West. But as the revolutionary regime began repealing some of women...

Motivated by Change: Political Activism of Young Women in the 2008 Presidential Campaign

Motivated by Change: Political Activism of Young Women in the 2008 Presidential Campaign Jane Booth-Tobin (bio) and Hahrie Han (bio) A persistent gender gap in political participation has plagued American politics for many years. Although women are more likely than men to vote, they are less likely to engage in other political activities, such as volunteering for campaigns, being active in community politics, or discussing political beliefs among friends and co-workers (Center for American Woman and Politics [CAWP] 2005; Schlozman, Burns, and Verba 1994; Welch 1977). Although small, this gap in political activism has significant implications for women’s citizenship. Citizenship is, at its core, about the ability to exercise a voice in politics and make that voice heard by those in the government. Participation in politics is a key way in which men and women can make their voices heard. As Sidney Verba, Nancy Burns, and Kay Lehman Schlozman write, “Those who are less active pay a price in terms of representation. Public officials hear less about—and, therefore, presumably pay less attention to—their concerns, preferences, and needs” (1997, 1053). Without a voice in politics, women miss a fundamental piece of what it means to be a democratic citizen. Resolving this gender gap in participation depends on changing our assumptions about why women become engaged in politics. We argue that traditional assumptions about what it means to be political may not hold for women, thereby suppressing female participation in politics. To examine this, we focus on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, which—unlike other campaigns—engaged significant numbers of young women in campaign activism. A postelection survey of campaign activists under the age of twenty-five found that young women were 5 percentage points more likely than young men to engage in some form of activism [End Page 115] within the Obama campaign. Likewise, a 2008 study by CIRCLE (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) found that, of the 52 percent of young voters who turned out to vote, young women were 8 percentage points more likely to vote than young men (Kirby and Kawashima-Ginsberg 2009). Although the trends in voting among young women were not historically unique, the trends in campaign activism were. To understand the reasons behind this dramatic rise in political activism among young women, we look beyond traditional understandings of what motivates political participation. Our findings suggest that traditional conceptions of politics are limited in their understanding of the factors that motivate young women to get involved. They explain the engagement of young men in politics, but do little to expand our understanding of participation among young women. The young women in our study are less likely to call themselves “political” in the traditional sense, but are more likely than men to be driven by a sense of wanting to make change and be part of a larger movement. To better incorporate women into our political system, then, we need to recognize the alternative factors that can draw women into politics. By exploring new ways to motivate women to participate, we open up the possibility of increasing women’s participation and strengthening women’s citizenship. Understanding the Gender Gap in Participation Although previous research has made large strides in expanding our understanding of the way resource disparities between men and women contribute to the gender gap in participation, questions about how men and women are motivated to participate remain unanswered. Previous research has not examined the possibility that nontraditional sources of motivation propel women’s participation. In addition, most research on the gender gap has focused solely on adult women’s participation. We focus particularly on young women and examine the possibility that women are motivated to get involved in ways different from those of men. Given the strong connection between early political activity and lifelong habits, we cannot ignore youth participation when studying the gender gap in participation. Early experiences with civic and political activity can shape people’s orientations towards participation for life (Yates and Youniss 1996; Plutzer 2002; Jennings 1987). Understanding why young [End Page 116] women in 2008 were more likely to participate could potentially have important implications for understanding the political...

From “Politico-Scientists” to Democratizing Science Movements

The Committee for Nuclear Information (CNI) was one of the first movements to translate expert knowledge to the public. It was led by “politico-scientists” who meant to advance an ethics of science by contributing to public understanding. Since then, citizens have taken research into their own hands, using it to frame issues, challenge corporate practices, and change policy. Movement methods that respond to consistent activist concerns about science are reflected in “democratizing science movements” (DSMs) that have grown, expanded, and changed in the past 50 years. This article compares the CNI to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a group of organizations that have critiqued the hazardous ingredients in personal care products. The aim is to update our understanding of how movements use science to protect health and improve the environment since the CNI. Like CNI, Campaign activists have used science to educate the public about hazardous exposures; however, the Campaign reflects that over time, lay people have become more central to scientific production as well as more able to use it without the assistance of experts. It is argued that in Commoner's time scientists focused on translating results and meanings for lay audiences whereas today, movements use science to heighten the political nature of the issue through reframing.

The Big Vote: Gender, Consumer Culture, and the Politics of Exclusion, 1890s-1920s

Every election we are bombarded with non-partisan campaigns urging us to vote; I once saw these ubiquitous efforts as ineffective but innocuous. Since I read Liette Gidlow's able and thought-provoking book, The Big Vote, however, I look at them quite differently. Gidlow examines the Get Out the Vote (gotv) campaigns of the 1920s, demonstrating that the campaigns were ubiquitous and, as far as increasing voter turnout, ineffective. But Gidlow also argues that the gotv campaigns strengthened the political dominance of the campaign activists—white middle-class clubwomen and businessmen. Gidlow defines political dominance to mean, first, the ability to frame public debate. She contends that while Americans were shocked at the low voter turnout in 1920, gotv activists reframed the issue by arguing that the recalcitrant yet valuable voters were affluent whites rather than workers or people of color. This belief became the political wisdom of the era, despite scientific studies that had identified upper- and middle-class whites as those most likely to vote.

‘In the Court of Public Opinion’

This article analyses the HIV/AIDS medicine access campaign from 1998 to 2001. The campaign began when 39 of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies initiated a court case against South Africa for violating the companies’ patent rights. The campaign played an important role in making the issue resonate in the public spheres of many countries around the world and thereby contributed to the pharmaceutical companies’ eventual decision to withdraw the case. The main objective of the article is to provide insight into the way campaign activists sought to make the issue of HIV/AIDS medicine access of concern and intelligible to audiences not directly affected by it. Paying attention to such questions is crucial in order to reach a better understanding of current processes of globalization. The article shows how campaign discourses combined emotional and strategic elements and sought to bridge distance by connecting the universal and the particular. At the same time, it is argued that resonance was not only an outcome of the campaign's discursive activities. It was significantly aided by the fact that key campaign organizations possessed considerable economic and skill resources, and by the presence of allies such as states and international institutions.

Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang: South Africa's controversial health minister

Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang: South Africa's controversial health minister

THE ROLE OF PARTY ACTIVISTS IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE ABORTION ISSUE

This article examines the role of party activists in the partisan evolution of the abortion issue. Previous research indicates that party elites—specifically members of Congress—and partisans in the mass public have become more differentiated in their abortion attitudes during the last several decades with Democrats becoming more pro-choice and Republicans becoming increasingly pro-life. The missing piece of the picture is the behavior of party activists. Accordingly, this research examines the changes in the abortion attitudes of two groups of party activists during the last three decades: campaign activists and national convention delegates. From 1972 to 1980 there were no significant differences in the abortion attitudes of Republican and Democratic campaign activists, and the mean positions of the two parties' national convention delegates did not differ greatly. However, since 1984 there has been a growing differentiation in the abortion positions of both groups of party activists. Now Democratic activists are consistently pro-choice while Republican activists are equally pro-life. This evidence indicates that the differentiation on the abortion issue that has only recently emerged among partisans in the mass public was predated by an earlier and much more dramatic polarization that had already developed among party activists and elites, thus supporting a model of issue evolution introduced by Carmines and Stimson in their study of racial issues. We also find that citizens' abortion attitudes have become increasingly correlated with party voting not just in presidential elections but also in House, Senate, and gubernatorial contests during this period as well as being more closely related to political ideology. All of this evidence points to the growing extent to which abortion has become a partisan issue in American politics and the key role that party activists have played in this process.

The Mobilization of Campaign Activists By the Party Canvass

This research examines the role of the personal contacting activities of the political parties as mobilizing forces in what Verba and Nie termed campaign activities. A reformulated rational choice model is discussed in which parties seek to reduce certain avoidable and unavoidable costs associated with political participation. Using data from the 1952 through 1994 American National Election Studies, it is shown that the party contact has been and continues to be a major factor in mobilizing campaign activists. Its influence is remarkably robust, maintaining statistical and substantive significance even after controlling for other important factors usually associated with political behavior.

Do local campaigns matter? Campaign spending, the local canvass and party support in Canada

Though most observers agree that election campaigns have become increasingly nationalized in recent decades, considerable disagreement persists over whether and how local campaigns effect the vote. This study explores the impact of campaign spending and campaign activists on support levels for the national parties contesting the Canadian federal election of 1988, and builds on parallel work done in the U.K. Despite the unusually nationalized character of the 1988 election (dominated by the issue of the Free Trade Agreement with the U.S.), we are able to demonstrate convincingly that local campaigns do matter for most candidates. Specifically, campaign effects were strongest for candidates running for the opposition parties, especially those who ran non-winning campaigns. Our results suggest that the local party organizations of non-winning candidates are in the position of being able to realize potentially significant electoral returns through the mobilization of additional personnel or financial resources in their constituency campaigns.

I'd Rather Switch than Fight: Lifelong Democrats and Converts to Republicanism among Campaign Activists

Analysis of a survey of 1988 presidential campaign activists revealed that one-third of the Republican activists at one time thought of themselves as Democrats. Drawing on the mass realignment literature, the duration, movement, and motivation of this elite realignment were examined. A multivariate probit model was developed to analyze party switching that combines demographic, political, and attitudinal motivations. Ideology, parents' political activity, and age were found to be statistically significant influences on the decision to switch parties. We then explored patterns of Republican-to-Democrat switching using bivariate analysis. The article concludes by discussing some implications of party switching for the American party system.

Ideology and campaign activity at three levels of government

This article examines the relationship between self-designated political ideology, opinions on twenty-one issues, and campaign activity at local, state, and national levels. The samples examined include delegates to the 1984 Party Conventions in eleven states. Generally, the findings indicate that ideology and issue position are most strongly associated with activity in national campaigns. Among Democrats liberalism is associated with national activity, whereas among Republicans those who are conservative are most active in national campaigns. Some important intraparty differences are found between local campaign activists and national activists. For example, among Democrats local campaign activists are much more conservative than national activists on several issues.

Reconsidering a Typology of Incentives among Campaign Activists: A Research Note

Reconsidering a Typology of Incentives among Campaign Activists: A Research Note

Reconsidering a Typology of Incentives Among Campaign Activists

C LARK and Wilson (1961) distinguished among three types of incentives which organizations offer their members: incentives, tangible rewards translatable into monetary terms; solidary incentives, intangible rewards that result from the very act of associating; and purposive incentives, intangible rewards that pertain to the stated ends of association rather than to association per se. This typology has informed numerous analyses of various types of political activists, including party leaders and activists (Costantini and King 1984), campaign contributors (Hedges 1984), delegates to presidential nominating conventions (Kirkpatrick 1976; Roback 1980), and local ward leaders (Hofstetter 1973). Unfortunately, there are numerous differences among these studies in operationalizations of the Clark-Wilson categories. For example, although most researchers classify the desire to enhance one's political career as a material motivation, Brown, Hedges, and Powell (1980) consider it solidary; moreover, others (e.g., Kirkpatrick 1976; Semel 1978; Costantini and King 1984) have used Clark and Wilson's original distinctions as a springboard for more complex typologies of their own. Nonetheless, certain general patterns of motivation can be discerned. For example, Hedges (1984), Roback (1980), and Kirkpatrick (1976) all found that purposive, good-citizen motivations were more widespread than any other motivation among campaign contributors and presidential convention delegates; by contrast, material reasons for involvement appear to be rather uncommon among political activists (Hedges 1984; Kirkpatrick 1976). While these studies have helped clarify why people become involved in political activity, very little is known about their motivations for active involvement in the campaign of a particular candidate a question to which the Clark-Wilson typology can be, but has not yet been, applied. That is the purpose of the present study, which extends the Clark-Wilson typology to a new setting: a set of gubernatorial primary campaigns. The research site is Kentucky, a factionalized one-party state. The general expectation underlying the research is that the incentive mix motivating the

Moral Reform and the Anti-Abortion Movement

Throughout the 1970s protest against abortion was organised by two main pressure groups, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child and the LIFE organisation. This paper considers the rhetoric employed by the anti-abortion movement during this period by focusing on the campaign literature, the evidence submitted to various committees of inquiry and public statements made by leading anti-abortionists. The findings from a study of a small sample of anti-abortion protestors are also reported. A self-administered questionnaire was completed by sixty-four members of two local branches of the two national pressure groups and semi-structured interviews were conducted with local campaign activists. In the subsequent analysis the anti-abortion movement is depicted as adopting a position of cultural fundamentalism in the face of changing social mores and moral values. Protest against abortion is placed within the wider framework of moral reform. In studying the movement and its supporters use is made of the analytical distinction between assimilative and coercive reform (Gusfield, 1963).