Concept Of Political Opportunity Structure Research Articles

AS ESTRUTURAS DE OPORTUNIDADES POLÍTICAS À LUZ DAS VIOLÊNCIAS NA AMÉRICA LATINA

Abstract The article discusses the concept of Political Opportunity Structure, central to the Political Process Theory, which emerged in the 1960s, in North America, and is essential to the study of social movements. Its objective is to nuance the use of this concept, after presenting its context of initial formulation and addressing the main criticisms, reformulations-internal and external-and a proposal to include the category of violence, notably from Latin American experiences. From a qualitative approach, with an extensive bibliographic review, it concludes that the neglect of the polysemical category of violence provided an often mistaken reading of the classic questions of this field, namely, how and why subjects mobilize. Furthermore, we come up with readings that definitely include the different uses of violent practices both in social movements and to repress them in the analysis of political opportunities.

The role of digital media in the 2011 Egyptian revolution

ABSTRACT The Egyptian uprising in January 2011, widely known as the 25 January Revolution, was initially claimed to have been caused by the internet. However, the relationship between social media and participation in the anti-regime demonstrations is contested and opaque. This article explores this relationship through both a theoretical and empirical approach. More concretely, by using two survey data sets, we examine a hypothesis derived from a diffusion model of information and social movement theory. The two key findings are: (1) vanguards of the demonstrations were more active on social media than followers during the revolution, and (2) active bloggers tended to participate in demonstrations against the Mubarak regime. These findings contradict previous findings of social media’s limited effect and indicate that social media diminishes the collective action problem in anti-government protests. They also indicate that the concept of political opportunity structure is useful for understanding the revolution.

Political opportunity and mobilization: The evolution of a Swedish mining-sceptical movement

As demand for minerals is expected to increase due to the energy transition needed to meet climate targets, mineral exploration will continue intensifying. Surveys find that public acceptance of the mining industry is low, particularly in the EU, suggesting that mining conflicts may increase in both number and intensity. Conflict usually occurs in places where a significant number of local actors mobilize resistance against a mining company. Their success is dependent on the emergence of a broader social movement that jumps to the relevant scale of regulation, often the national level. Despite this, very little attention is being paid to the emergence of such a movement, as well as to the state and its institutions, in studies on mining conflicts. Most research into mining conflicts examines developing countries, while mining resistance is an emerging issue also in developed nations, not least in the Arctic. Understanding mining resistance is important in avoiding or addressing conflicts that can be costly for companies, communities, and the state. This paper explores the relationship between state politics and mining resistance at the national level, drawing on social movement research and the concept of political opportunity structures. The results show that confrontational mining resistance will grow at the national level when the state offers little access nor influence to mining-sceptical actors in either policy formulation or implementation, and where there is a sufficient number of simultaneously ongoing contested licensing processes. In cases where indigenous people are involved, weak or contested indigenous rights may also spur resistance.

Correction to: Lobbying the lobbyists: when and why do policymakers seek to influence advocacy groups in global governance?

Advocacy is typically conceived of as an activity where advocacy groups seek and policymakers grant influence. In this paper, we turn the classic approach to advocacy upside down and ask under what conditions policymakers seek to exert influence on the positions adopted by opposing or allied advocacy groups. Two strategies that policymakers can use in their interactions with advocacy groups are proposed: amplification and persuasion. We build on resource exchange theory and the concept of political opportunity structures to explain which strategy a policymaker uses. The analysis relies on a unique database, which draws from 297 interviews with policymakers from 107 different countries at global climate change and trade conferences. Our results demonstrate that, overall, policymakers seek out advocacy groups more when they are faced with increased levels of political pressures. Namely, elected politicians are more prone to seek out opposing societal interests than non-elected policymakers. Moreover, policymakers from democratically accountable countries, who work on salient issues, are more inclined to mobilize their advocacy group allies.

Bourdieu in movement: toward a field theory of contentious politics

ABSTRACT How can we account for the emergence and the dynamics of contentious mobilization? In order to answer this question, this article draws upon Bourdieu’s sociology to reformulate the political process model. Building on the claim that many social spaces organized around different logics coexist within each society, I propose to replace the concept of political opportunity structure, which lies at the core of the political process model, with that of field opportunity structure (FOS). There are thus as many FOS as there are fields and the structure of political opportunities is just one type of opportunity structure among others. After briefly reviewing the political process model and Bourdieu’s field theory, this article explains how shifts in the FOS can contribute to the emergence, growth, and decline of mobilization and contention. It then discusses how Bourdieu’s concept of habitus can account for actors not taking advantage of such shifts in situations of crisis, when fields relax their hold over the practices and goals of actors.

Lobbying the lobbyists: when and why do policymakers seek to influence advocacy groups in global governance?

Advocacy is typically conceived of as an activity where advocacy groups seek and policymakers grant influence. In this paper, we turn the classic approach to advocacy upside down and ask under what conditions policymakers seek to exert influence on the positions adopted by opposing or allied advocacy groups. Two strategies that policymakers can use in their interactions with advocacy groups are proposed: amplification and persuasion. We build on resource exchange theory and the concept of political opportunity structures to explain which strategy a policymaker uses. The analysis relies on a unique database, which draws from 297 interviews with policymakers from 107 different countries at global climate change and trade conferences. Our results demonstrate that, overall, policymakers seek out advocacy groups more when they are faced with increased levels of political pressures. Namely, elected politicians are more prone to seek out opposing societal interests than non-elected policymakers. Moreover, policymakers from democratically accountable countries, who work on salient issues, are more inclined to mobilize their advocacy group allies.

Friends or Foes? How Managerial Perceptions of the Political Opportunity Structure Shape Nonprofit Advocacy

Policy advocacy is an important tool that nonprofit managers use to build relationships with public officials and others in furtherance of their charitable missions. Through advocacy, nonprofits work to promote policies affecting their constituencies, maintain public funding, or strengthen the nonprofit sector as a whole. Scholarship on nonprofit advocacy often considers the organizational or resource environment, however, insufficient attention has focused on the policy environment as a factor shaping nonprofit advocacy. This article draws on the concept of political opportunity structure from the sociological study of social movements to understand nonprofit policy advocacy. The political opportunity framework focuses on how aspects of the political environment influence political action. Using data from a recent statewide survey of Massachusetts nonprofit organizations (n = 656, 55% response rate), we find evidence of a nonlinear relationship between managers’ perceptions of the political opportunity structure and the likelihood that a nonprofit engages in policy advocacy.

Debating the \u2018integration of Islam\u2019: the discourse between governmental actors and Islamic representatives in Germany and the Netherlands

This paper examines what influences the views of governmental and Islamic actors in consultations on the integration of Islam in Germany and the Netherlands. Disentangling institutionalist and constructivist assumptions within the concept of political opportunity structures and employing a content analysis of primary documents and interviews, the paper shows that expectations of both approaches apply: On the one hand, Islamic organizations (as challengers) and governmental representatives (as defenders of the status quo) each problematize the issue differently. Yet, their views also depend on specific national contextual factors (i.e. regimes of immigrant integration and religious governance) and, therefore, differ cross-nationally, too. The paper argues that it is fruitful to uncover the ways participants in the discourses define and conceive of central terms and concepts prevalent in order to disclose their fundamental motivations, interests, and strategies.

Nothing will be as before: Shifting political opportunity structures in protests against gold mining in Burkina Faso

This article seeks to explore what enables mining-related protests in the affected localities to become manifest. In an empirical analysis of three local conflicts over gold mining in Burkina Faso it is demonstrated how shifting political-institutional conditions on the national scale have fostered the eruption of protests at various mining localities within the country. Theoretically, the analysis is based on a contentious politics perspective, notably the concept of political opportunity structures. It is demonstrated that and through which mechanisms the overthrow of the long-standing president Blaise Compaoré at the end of October 2014 enabled the protests on the local scale. Three mechanisms are revealed. The analysis is built on primary data gathered in field research conducted between 2015 and 2017, including 70 semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, observations and document analysis.

Educational Advancement in Three Generations: East and West Germany in Comparison

Educational Advancement in Three Generations: East and West Germany in Comparison Prof. Dr. Ingrid Miethe1 & Regina Soremski M.A. Abstract Our article presents some of the key findings of a qualitative study that is based on biographical interviews to investigate three generations of first generation students in East and West Germany since the Second World War. Focusing on the influence of political and societal conditions on individual upward mobility through education, we developed a conceptional framework that combines Pierre Bourdieu’s theory with the concept of political opportunity structure by Sidney Tarrow. This combined theoretical approach enables us to investigate the dynamics of fostering mobility by creating access to higher education. These dynamics can be described as typical opportunity structures which we explain in the article. Another important result refers to seven different structural elements that are favorable to educational advancement, e.g. changes in habitus through education, institutional incentives or a broad positive public discourse. These structural elements we could find across the different types and individual cases. Finally, that enables us to connect our findings to an international discourse on first generation students, social inequality, and higher education. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/jehd.v5n4a6

Political Opportunity Structure, Contentious Social Movements, and State-Based Organizations: The Fight against Solidarity inside the Polish United Workers Party

Studies of social movements have often focused on the role of the state vis-à-vis social movements—in recent times using the concept of political opportunity structure to understand the options available to social movements. This article examines the internal conflicts within the ruling party in Communist Poland to show that a reciprocal process proceeded, in which both the social movement and the state found the choices of action available to them limited by the other, rather than just the social movement. The social upheaval that impacted the entire country brought about the rise of a reform movement within the ruling Polish United Workers Party, which prevented the government from acting as it preferred for a significant period of time. That reform movement, which would not have existed without Solidarity and certainly would not have brought about intraparty changes by itself, saw itself as connected to and dependent upon Solidarity. Party conservatives had to respond to and overcome the reformers before they could turn their full attention to ending the challenge Solidarity presented to the Communist system. In effect, for a time, Solidarity limited the political opportunity structure of the state, while the reverse was also true. While social movement scholars have long considered the possibilities and the limits on possibilities available to social movements because of the state or other external circumstances, this experience demonstrates that similar considerations must sometimes be contemplated with respect to the state.

Legal Opportunity in Trade Negotiations: International Law, Opportunity Structures and the Political Economy of Trade Agreements

In 2009, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) challenged the European Union (EU)'s interpretation of Article XXIV GATT in bilateral trade talks. Based on a legal analysis that West African activists initially provided, ECOWAS established that the clause allowed for more flexibility on market opening than the EU expected. Since then, market access constitutes one unresolved issue slowing down negotiations between the trade power Europe and trade- and aid-dependent ECOWAS. The example challenges the political economy literature dealing with trade policy-making on at least two accounts, namely the role of typically sidelines actors such as poor countries and transnational activists; and the role of the law in mediating strategic and discursive aspects of trade political processes. To assess the evidence and its theoretical implications, I combine the analytical concept of political opportunity structure developed in the transnational studies literature with pluralist approaches to law. I argue that trade political actors can become aware of the pathways to influence that legal uncertainty opens, in particular under conditions of multi-level governance where national, regional and international legal orders are intertwined. Overall, the way in which the law mediates ideas and interests thus deserves scrutiny in political economy approaches to trade.

The Republika Srpska as a strong nationalizing state and the consequences for postethnic activism

This paper explores the limits and possibilities for postethnic mobilization in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It employs and critically assesses Tarrow's classic concept of political opportunity structure for the explaining the variations in the occurrence of postethnic mobilization in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a deeply divided society. While the main cleavages in the country run along ethnic lines, a number of groups and NGOs attempt to mobilize alternative identities across ethnic boundaries. These groups are mostly based in the Federation entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina and not in the Republika Srpska. My analysis shows that the concept of political opportunity structure only partly explains this difference. I thus suggest an alternative perspective, which takes into account the cultural environment in which the mobilization happens. The first part of the paper expands on the definition of postethnic activism, explaining what it is and how I proceeded in researching postethnic groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The second part uses the framework of political opportunity structure for assessing the influence of environmental factors on the emergence and development of postethnic activism. The third part of the paper evaluates the relevance of the political opportunity structure framework, considers the merits of an approach which takes into account the cultural context, and suggests some further avenues for research.

Political opportunities and storylines in Finnish climate policy negotiations

This article addresses the discursive dimension of the politics of climate change. Drawing from the concept of political opportunity structure (POS) and Maarten Hajer's discourse analytical approach, it focuses on the ways in which Finnish technology-based climate and energy policy vision is constructed, specified and contested in the national energy policy debate. As Finland ranks among the top countries in international comparisons of economic competitiveness, research and development indicators and environmental performance, it provides a good example of emerging tensions in balancing various political objectives under the Kyoto obligations. The results suggest that a national POS enables and delimits opportunities for different political articulations to emerge. They also point to the importance of including a discursive dimension in the POS in order to enhance its applicability in understanding the dynamics of political contention.

Civil Societies and Social Movements. Potentials and Problems

Civil society has become a widely-used concept that represents what is considered to be an indispensable element of a good society and polity. Indeed, civil societies are venerated for contributing to democratization and good governance, to active citizenship and community development, to social relations and societal integration. The success of this concept can be attributed also to its ability to embrace previously distinct research strands and debates, which focussed, e.g., on non-governmental, non-profit and/or voluntary organizations, on the Third Sector, on social movements and on social capital, amongst others. However, as a conceptual umbrella, it risks to lack empirical and analytic precision. Moreover, most debates on civil society tend to blur analytic and normative questions. In fact, civil society has not only been a scientific category for analyzing societies, but also a programmatic tool for policy-making. The collective volume edited by Derrick Purdue contributes to a demystification of the concept ‘civil society’. The authors draw a differentiated picture of civil societies around the globe by highlighting their merits and weaknesses. While most chapters are national case studies, in sum, findings corroborate what scholarly writing on civil society is proposing generally: civil society is marked by internal cleavages and fragmentations along class, ideology, culture and race; civil society is dependent on the market and the state, and is thus exposed to commercialization and political instrumentalization; civil societies still cluster geographically in specific regions, because they are strongly shaped by socio-economic and political conditions at the national level. The underlying argument of the book has strongly benefited from the decision to link the study of civil society to scholarly writing on social movements. On the empirical level, this allows contributors to analyze and compare civil societies in a more focused way, given the fact that social movements are the more politically active and contentious element of civil society. This also allows differences across time and countries to be highlighted more clearly. On the analytic level, scholarly writing on social movements has provided very helpful theoretical tools (in particular, the concept of political opportunity structures), which are effectively used in this book to describe and explain the fates of civil societies in different national contexts.

ISLAMIC MOBILIZATION: Social Movement Theory and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood

This article examines the emergence and growth of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt from the 1930s through the 1950s. It begins by outlining and empirically evaluating possible explanations for the organization's growth based on (1) theories of political Islam and (2) the concept of political opportunity structure in social movement theory. An extension of these approaches is suggested based on data from organizational documents and declassified U.S. State Department files from the period. The successful mobilization of the Muslim Brotherhood was possible because of the way in which its Islamic message was tied to its organizational structure, activities, and strategies and the everyday lives of Egyptians. The analysis suggests that ideas are integrated into social movements in more ways than the concept of framing allows. It also expands our understanding of how organizations can arise in highly repressive environments.

Islamic Mobilization: Social Movement Theory and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood

This article examines the emergence and growth of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt from the 1930s through the 1950s. It begins by outlining and empirically evaluating possible explanations for the organization's growth based on (1) theories of political Islam and (2) the concept of political opportunity structure in social movement theory. An extension of these approaches is suggested based on data from organizational documents and declassified U.S. State Department files from the period. The successful mobilization of the Muslim Brotherhood was possible because of the way in which its Islamic message was tied to its organizational structure, activities, and strategies and the everyday lives of Egyptians. The analysis suggests that ideas are integrated into social movements in more ways than the concept of framing allows. It also expands our understanding of how organizations can arise in highly repressive environments.

Transnational women’s activism in Japan and Korea:the unresolved issue of military sexual slavery

This article is about the transnational links formed between the Korean and Japanese women‘s movements in their campaign on behalf of the victims of ‘military sexual slavery’ during the Second World War. There is a growing literature that examines such networks. Yet, a deeper understanding of the emergence and activities of transnational advocacy networks is needed, particularly in the context of political opportunity structures. Social scientists who have developed the concept of political opportunity structures have, however, not provided a gender‐specific analysis of these. Of particular interest is the exploration of the role played by gender in an international human rights discourse as a political opportunity structure for women’s groups in Korea and Japan. This article, thus, explores the ways in which the feminist movements in Korea and Japan have made use of transnational legal means in politicizing and popularizing the issue of ‘military sexual slavery’ at both regional and global scales.

POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY AFTER THE COLD WAR

The end of the cold war dramatically altered the prospects for challenging movements in both the East and the West. Because the international context in which social movements occur has so radically changed, their form and content is also likely to change radically. In this article, the author uses the concept of political opportunity structure to discuss the likely opportunities, issues, and constituencies of challenging movements after the cold war. The author begins by discussing political opportunity structure as an analytic tool, explaining how the end of the cold war alters opportunities for challengers within various countries and briefly outlines the events that marked the end of the cold war, arguing that activists played a role in precipitating and shaping the transformations now underway. Opportunities are discussed for political action on a large scale that activists have thus far pursued in a piecemeal fashion. The author then examines how these opportunities refract in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and in the United States. It is suggested that the prospects for transformation from below have dramatically improved in the West because negative models of alternative forms of political and economic organization are no longer externalized as a security threat. In the East, matters are much less clear. Opposition to party‐state governments in Eastern Europe spanned a broad political spectrum during the cold war, unified only by rejection of the status quo. Paradoxically, new openness may make organizing and articulating new claims, particularly for democratic movements, more difficult, and the author concludes by calling for transnational activist efforts.