A political movement is a social movement in the area of politics. A political movement may be organized around a single issue or set of issues, or around a set of shared concerns of a social group. In contrast with a political party, a political movement is not organized to elect members of the movement to government office; instead, a political movement aims to convince citizens and/or government officers to take action on the issues and concerns which are the focus of the movement.
Political movements are an expression of the struggle of a social group for the political space and benefits. The political movements are presented by non-state groups who are led by their élite. In fact the process of the construction of identities and reinforcing them is also a part of political movements.
A political movement may be local, regional, national, or international in scope. Some have aimed to change government policy, such as the anti-war movement, the Ecology movement, and the Anti-globalization movement. Many have aimed to establish or broaden the rights of subordinate groups, such as abolitionism, the women's suffrage movement, the Civil rights movement, feminism, men's rights movement, gay rights movement, the Disability rights movement, or the inclusive human rights movement. Some have represented class interests, such as the Labour movement, Socialism, and Communism, others have expressed national aspirations, such as anticolonialist movements, Ratana, Zionism, and Sinn Féin. Political movements can also involve struggles to decentralize or centralize state control, as in Anarchism, Fascism, and Nazism.
Some activists and scholars claim that along with globalization a new type of political movement emerges that is not merely international or single-issue focused, but is characterized with global approach. This has been termed a global citizens movement and debate continues over whether it has manifested or is still a latent potential.
Read more about Political Movement: Identification of Supporters
Famous quotes containing the words political movement, political and/or movement:
“The people of Western Europe are facing this summer a series of tragic dilemmas. Of the hopes that dazzled the last twenty years that some political movement might tend to the betterment of the human lot, little remains above ground but the tattered slogans of the past.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Every new baby is a blind desperate vote for survival: people who find themselves unable to register an effective political protest against extermination do so by a biological act.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“So close is the bond between man and woman that you can not raise one without lifting the other. The world can not move ahead without woman’s sharing in the movement, and to help give a right impetus to that movement is woman’s highest privilege.”
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)