The Logic Between Movements And Politics

As a kind of social and political phenomena that emerge with the establishment of nation-states, social movements are one of the dynamics that promote the transformation of society and are used by the people without power as a tool to change their fate through non-institutional channels by collective action. As a branch of social movements, new social movements refer to a series of mass protest movements, with different scales and benefit appeals, which come to existence with the student movements in western society since 1960s. Currently, new social movements have become one of important social and political powers in western society. Just like political parties and interest groups, they could exert un-ignorable influence on the operation of western political system, the decision-making and operating. These movements, with the most distinct characteristic different from the traditional social movements is that they don’t take overthrow the existing ruling power as their object while pursuit the reform of the existing political system, have brought various impact on contemporary western politics. So, the object of this dissertation is analyzing the change of contemporary western politics under the influence of new social movements.Chapter one discusses the basic concepts and illustrates relative theories. Firstly, part one defines the concept of social movements:social movements refer to the network activities that are formed during the conflict process between the political elites and people who are in a given status in society and have the same goals and collective identities. In order to realize or hinder the social change or to sustain certain interest, people take various protest strategies and tactics. Social movements have four characteristics:firstly, an informal social network; secondly, a common belief; thirdly, the same opposed object; fourthly, various strategies and tactics. Then, this part discusses the common ground and differences among social movements, collective action and revolution. At the same time, this part points that as a kind of political forces, social movements are different from the political parties and interest groups. Part two discusses the connotation and characteristics of the western new social movements. We think new social movements are not a united movement or organization, but the general title of the various and abroad protest activities that rise in the western countries since 1960s. The " new" of new social movements is embodied in the following aspects:ideology, the class basis, motivation, the organization structure. Then, this chapter introduces the formation, background and the future of new social movements. At last, this chapter analyzes the four research paradigms of new social movements:resource mobilization theory, political process theory, new social movement·theory and political opportunity structure theory.Chapter two analyzes the influence of new social movements on democracy ideology of contemporary western politics, that is, the revival of participatory democracy. First, this chapter expounds the history of democracy theory. Then, it discusses the relation betweenthe new social movements and the revival of participatory democracy. Except realizing the given demand of social movements, new social movements are helpful for achieving one of the important goals of themselves:developing the new concept of democracy. In fact, people think that the new social movements are not only participating in the politics, but also, more or less, they criticize the traditional politics and try to develop sub-politics. All in all, from the angle of new social movements, there are three advantages to advocate participatory democracy:organization solidarity, strategy innovation and member development. In order to make the argumentation more convincing, this chapter uses case analysis:the participatory democracy in New-left organizations and women movement.Chapter three analyzes the influence of new social movements on contemporary western party politics. The origin of party can be traced back to the industrial revolution, so the focus of parties originally is the main social contradiction in that time---the economy contradiction. But, the new social movements and their success in mobilizing the mass have brought great challenges to the traditional party politics. In this chapter, the challenges are embodied in three aspects:the agenda, election and organization. The first part of this chapter illustrates the connotation, function, role of the party and party government. Part two to part four are developed according to these three challenges.Chapter four analyzes the influence of new social movements on contemporary western interest group politics. As we know, the relation among the social movement organizations, parties and interest groups is very complicated; they can be allies or opponents. Then, we discuss the influence of new social movements on contemporary western politics. What influence have they exerted on interest group politics? Before we analyze it, this chapter firstly illustrates the connotation of interest groups and ways of participation. Part two discusses the differences and relations between the new social movements and interest groups. Finally, this chapter puts forward that the influence of new social movements on contemporary western interest group politics are the following three aspects:firstly, the expansion of the scope of interest groups, that is the institutionalization of new social movements. Secondly, the breaking of the rule of strong interest groups, that is the transformation from plural-elitism to post-pluralism. Thirdly, the diversification of protest tools of interest groups, that is, the interest groups take the protest tools of social movements.Chapter five analyzes the influence of new social movements on contemporary western public policy. Part one illustrates the main body and cycle of the public decision-making. Part two analyzes the determinants of the power of influence of new social movements and the influence models. In this dissertation, we hold the point that the power is determined by the following four factors:public opinion, the type of issues, political ally and social movement organization. As to the models, there are three kinds: action-reaction model, access-influence model, the movement infrastructure model. Finally, we discuss the policy changes under the influence of new social movements. The changes are embodied in three aspects:policy agenda, policy process and policy value.The conclusion firstly evaluates the new social movements. We affirm the mediating effect of new social movements when we view them as a kind of non-institutional and modified social movements in the transformation of the contemporary western politics. At the same time, we also point that we couldn’t exaggerate the function of them. As a sort of non-institutional grass-root movement, if they still want to keep development in the future, they are facing a lot of problems, such as organization, ideology, finance and goals. Then, we evaluate the influence of new social movements on contemporary western politics. Just like a coin has two sides, when we discuss the influence of new social movements, we also should observe the counteractive of the institutional systems on the new social movements. Lastly, we discuss the revelation of our research to China and we could use these for reference.