Ideological Roots of Republican Party in Election 2016: A Collective Behavior and Social Movement Approach

• In Event: 474 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 17. Party Politics and Social Movements

Abstract

The rhetoric of the Republican Presidential primary race for the 2016 election caused a maelstrom of media coverage concerning the ferocity and bigotry of the rhetoric. In this study, we examine how ideologies, meta-frames, frames, and narratives exert a powerful pull on the collective behavior of large groups of people. This not only primes these populations for mobilization into specific social movements and social movement organizations (SMOs), but also makes them receptive, in this case, to political campaign rhetoric.
The several constituencies were mobilized by longstanding right-wing social movements and social movement organizations. In this paper we examine the role of four core ideological tendencies around which a number of these movements are clustered: White Nationalism, Christian Nationalism, Heteropatriarchy, and Neoliberalism. These ideologies overlap and compete in complex ways. Our goal is to detail the roots and branches of these ideological tendencies as one way to clarify how pre-existing social movements mobilize often-temporary political and electoral power blocks, despite cleavages and tensions.

Authors

• Alex DiBranco, Yale University

• Chip Berlet, Research for Progress