The Racial and Gender Dimensions of Political Opportunity

• In Event: 1154 - Women of Color and Social Movements

Abstract

The political opportunity structures (POS) framework provides insight into the political environment in which social movements emerge and exert political influence. Prior research on structural openness and government responsiveness to movement demands identifies such opportunities in electoral shifts, a state’s capacity to repress, alliances with elites, and conflicts among elites (Brockett 1991; Kriesi et al 1995; McAdam 1996; Rucht 1996; Tarrow 1998). Yet, despite POS emerging in relation to the study of race riots in American cities (Eisinger 1973), scholarship within the POS framework has devoted remarkably little attention to the racial and gendered dimensions of the political contexts in which movements operate. Although recent work by Velez et al. (2015) focuses on Black political opportunity to capture how favorable political contexts may attenuate violence in predominantly Black neighborhoods, most analysis continues to omit attention to the role of race and gender. This paper theorizes the ways in which the racial and gendered dimensions of POS either constrain or enable the political influence of social movements based on the case of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Author

• Fernando Tormos, Scholars Strategy Network