Blackwell Reference Online

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Political opportunities, sometimes referred to as political opportunity structure or the structure of political opportunities, is a catchall term that refers to the world outside a social movement that affects its mobilization, development, and ultimate impact. The notion that the social and political context matters is well established in the social sciences, but scholars dispute which aspects of the environment influence social movements, and how, and contest the analytic utility of the concept of political opportunities as it has developed. Tarrow's (1998: 19–20) economical definition, “consistent – but not necessarily formal or permanent – dimensions of the political struggle that encourage people to engage in contentious politics,” affords researchers considerable latitude in tailoring the concepts to the case at hand. The challenge for scholars of social movements is to conduct theoretically oriented empirical studies of the interactions of movements with their contexts to test and refine the theory. Modern use of the term political opportunities is rooted in the scholarly response to the social movements of the 1960s, which challenged the notion that protest was a phenomenon wholly unconnected with more conventional politics. Scholars (e.g., Lipsky 1970 ) contended that protest could be a rational political strategy for those poorly positioned to exercise influence in other ... log in or subscribe to read full text