ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we shall turn to the less stable elements of the political opportunity structure—certain aspects of the configuration of power of a political system. These are the elements underscored by the conceptualization of the POS by Sidney Tarrow (1989a, 1989b, 1994, 1995). He insists on the importance of the political conditions of the moment, on short-term changes in political opportunities that may unleash political protest and may contribute to its decline. The elements of the political context that may change in the short run include the opening up of access to participation, shifts in ruling alignments, the availability of influential allies, and cleavages within and among elites. We shall concentrate here on two aspects of the changing political context of the mobilization by new social movements—the configuration of power on the left and the presence or absence of the left in government. At several occasions, we have already pointed out that the constituencies of the new social movements are closely related to those of the left. The implications of such a close relationship are quite ambivalent, as we already had occasion to note in chapter 1. Whereas we showed the restrictive implications of this proximity for the mobilization of new social movements in that chapter, in this one we shall put the accent on the other side of the coin: Given that the concerns of the left and those of the new social movements are closely related, we expect the mobilization capacity of the new social movements as well as their political success to depend closely on the support they receive from the organizations of the left.
