Identity and the political process

     For Political movement, the construction of identity is often conditiiby variables of a strictly political externally echo characteristics of the political system and of the political culture of a given country. It seems that the development of collective identity can be explained by reference to a reformulated version of the wall known argument thay froms of politocalnaking determine forms of political action, and not vice verza ( Lowi 1971). Social actors, in fact, tend a structure their action and establish alliances in different ways on different policy issues, with large interest groups dominating distributive policies and more pluralistit networks characterizing regulatory policies.

      Other peculiarities of policy areas have also been singled out for their impact on the structure of contentious politics in their areas ( Bartholomew and Mayer 1992;Jenson 1995). For example, the emergence in the USA of  a specific identity linking Asian Americans, and the development of " pan ethnic collective action" ( Okamoto 2003) at the level, have been put down to the fact that, in crucial areas such as those of immigration policy and the right of minority groups, public agencies tended to treat ethnic groups as the Vietnamese or the koreans. In the case, the adoption of a certain political or administrative criterionhas produced interests and identities which enable different groups to act collectively on a number of issues ( omi and Winnant 1994).

        On another level, actors identities are defined also in the context of dominant political divisions or cleavages in a given society. Movements develop in political systems which already have a structure: they try to modify it and to activate processes of political realignment ( Tilly 1978;Dalton et al. 1984; Bartolini and Mair 1990). When established political identities which are sufficiently specific to provide the foundations for the diversity of the movement in relation to its adversaries; but at the same time, sufficiently close to traditional collective identities in order to make it possible for movement actors to communicate with those who continue to recognize themselves in consolidated identities. Under those conditions, oppor for genuinely " new" movements, I.e. movements cutting across established cleavages, will be relatively limited ( Diani 2000a).

       Interaction with authorities often represent important sources of identity. It has long been noticed how " encouters with unjust authority" ( Gamson, Fireman, and Rytina 1982) may facilitate the consolidation of both motivation to act and hostility towards powerholeders and their representatives ( see also chapter 8 below). For example, accounts of Italian terrorists of the 1970s often mentioned mistreatment by police or by the judiciary as one of driving forces behind their radicalization ( della porta 1990; Catanzaro and Manconi 1995). In much broaders and milder terms, we can view interai with state agents who do not behave according to expectations or political representatives who fail to recognize people"s genuine needs as facilitators of the development of political identity. For example, Drury et al. ( 2003)  analyzed how the identities of local residents, participating in an antiroad protest in England in 1993-1994, evolved during the conflict. They found thay the role of the police in supporting the bailiffs in the eviction of protestors from the boundaries of the locak communities toward global social movement. Investigating the relatiom between everyday life and protest in 1990s Argentina. Auyero (2004) showed that the transformation of an unemployed, divorced woman with no tradition of political interest whatsoever into a prominent community organizer depended in no small measure on the sense of outrage that the experienced at her interactions with two type of " unjust authorities" : " political authority", in the form of the local governor, who portrayed hungry protestors as a mob; and " social authority", in the shape of a fellow male protestor who reproduced gender stereotypes by dismissing the role of women in the struggle.

Reference

Donatella Della Porta And Mario Diani, Social Movements an introduction; second edition.