Political Opportunity Structure: Three-Part Crime Model

We were first introduced to the political opportunity structure (POS) in the beginning of class. The political opportunity structure is part of a three-part crime model; which also included means and motive. The POS sets out to explain how open or closed the political system is to a certain issue or claim, that may bring about a social movement. The second part of class introduced us to how the political opportunity structure interacts globally and how complications arise. The political opportunity structure has many great advantages when determining if a movement opportunity has the capability of success, at the domestic level, but when some activist/activists decide to use the political opportunity structure internationally complications arise. The focus of the POS is determining the openness to an issue and one complication that arises is international actors. …show more content…
There are many reasons to why this needs to be the case. First, when a movement decides to broaden their goals to a global view, instead of domestic, the movement’s goals take a new shape. Even though the goal remains the same, for example women’s equality, you now have to take in account a bigger population, more countries, and now you have to take in account other countries’ norms and values. It is not easy to achieve broad goals worldwide without first achieving them in your country. Another issue activist will face when taking their movement global is legitimizing the movement. Outsiders are looking at the movement and wondering if they did not find success in their own country how can they achieve successes in other countries. It difficult for movements to find legitimacy, let alone in their home country and now activist want to push movement goals globally? It is not as easy as it sounds. For a movement to find its most success it needs to focus domestically and move from