I think that although the United States has ideally a setup that would promote an open political opportunity structure in Kitschelt's model, the actual number of parties here compared to the number of parties there could be here (but are not!) are telling of a system more closed than we think. Tarrow's strategies of states, facilitation and repression, that characterize representative democracies and authoritarian structures respectively are also a mark against the United States. I believe that the democracy in the United States is executed in a way to repress social movements rather than facilitate them (unless they are patriotic/conservative movements/backlashes). As far as history goes, the United States in recent years has become more centralized a government than ever before. We have not seen any social movements on the scale of the Civil Rights Movement since the 1960's and much of that has to do with the change in methods, as we talked about last week.
I actually do not have very high hopes for current social movements in the United States. Perhaps they will change people's ideas and the culture in a very vague way, but the thought that it will create real institutional change is something I doubt, no matter which movement. I don't know, maybe I'm just all Debbie Downer right now!
I can see your point here about America becoming more centralized over time and therefore repressing social movements. It seems as if people here are almost losing faith in themselves to be able to manage our own economy and ideas and turning to government to fix everything for them. There's major downsides to that. The more control we give to government, the less say we have in creating change.
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