Taxed Enough Already : en analys av Tea Party rörelsen i USA

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis is to describe the rise of the Tea Party movement in the United States. By using a known theory within social movement studies, the political process theory, this thesis look into the factors that could have played a role in the rise and fast mobilization of the Tea Party movement. The political process theory consists of three parts and hence looks into both the political structure of, in this case, the United States, how mobilizing structures have been used and into the cultural framing used by the Tea Party to create their identity. In order to bring structure to the thesis, the three theory parts have been transformed into analysis models. These give a very good idea of all the factors that could have played a part and therefore also a good way to describe the rise of the Tea Party movement. The research confirm what the political process theory says, that the Tea Party movements rise came at a time when there were a mix of factors at play, both structural and cultural, creating an opportunity that the Tea Party took. The Tea Party’s fast mobilization can be seen as a result of the combination of factors present at the time. The methods used in this thesis are qualitative data analysis and process tracing.