5 Summary of Week 7

Campaigning is a process of mobilising resources towards a specific goal. Often campaigning is associated with social or political movements and tends to involve mobilising a particular constituency to act on an issue. ‘Issues’ in this context are thought of as partial parts of broader problems, and ‘constituencies’ as broad social groupings based in material interests or political/ideological outlooks. Campaigning is applied in a broad range of contexts, including electing political leaders, or indeed pressuring these leaders to enact change. The latter of these contexts is usually associated with collective campaigning in some form, at times occurring internally within an organisation (trade unionism/factionalism) or to apply pressure to an external organisation (social movements/pressure groups). Collective campaigning uses a range of tactics, with the common strategies using collective strength to apply public pressure to a decision-maker. Campaigns can be useful vehicles for developing leadership – something you will explore in greater detail in the next (and final) week of the course, which is about organising.

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