Social movements and party politics: The case of the Christian Right

This paper explores the uneasy relationship between social movements and ma jor political parties by considering the case of the Christian Right and th e Republican Party in the 1994 elections. We look at four states where the movement was active in party politics and where Republican electoral fortun es varied from failure to success. We found that the degree of intraparty d ivision generated by the Christian Right seemed to hurt Republicans at the polls, but the level of movement activity in itself apparently helped the R epublicans. Most factors associated with support for the Christian Right di d not help account for electoral outcomes across the states. Instead, the a ccessibility of the political party nomination processes to the movement be st accounted for the election results: greater party openness tvas associat ed with poor results and more limited access with greater success for the G OP.