Movements are aggregates of people making claims about a new order of life. With four basic empirical properties: collective challenge, common purpose, social solidarity and sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities (Tarrow).

The vertical axis refers to a fundamental divide in social movements analysis. The European approach asks "why" movements arise, focusing on crisis erupting from major structural "strains" (Smelser) in the society. The American approach asks "how" social movements develop, concentrating upon conditions which favour creation and success of collective action. The horizontal axis indicates the relationship of collective movements with political order. While most movements challenge existing authorities, they only rarely seek to overthrow them and may have a more or less overt tendency to institutionalize their activities.

The URQ describes the marxist tradition of social movements as "the organised collective behaviour of a class actor struggling against his class adversary" (Touraine), a conflict whic is often in the name of - and may lead to - revolution. The focus of the ULQ is on "new social movements" expressing new cultural identities or defending - reconstructing - old ones. A phenomenon described by Castells (1996,22) as "the construction of social action and politics around primary identities, either ascribed, rooted in history, and geography, or newly built in an anxious search for meaning and spirituality". In the LLQ, market and lobbying stress similarities between social movements and interest groups in the "resource mobilization theory" (McCarthy and Zald 1977), analyzing the material resources that various movements use to garner membership support. The LRQ points to the shifting institutional structure and the ideological disposition (McAdam 1982), as well as policy responses, of those in power to account for the timing and fate of insurgency movements. Rather than from socio-economic differences or regional variations, fluctuations in collective protest depend on the "structure of political opportunities", as the strength of a sympatethic political party, a competitive party system, high levels of voting turnout. [Daniel Sherman]