Abstract
This article aims to analytically bring closer the literature on social movements and political parties, traditionally approached as detached. We put forward a debate about the process of both collective and party identity along with elements that define social movement’s and political party’s strategy choice. We argue that issues related to identity and strategy will be crucial to movement-party interactions which can occur through the mediation of a sociopartisan leadership – who exercises influence on both social and party fields. The theoretical discussion was built from a case study in which we observed the articulation of environmental movement’s leaderships with political parties, specially the Partido dos Trabalhadores, from the eighties up to Rede Sustentabilidade formation. The intermediation of Marina Silva between social and political worlds was fundamental to getting social movement’s leaderships to enter the political parties arenas: legislative, executive, electoral. We conclude that prior relationship between environmental movement and Partido dos Trabalhadores was essential to environmentalists to engage on Rede Sustentabilidade formation.
social movements; political parties; movement-party interaction; Partido dos Trabalhadores; environmental movement