Understanding the Behavior of Social Movements in the Foreign Policy of Contemporary Era

As an elitist concept in the traditional approach, foreign policy does not have any relation with socio-political life. Such interpretation is not necessarily a political lie, but a cognitive bias. Despite the transition of social movements’ researches to the literature of foreign policy in recent years, the influence of this social force on foreign policy is still neglected. Such interpretation is due to overlooking the social forces and the lack of alternative arenas of political action and irrationality of democratic politics in the traditional approach. However, social movements as an expression of modern societies’ cleavages and continuity of politics with other tools, have a unique status in the ontology of foreign policy. Thus, the main question of this paper is to appraise whether the social movements lead to changing foreign policy or are just as the symbols of change in the preference of foreign policy? Based on the main hypothesis, liberation and changing the public discourse by social movements will not only shift the power but also pave the way to alternate politics. By employing the theory of sociology of social movements and the analytic method, this paper will test the hypothesis. The findings show that social movements and foreign policy are interdependent. Accordingly, foreign policy affects the formation of social movements and vice versa.