The (Seeming) Power of (Seemingly) Leaderless Organizations: The Tea Party Movement as a Case Study

Abstract

In 2009, as newly elected President Barack Obama started to implement the Democratic agenda for economic recovery and healthcare reform, a right-wing populist movement that claimed to be ‘mad as hell’ (Rasmussen and Schoen, 2010) emerged in vigorous opposition to expanded government. Since then, the Tea Party has never been long out of the headlines, and its triumphs and travails have provided scholars with considerable food for thought (Formisano, 2012; Godet, 2012; Horwitz, 2013; Huret, 2014; Kabaservice, 2012; Lepore, 2010; Libby, 2013; Skocpol and Williamson, 2012; Parker and Barreto, 2013; Van Dyke and Meyer, 2014).