The Ideal Society - An Investigation into the Preferred Mechanisms of Social Organization of Tea Party and Occupy Movement Members

The Tea Party and Occupy movements perceive similar problems in the current social structure of the United States while citing different causes of and solutions to those problems. This study asked six participants from each movement to describe their "ideal society" to illuminate their preferred mechanisms of social organization. The results demonstrate that the participants from Occupy and the Tea Party share: a belief in education as an impediment to, and a strategy for, the improvement of society; a desire for a social structure governed from the bottom up rather than the top down; and a perception of a lack of representation in political affairs. The results also demonstrate that study participants in the Occupy movement distrust current social institutions and favor eliminating them, whereas Tea Party participants value current institutions and aim to repopulate these institutions with people that share their philosophy.