This thesis is a case study of Libertarian Party (LP) electioneering in the American bellwether State of Ohio. Officially established in 1972, America's growing LP currently ranks first amongst third parties in their electoral challenge to Democrats and Republicans. Nonetheless, growing duopolist hegemony in the form of the U.S. two-party system has greatly diminished a long and lively history of third party resistance. A survey of American cultural logics and political economy from colonial forms to garrison state constructions together reveal an ideology of party duopoly to serve elite hegemony. The thesis then moves to examine the manner in which Old Right proto-libertarians coalesced into a Libertarian movement. As a socio-cultural investigation of unwanted segments formerly with the Republican Party and their struggles with one another to socially construct the LP, this study is rare. Whilst highlighting interactionist complexities amongst Libertarian segments, the employment of a Rothbardian conflict perspective serves to illuminate a formerly prominent segment within the Libertarian movement. Non-Rothbardian conflict perspectives in synthesis with theories of culture are also drawn upon to broadly interrogate three major segments in their collective social constructions of Libertarian electioneering: classical liberal proponents of small involuntary government, Randian advocates of limited involuntary government, and Rothbardian purists for voluntary government. How the rationalisation of corporative cultural logics impacts upon shared meanings, social constructions, and practices of LP electioneering is also explored. The central argument in this thesis is that segments vie for power to define libertarianism and the LP, but do so within culturally determined codes and parameters. The resulting interpretation in this thesis demonstrates how seemingly paradoxical social constructions of electioneering as Libertarian emerge from corporative ationalisation. Nonetheless, corporative organisational reforms have overcome a range of differentiating factors to achieve greater cooperation between remaining segments after a recent exodus of purists. The result of the corporative turn in Libertarian politics led to rising prominence for an ideology of electability that invariably reinforces the status quo.

Début 2009, alors que les Etats-Unis étaient au coeur de la crise économique la plusimportante depuis plus de soixante-quinze ans, Barack Obama prenait place à la Maison-Blanche etmettait en place ses premières mesures sous le mot d’ordre « Hope and Change ». L’opposition à sonaction s’est alors rapidement cristallisée autour du mouvement Tea Party. Le premier objectif de cetravail de thèse consiste à expliquer le succès remporté par ce mouvement, en soulignant le rôle dequatre facteurs issue de la « structure des opportunités politiques » : l’ouverture du système partisanaux challengers, la stabilité des alignements politiques, l’existence de forces relais et, enfin, lastructure du conflit. Ces éléments constitutifs nous donnent aussi les clés nécessaires pour comprendrecomment et sous quelle forme s’est construite l’idéologie du mouvement. Dans un second temps, ilsera question d’analyser les effets du mouvement Tea Party sur son environnement politique. Nouschercherons à comprendre dans quelle mesure et selon quels mécanismes ce mouvement est parvenu àinfluencer le système politique américain dans un contexte marqué, depuis les années soixante-dix, parune polarisation de la politique américaine. Pour cela, nous aurons recours à l’étude comparée desdiscours produits par le Tea Party, le Parti républicain et le Parti démocrate. / In 2009, while the United-States were suffering from the worst economic crisis in more thansixty-five years, Barack Obama entered the White House and began implementing the first measuresof his “Hope and change” agenda. Opposition to his actions quickly crystallized around the Tea Partymovement. This PhD thesis aims firstly to explain the sudden success of the Tea Party by pointing therole of four factors linked to the “political opportunity structure”: access to the party system and policydecisions, the political alignments stability, the alliance structure, and finally the conflict structure.Those four elements can also help us understand the way the movement’s ideology was shaped. Asecond part is devoted to analyzing the effects of the Tea Party on its political environment. We intendto show to what extend and in which ways the Tea Party was able to influence the American politicalsystem, in a context marked, since the seventies, by a growing political polarization. To do so, weproceed by resorting to the comparative study of the Tea Party, the Republican Party, and theDemocratic Party discourses.