gesture politics

noun, plural in form but singular or plural in construction

Definition of gesture politics

: political actions or statements that are done or made chiefly as symbolic gestures and have little or no practical effect

Law and order issues are easily subject to gesture politics, to rhetoric and to simple solutions.
—Frances Heidensohn, in Social Issues and Party Politics, 1998

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First Known Use of gesture politics

1971

in the meaning defined above

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