liikuttajista

Liikuttajista is the elative plural form of the Finnish noun liikuttaja, meaning a mover, driver, or driving force. The base liikuttaja comes from the verb liikuttaa, “to move,” with the agentive suffix -ja. The elative suffix -sta/-stä expresses “from” or “out of,” so liikuttajista literally means “from the movers” or, more broadly, “of the movers.” This form is used to indicate origin, selection, or focus within a group of movers.

In scholarly and practical contexts, liikuttajat are understood as persons or factors that initiate, promote, or sustain change. They can be individual activists, opinion leaders, policy advocates, program champions, or structural drivers such as institutions, norms, or incentives. The term is common in sociology, political science, organizational studies, and marketing, where researchers discuss which actors or forces drive adoption, diffusion, or mobilization.

The use of liikuttajista specifically denotes the elative case: it points to “those movers from whom” something originates, or to a subset being examined. In English-language summaries, the concept is typically translated as “drivers of change” or “mobilizers,” with the exact rendering depending on whether the emphasis is on individuals, groups, or impersonal forces.

See also: liikuttaja; Finnish grammar of the elative case.