Karl-Dieter Opp

RATIONAL CHOICE AND REBELLIOUS COLLECTIVE ACTION

A basic problem for a rational choice theory of rebellious collective action is to explain why average citizens would participate in such behavior, since they have nothing to gain (they will receive benefits of successful rebellion, in terms of public goods, regardless of whether they take part or not), but much to lose (rebellious behavior may be quite costly). According to the conventional private interest or “by-product” theory, the incentive to participate must come from the expectation of receiving selective benefits; but since average citizens in a general case cannot expect substantial private material rewards, the relevant selective benefits must be psychological in nature. In contrast to the model of private interest theory, a public goods model is proposed, stipulating that the value of rebellion in terms of public goods can be a relevant incentive for participation. Using data from surveys conducted in New York City and Hamburg, West Germany, we investigate the relationship between participation in rebellious political behavior and measures of the incentives of public goods and private interest. The results do not support predictions of the private interest model in regard to nonmaterial selective incentives. Hypotheses of the public goods model are supported.

Personal Influence, Collective Rationality, and Mass Political Action

We propose two models to explain why individuals participate in collective political action—a personal influence model and a collective rationality model. Each model overcomes the free-rider problem posed by conventional rational choice theory and left unresolved in previous research. The models are tested for legal and illegal protest behaviors, using data from a national sample and two samples of protest-prone communities in the Federal Republic of Germany. The personal influence model is supported for both forms of participation, while the collective rationality model is supported for legal protest. We discuss implications of the results for grievance and rational choice theories of collective political action.

Contending Conceptions of the Theory of Rational Action

Advocates of the theory of rational action are divided in regard to the version of the theory they accept. This paper distinguishes between a narrow version, claiming that the kinds of preferences and constraints to be used in explanations must be restricted, and a wide version imposing no such restrictions, and thus including beliefs, altruism, norms and social sanctions in explaining behavior. The paper begins by describing the major assumptions of both versions and then discusses the key arguments that are adduced in favor of a narrow and against a wide version: (1) preferences and beliefs cannot be measured; (2) the wide version is tautological, circular, empty or trivial; (3) predictions with the wide version are difficult; (4) the assumptions of the narrow version are sufficient to explain behavior; (5) when problems are encountered, the narrow version should only be applied to situations where it works. It is argued that those arguments do not provide an adequate defense, and thus suggest that the narrow version is inadequate. The last part of the paper offers some methodological considerations, suggesting how different types of assumptions can be combined.

Theories of Political Protest and Social Movements : A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Critique, and Synthesis

Part 1: What Kind of Theory Do We Need and What Is a Good Theory? Part 2: Protest, Social Movements and Collective Action: Conceptual Clarifications and the Subject of the Book Part 3: Group Size, Selective Incentives, and Collective Action Part 4: Protest and Social Movements as Collective Action Part 5: The Resource Mobilization Perspective Part 6: Political Opportunity Structures, Protest and Social Movements Part 7: Collective Identity and Social Movement Activity Part 8: How Framing Influences Mobilization and Protest Part 9: Identity, Framing and Cognitive Balance: Toward a New Theory of Identity and Framing Part 10: The Dynamics of Contention Approach - Retreat to History? Part 11: The Structural-Cognitive Model: A Synthesis of Collective Action, Resource Mobilization, Political Opportunity, Identity, and Framing Perspectives Part 12: General Discussion, Conclusion, and an Agenda for Future Research

Probing the Character of Norms: A Factorial Survey Analysis of the Norms of Political Action

The purpose of this paper is twofold : first, to contribute to the methodology for measuring norms; and second, to measure the norms of political action among a sample of respondents in Leipzig, in the former East Germany, in 1993. They highlight four aspects of norms : (1) polarity, whether a norm is prescriptive, proscriptive, or bipolar; (2) conditionality, whether a norm holds under all circumstances; (3) intensity, the degree to which individuals subscribe to the norm; and (4) consensus, the extent to which members of a a society share a norm. They show how the factorial survey pioneered by P. H. Rossi enables development of procedures for measuring these four aspects of norms, and they carry out for the first time a factorial survey analysis of the norms of political action. The results indicate that prescriptive, proscriptive, and bipolar norms coexist, as do individuals subscribing to unconditional norms, conditional norms, and no norms at all. While over two-thirds of the measured norms are bipolar, a strong minority (almost 23 percent) are prescriptive; proscriptive norms, though less numerous than prescriptive norms, are stronger than prescriptive norms. Finally, individuals disagree on the content of norms

Soft Incentives and Collective Action: Participation in the Anti-Nuclear Movement

The standard explanation of collective action in modern political economy can be outlined as follows: a collective (or public) good is only an incentive for a joint contribution to its provision, if those who benefit from the good at least perceive some influence arising from their contribution, the costs of contributing being otherwise greater than the benefits derived from it; otherwise joint efforts for the provision of the collective good will not ensue. If the good itself does not stimulate collective action, contributions will nevertheless occur when selective incentives become effective. These are benefits arising from contributing and/or costs resulting from no contribution being made.

Grievances and Participation in Social Movements

This paper addresses three questions regarding the dynamics of grievances: (1) What is the causal order of grievances and social movement participation (SMP)? (2) To what extent does the intensity of grievances before a critical incident, such as the reactor accident at Chernobyl, affect the extent of SMP after the incident? (3) Is the intensity of grievances related to the kind of SMP adopted? To answer these questions, 121 opponents of nuclear energy were interviewed in 1982 and 1987. The data indicate that grievances have a causal effect on SMP, but not a direct cross-lagged effect on protest. There was also a shock effect: the grievances of respondents with low dissatisfaction before Chernobyl increased more than those of respondents with high dissatisfaction. An aggression effect, i.e., high discontent leading primarily to violent or illegal SMP, was not ascertained. Protesters generally chose those actions they considered most efficacious for reaching the goals of the movement.

Party Identification and Participation in Collective Political Action

Previous research has shown a strong relationship between party identification and participation in conventional political activities such as voting and campaign behavior. We extend these analyses by examining the effects of party identification and strength of identification on participation in both campaign activities and political protest. We hypothesize that party differences in these behaviors can be explained by the different levels of participatory incentives perceived by party identifiers and nonidentifiers. We specify a series of incentives derived from theories of collective action and measure them in a national and a community probability sample in the Federal Republic of Germany. The results show that the bivariate relationships between party identification and political participation can be explained largely through their mutual relationship with participatory incentives such as policy dissatisfaction, belief in the moral justifiability of various forms of behavior, and willingness to conform to the behavioral expectations of important others. The effects of identification with all parties on participation are substantially reduced once the effects of the incentives are taken into account, and for protest participation, only identification with the Greens shows a nonnegligible net impact.

Repression and Revolutionary Action East Germany in 1989

A theoretical model is proposed explaining why repression sometimes deters and sometimes instigates political action. Then this model is applied to explain the mounting protests in East Germany in 1989. The basic idea of the model is that repression, as a cost, has a direct deterring effect on political action, but that increasing repression instigates positive incentives up to a certain point; then positive incentives decrease—a relationship corresponding to an inverted u-curve. Apart from repression, public goods incentives (discontent, weighted by perceived political influence), moral incentives, and social incentives have positive effects on participation in protest. A representative survey of 1,300 citizens from Leipzig (East Germany) conducted in the fall of 1990, focusing on the events of the East German revolution in 1989, confirms the model with two exceptions: Increasing probability of repression raises protest, but the increase becomes smaller with increasing probability of repression (decreasing radicalization effect); increasing costs of repression lowers protest, but the decrease becomes smaller with increasing costs of repression (decreasing deterrence effect). It is argued that the protests in East Germany could emerge despite severe repression because positive incentives to protest increased due to political events.

Social institutions : their emergence, maintenance and effects

This is the first book to present a synthesis of rational choice theory and sociological perspectives for the analysis of social institutions. The origin of social institutions is an old concern in social theory. Currently it has re-emerged as one of the most intensely debated issues in social science. Among economists and rational choice theorists, there is growing awareness that most, if not all, of the social outcomes that are of interest to explain are at least partly a function of institutional constraints. Yet the role of institutions is negligible both in general equilibrium theory and in most neoclassical economic models. There is a burgeoning substantive interest in institutions ranging from social movements, to formal organizations, to states, and even international regimes. Rational choice theorists have made great strides in elucidating the effects of institutions on a variety of social outcomes, but they have paid insufficient attention to the social dynamics that lead to the emergence of these institutions. Typically, these institutions have been assumed to be a given, rather than considered as outcomes requiring explanation in their own right. Sociological theorists, in contrast, have long appreciated the role of social structural constraints in the determination of outcomes but have neglected the role of individual agents.