Rory McVeigh

Voting to Ban Same-Sex Marriage: Interests, Values, and Communities

From 2000 through 2008, initiatives proposing to ban same-sex marriage were on the ballot in 28 states. Although same-sex marriage opponents scored lopsided victories in most cases, voting outcomes varied substantially at the county level. This article examines sources of that variation and argues that opposition to same-sex marriage should be strong in communities characterized by the predominance of traditional gender roles and family structure. Perhaps more interestingly, the analysis also shows that the effects of traditional family structure and gender roles are especially strong in counties characterized by weak community cohesion, as indicated by residential instability, low rates of home ownership, and high crime rates.

Hate crime reporting as a successful social movement outcome

Variation in compliance with public policies across local settings is examined through an analysis of the number of reported hate crime incidents in United States counties. Particular attention is given to the role that activist organizations play in promoting, or impeding, compliance with public policies. Each hate crime reported to the federal government is conceptualized as a successful outcome of social movement mobilization. Drawing upon political mediation theory and Fines model of discursive rivalry, the analysis shows how social movement resources, framing processes, political incentives, and features of local contexts combine to promote successful social movement outcomes. The presence of resourceful civil rights organizations in a county can lead to higher numbers of reported hate crimes, but the influence of civil rights organizations is contingent upon the political context and upon objective conditions that lend credibility to civil rights framing.

Corn, Klansmen, and Coolidge: Structure and Framing in Social Movements

This article examines how structural conditions and social movement frames interact to influence mobilization and political consequences of social movements. Mobilization efforts benefit when movement framing is congruent with local structural conditions. This mobilization, in turn, produces political leverage for the movement through its capacity to deliver support of its members and adherents. Its political advantage may be offset, however, if another of its key framing activities, the construction of collective identity boundaries, alienates the broader population and stimulates a backlash. Such backlash is also intimately connected to structural conditions because its potential is a function of the characteristics of the local population — specifically, the proportion of the population alienated by the movements boundary construction. We apply these arguments to the case of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and show that while the Klans diagnostic and prognostic framing may have resonated structurally and facilitated the Klans mobilization efforts, its exclusionary boundaries frustrated its attempts to secure broader political gains.

God, Politics, and Protest: Religious Beliefs and the Legitimation of Contentious Tactics

Most students of social protest now agree that protest participation and participation in institutionalized politics are both potentially effective means of addressing individual and collective grievances. A primary conceptual distinction between the two forms of political participation centers on the contentious nature of protest. We focus attention on the disruptive potential of religious beliefs and values and argue that approval of contentious tactics is a critical link between religious beliefs and protest participation. We analyze data from a representative sample of churchgoing Protestants in the United States. Results show that four factors increase the likelihood that Protestants approve of contentious tactics: volunteering for church organizations, a perception that religious values are being threatened, a belief that individuals should not have a right to deviate from Christian moral standards, and a belief that humans are inherently sinful. Approval of contentious tactics and frequent volunteering for church organizations are the only variables in our analysis that differentiate conservative Christian voters from those who combine conservative Christian voting with protest participation.

Who Protests in America: An Analysis of Three Political Alternatives-Inaction, Institutionalized Politics, or Protest

Theories of social movements and collective action typically present social protest as one of three alternatives available to the individual: inaction, institutionalized political action, or protest. These political alternatives are rarely considered simultaneously nor are they modeled explicitly. In this paper we make use of survey data from a representative sample of the United States population. We employ multinomial logistic regression to determine what differentiates those who protest from those who engage only in institutionalized politics and from those who engage in no political action. We find that those who engage in social protest are similar in many respects to those who engage actively in institutionalized politics, yet education on social and political issues, participation in community organizations, and frequent church attendance increases the likelihood that individuals will engage in protest relative to institutionalized politics.

Structural Influences on Activism and Crime: Identifying the Social Structure of Discontent

By applying and extending the logic of Peter Blaus theory of social structure, this article identifies structural features of U.S. counties that are associated with high levels of crime, the presence of activist organizations as ideologically diverse as civil rights organizations and antiabortion groups, and low levels of voter turnout. Key empirical findings include positive effects of ethnic heterogeneity, religious heterogeneity, and income inequality on both the crime rate and the number of activist organizations in counties. Educational inequality diminishes the positive effect of income inequality on activism and has a strong negative effect on the crime rate. Many structural conditions associated with high numbers of activist organizations and a high crime rate decrease voter turnout rates.

Political Polarization as a Social Movement Outcome: 1960s Klan Activism and Its Enduring Impact on Political Realignment in Southern Counties, 1960 to 2000

Radical social movements can exacerbate tensions in local settings while drawing attention to how movement goals align with political party agendas. Short-term movement influence on voting outcomes can endure when orientations toward the movement disrupt social ties, embedding individuals within new discussion networks that reinforce new partisan loyalties. To demonstrate this dynamic, we employ longitudinal data to show that increases in Republican voting, across several different time intervals, were most pronounced in southern counties where the Ku Klux Klan had been active in the 1960s. In an individual-level analysis of voting intent, we show that decades after the Klan declined, racial attitudes map onto party voting among southern voters, but only in counties where the Klan had been active.

Red Counties, Blue Counties, and Occupational Segregation by Sex and Race1

A large body of research examines relationships between social class and voting behavior in the United States, but there have been no systematic studies of how occupational segregation structures voting outcomes across many local settings. This article argues that electoral outcomes in the United States are strongly influenced by inequality between men and women and between whites and nonwhites, with that inequality being rooted in occupational segregation. Republican candidates should receive their strongest electoral support in locations where occupations are highly segregated by sex and by race, particularly in settings where segregation is most vulnerable to penetration. The argument finds support in statistical analyses of county‐level variation in Republican voting in the 2004 presidential election.

Educational Segregation, Tea Party Organizations, and Battles over Distributive Justice

Competing visions of who is deserving of rewards and privileges, and different understandings of the fairness of reward allocation processes, are at the heart of political conflict. Indeed, social movement scholars generally agree that a key component of most, if not all, social movements is a shared belief that existing conditions are unfair and subject to change (Gamson 1992; McAdam 1982; Snow et al. 1986; Turner and Killian 1987). In this article we consider the role that residential segregation by education level plays in shaping perceptions of distributive justice and, in turn, providing a context conducive to conservative political mobilization. We apply these ideas in an analysis of Tea Party activism and show that educational segregation is a strong predictor of the number of Tea Party organizations in U.S. counties. In a complementary analysis, we find that individuals with a bachelor’s degree are more likely than people who do not have any college education to support the Tea Party; this relationship is strongest in counties with higher levels of educational segregation.

Making Race, Making PowerMaking Race, Making Power: North Carolina's Road to Disfranchisement, by ReddingKent. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. 180 pp.

When reconstruction ended, blacks in the American South faced poverty and extreme prejudice, and were often targets of violence and intimidation. The fortunes of the southern elite rested on their ability to confine blacks to subordinate positions. At the same time, many nonelite white southerners believed that their lives would improve if blacks were eliminated as a source of economic and political competition. Under these circumstances, the disfranchisement of African Americans hardly seems surprising. However, Redding’s analysis of North Carolina politics demonstrates that the eventual disfranchisement of blacks after reconstruction was not a foregone conclusion. Indeed, African Americans in North Carolina participated actively in politics and turned out at the polls in high numbers throughout the latter decades of the nineteenth century. It was not until the elections of 1898 that race became a central organizing theme in North Carolina politics. In the aftermath of those elections, state Democrats quickly enacted electoral laws that effectively excluded blacks from the polity. If white North Carolinians possessed both the resources and the motive to exclude blacks from politics, why did it take so long? Scholars have paid considerable attention to the problems of mobilizing collective action among relatively powerless groups, but have largely viewed elite mobilization as unproblematic. Power, Redding argues, does not accrue automatically to the possessors of wealth. Power is made through the deliberate actions of individuals, often through processes of trial and error. Through a case study of North Carolina, with in-depth studies of two North Carolina counties, Redding is able to reveal mechanisms used by the elite to make power and to turn back political challenges from African Americans and from discontented farmers. Making Race, Making Power makes a solid contribution to Southern history, but also offers general theoretical insights that should be valuable to sociologists studying social movements and politics. Redding’s analysis is heavily influenced by social network theory as he argues that collective identities, interests, and organization emerge from patterns of social relations, rather than from preconceived categorical distinctions. Prior to the 1890s, the elite in North Carolina dominated the political arena, primarily at the local level, by activating vertical ties within communities based on kinship, neighborhood, and local patronage. In addition, control of a weak state government allowed the Democratic elite to set up a political structure that insulated them from challenges at the local level. The most important county-level offices, for example, were filled by appointment rather than by open elections. In this manner, the elite were able to hold power without relying on coercive tactics and suffrage restrictions, which could have potentially brought conflicting interests out into the open. This localist-vertical organizational form, however, left the elite vulnerable to state-level challenges from groups that were beginning to experiment with horizontal forms of political mobilization (e.g., organizing support based on group identities). African Americans gained valuable experience in political organizing and developed strong loyalty to the Republican Party because the Party promoted specific policies that benefited blacks as a group. The Democratic Party leaders, on the other hand, often used the rhetoric of white supremacy, but continued to unsuccessfully court black voters. Because the Democrats did not offer specific policies to benefit white people as a category, white voters were not committed to the Democratic Party in the same way that black voters were attached to the Republican Party. As economic changes generated new conflicts among white North Carolinians, it became increasingly difficult for the elite to maintain support for the Democratic Party through tried and true methods of vertical organization. Many white voters willingly allied with black voters, abandoning the Democratic Party to vote for either the Republican Party or the Populist Party. The combined votes of blacks and disgruntled white farmers brought about the unthinkable—stunning Democratic defeats in the elections of 1894 and 1986.