Sarah A. Soule

Process and Protest: Accounting for Individual Protest Participation

Using American Citizen Participation Survey data (Verba et al. 1995a), we perform logistic regression analyses to adjudicate between three core explanations for individual protest: biographical availability, political engagement and structural availability. We calculate estimated probabilities to weigh the relative effects of these factors on the likelihood of protest participation, and we find that being asked to protest is the strongest predictor of participating in protest, but that numerous other individual characteristics such as political interest and organizational ties are important predictors of being asked to protest. Viewing protest as a multi-stage process and recognizing that certain factors predict being asked to protest while others predict actually protesting, we gain theoretical leverage over the ways in which individuals are prompted to take part in protest.

When Do Movements Matter? The Politics of Contingency and the Equal Rights Amendment

Data on the state-level ERA ratification process are used here to address leading theoretical debates about the role of social movements, public opinion, and political climate on policy outcomes, the goal being to test the claim that these factors depend on each other. Social movement organizations, public opinion, and political party support all influenced the ratification process. But the effects are modified when the interactive nature of public opinion and electoral competition, and political party support and movement organizational strength, are tested. In particular, the effect of social movement organizations on ratification was amplified in the presence of elite allies, and legislators responded most to favorable public opinion under conditions of low electoral competition. These findings are used to suggest a more integrated theory of policy outcomes that considers interactive and contingent effects of movements, public opinion, and political climate.

Protest under Fire? Explaining the Policing of Protest

Hypotheses about police presence and police action at social movement protest events in New York State between 1968 and 1973 are tested with the aim of understanding the broad mechanisms of social control used by authorities during this cycle of mass protest. Contrary to the popular perception of overzealous police repression of protest in this period, results show that police did not attend the majority of protest events. Tests of dominant explanations of police presence using logistic regression analysis indicate that the best predictor of police presence at a protest event was how threatening the event was-police attended larger protest events and those that used confrontational tactics. Tests (using multinomial logistic regression) of explanations of police action, given police presence at an event, indicate that extreme forms of police action were also triggered by threatening characteristics of events. Events in which subordinate groups and social movement organizations participated were also more likely to draw police action. Novel contributions include the comparison of dominant explanations of protest policing and methods that move beyond the tradition of examining repression through police presence or absence.

The stages of the policy process and the Equal Rights Amendment, 1972-1982

Studies of how social movements impact policy outcomes typically treat policy change as a dichotomous phenomenon; a governmental unit either adopts or does not adopt a particular policy in a particular time frame. This simplistic view of the policy process runs the risk of masking how movements and other factors matter at various stages of the policy process. Each stage is characterized by different rules and different consequences; thus, movements and other factors ought to matter differently at each stage. The authors examine three stages of policy development with regard to state ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Results show that movements mattered more to legislative decisions in the earlier stages of the policy process, but that their effects were eclipsed in later stages by public opinion.

THE TARGETS OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: BEYOND A FOCUS ON THE STATE

Among students of social movements, the prevailing view is that, in Western democracies, most social movements target the state and its institutions. Recently scholars have questioned this definition of social movements, associated with the political process and contentious politics approaches, arguing that public protest is also used to shape public opinion, identities, and cultural practices and to pressure authorities in institutional arenas not directly linked to the state. In this paper, we take up this debate by examining the targets of recent social movements. Our analysis draws from data on 4,654 protest events that occurred in the United States between 1968 and 1975. The protest events in our dataset encompass a variety of tactics used by social movements organized around a number of different issues. We find that, although virtually all movements in the United States direct some public protest at the state, there is considerable variation in the targets of modern movements. During this period, environmental, peace, international human rights, single-policy, and ethnic movements were more likely to direct their appeals to the government, while the civil rights, gay and lesbian, and the women’s movement were more likely to target public opinion and other, non-state institutions. Our analysis calls into question excessively state-centered conceptions of social movements that view social movement activity as directed primarily at the formal political domain of social life.

Runaway train ? The diffusion of state-level reform in ADC/AFDC eligibility requirements, 1950-1967

Displeased with the increasing expenditures on ADC/AFDC and the changing demographic composition of the recipient population, state managers between 1950 and 1967 attempted to restrict the program. One way this was accomplished was through enacting work requirements as a condition of eligibility. Temporal variation in the enactment may be explained through a synthesis of two theoretical traditions on policy development: the intrastate and interstate approaches. The authors use diffusion models to examine how both sets of processes affected the rate of enactment of work requirements. States reformed AFDC programs in response to their own internal problem pressures. But this did not happen in a vacuum; work requirements diffused among states that were culturally and/ or institutionally linked.

Competition and Resource Partitioning in Three Social Movement Industries

Drawing hypotheses from resource mobilization and resource partitioning theories (RMT and RPT), this article examines how interorganizational competition and social movement industry (SMI) concentration affect the level of tactical and goal specialization of protest organizations associated with the peace, women’s, and environmental movements. Additionally, the article examines how specialization affects the survival of these organizations. By and large, the findings are commensurate with the expectations of RMT and RPT. Results indicate that interorganizational competition leads to more specialized tactical and goal repertoires. Concentration in the SMI also leads to specialization, but this is only true for less established organizations. Results also indicate that tactical and goal specialization decrease organizational survival, unless the industry is highly concentrated.

Introduction: Social Movements in Organizations and Markets

ments have increasingly recognized that these two areas of research would both benefit from greater crossover. Organizations are the targets of, actors in, and sites for social movement activities. Social movements are often represented by formal organizations, while organizations resemble episodic “movements” rather than bounded actors. In an increasingly global economy and polity, organizations and movements are growing more transnational. And both movements and organizations are changing their strategies and routines in response to similar social and technological shifts. The same information and communication technologies that enable the management of global supply chains also allow global movement activities: on February 15, 2003, millions of participants marched in over 350 cities on six continents to protest the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq, marching under the common slogan “The World Says No to War.” As forms of coordinated social action, movements and organizations are ships riding the same waves.

Social Movement Organizational Collaboration: Networks of Learning and the Diffusion of Protest Tactics, 1960-1995

This article examines the diffusion of protest tactics among social movement organizations (SMOs) through their collaboration in protest groups. Using a longitudinal data set of SMO protest activity between 1960 and 1995, the authors adapt novel methods for dealing with two forms of selection and measurement bias in network analysis: (i) the mechanism that renders some SMOs more likely to select into collaboration and (ii) the notion that diffusion is an artifact of homophily or indirect learning rather than influence. The authors find that collaboration is an important channel of tactical diffusion and that SMOs with broader tactical repertoires adopt more tactics via their collaboration with other SMOs, but only up to a point. Engaging in more collaboration also makes SMOs more active transmitters and adopters of new tactics. Finally, initial overlap in respective tactical repertoires facilitates the diffusion of tactics among collaborating SMOs.

Social Movements and Markets, Industries, and Firms

This essay reviews research at the nexus of organizational and social movement studies. It begins by surveying research drawing on social movement theories to explain some organizational process, then surveys research drawing on organizational theories to explain some social movement process. The essay concludes with several suggestions for future research.