Susan Olzak

Discursive opportunities and the evolution of right-wing violence in Germany

This article explores the link between violence and public discourse. It suggests that media attention to radical right violence and public reactions to violence affect the clustering of targets and the temporal and spatial distribution of violence. The notion of “discursive opportunities” is introduced, and the article argues that it can serve to link political opportunity structure and framing perspectives on collective action. Using a cross‐sectional and time‐series design to model event counts in states in Germany, this study finds that differential public visibility, resonance, and legitimacy of right‐wing violence significantly affected the rate of violence against different target groups.

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.

Ethnic Mobilization in New and Old States: An Extension of the Competition Model

Ethnic mobilization simultaneously divides and unites the worlds states. The common threat of internal division posed by subnational movements is a widely faced challenge shared by a diverse array of countries around the world. The rise of ethnic politics since the Second World War is best understood when ethnic mobilization is seen as a process of emergent group interests rather than simply the manifestation of primordial sentiments. This paper examines five essentially similar processes in both new and old states: urbanization, increased scales of organization, expansion of secondary and tertiary economic sectors, expansion of the political sector, and emergence of supranational organizations. Instead of reducing ethnic differences in favor of national-level identities, these development processes promote ethnic mobilization by increasing economic and political competition and organizing it on the basis of ethnicity.

Ethnic Conflict and the Rise and Fall of Ethnic Newspapers

Contemporary research on collective action claims that organizations play a central role in facilitating many kinds of collective actions. We reverse the causal link and ask whether ethnic conflict affects the life chances of social movement organizations. We analyze the effects of ethnic conflict,fluctuations in the economy, and organizational density on the rates offounding andfailure of white immigrant and African-American newspaper organizations in a system ofAmerican cities, and in New York and Chicago, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Our results indicate that hostility and violence encouraged white immigrants to found ethnic newspapers, whereas racial attacks significantly deterred the founding of African-American newspapers. Existing immigrant newspapers thrived under attack, whereas African-American newspapers did not. Thus, the results suggest that the consequences of repressive attacks on ethnic and racial communities depend on the levels of collective violence in addition to the resources controlled by the victimized group.

School Desegregation, Interracial Exposure, and Antibusing Activity in Contemporary Urban America

Prior research emphasized either resource mobilization or grievance explanations of antibusing activity. This article argues that both explanations imply that racial competition generated collective action against busing. It suggests that increases in interracial exposure in schools and neighborhoods trigger racial and ethnic conflict. This article examines these competition arguments using data on antibusing events, school desegration, and interracial residential exposure in SMSAs from 1968 through 1990. The results suggest that the amount of school desegregation significantly raised rates of protests against busing. Furthermore, there is little evidence that the federal origin of court-ordered busing increased antibusing activity.

Labor Unrest, Immigration, and Ethnic Conflict in Urban America, 1880-1914

Did strikes effect the extent of ethnic and racial conflicts in late 19th-and early 20th-century America? If so, How? Data on the occurrence of conflicts and of violence against various ethnic or racial groups in the 81 largest cities, 1880-1914, show that the growth of the union movement and the rising supply of low-wage labor increased levels of ethnic competition in urban labor markets, thus raising rates of ethnic comflict. The findings support the argument that ethnic conflict and labor unrest are parallel forms of collective action and that each depends on the number and foundings of national labor unions. The effect of labor union organization is strongest for all attacks on blacks. In addition, sharp increases in immigration, a downturn in economic fortunes, and contagion processes all raise rates of ethnic conflict.

The ecology of tactical overlap

Does sharing protest tactics influence the trajectory of protest activities among social movements? Focusing on the New Social Movements (NSMs), the authors apply concepts that have proven useful in the study of organizations. These concepts suggest that legitimation and competition processes influence both the upward and downward trajectories of protest. The sharing of tactics is specified in terms of increased overlap in the tactical repertoire of social movements composing a given cohort. A tactical overlap index is calculated between womens protest activities and activities generated by all other New Social Movements in West Germany, from 1953 through 1990. Results suggest that tactical overlap has a nonmonotonic effect on levels of protest activity generated by the West German womens movement

Cross-Cutting Influences of Environmental Protest and Legislation

This research examines the influence of types of protest activities, Congressional hearings and political characteristics on environmental legislation enacted from 1961–1990. We find that rates of environmental protest rise with increases in the amount of previous institutional activities, but extra-institutional activities do not raise the overall rate of protest. Protest has no direct effect on the passage of legislation, but institutional protest activities significantly raise the rate of Congressional hearings on the environment. When comparing all environmental laws to those designated as having a major impact, we find both similarities and differences. For example, prior legislative activity decreases both rates, but increases in criteria air pollutants and partisan characteristics of Congress significantly affect only the rates of major environmental legislation.

Organizational Diversity, Vitality and Outcomes in the Civil Rights Movement

Sociologists often assert, but rarely test, the claim that organizational diversity benefits social movements by invigorating movement vitality and facilitating success. Our analysis of black civil rights organizations shows that goal and tactical diversity of a social movement is largely a function of organizational density, level of resources available to the movement, and the number of protests initiated by the movement. Goal diversity increases the rate of protest, whereas tactical diversity increases the likelihood of achieving a desired policy outcome. These findings advance our understanding of social movements and organizations by illuminating how organizational dynamics of a social movement might change over time, and in turn how this change might affect the vitality and desired outcomes of social movements.

Does Globalization Breed Ethnic Discontent

This article examines how different components of globalization affect the death toll from internal armed conflict. Conventional wisdom once held that the severity of internal conflict would gradually decline with the spread of globalization, but fatalities still remain high. Moreover, leading theories of civil war sharply disagree about how different aspects of globalization might affect the severity of ethnic and nonethnic armed conflicts. Using arguments from a variety of social science perspectives on globalization, civil war, and ethnic conflict to guide the analysis, this article finds that (1) economic globalization and cultural globalization significantly increase fatalities from ethnic conflicts, supporting arguments from ethnic competition and world-polity perspectives, (2) sociotechnical aspects of globalization increase deaths from ethnic conflict but decrease deaths from nonethnic conflict, and (3) regime corruption increases fatalities from nonethnic conflict, which supports explanations suggesting that the severity of civil war is greater in weak and corrupt states.