Collaborative Research: The Dynamics of Collective Protest in the U.S., 1960-1980

这是对1960-1980年间美国集体抗议活动的研究，重点是环境运动、妇女运动和和平运动。这些年涵盖了20世纪60年代和70年代抗议周期的高峰期和衰退期。分析将利用报纸对抗议事件的报道产生的纵向数据，系统地检验源自社会运动理论的假设，特别是那些强调政治机会中心的假设。为了检验政治机会理论，抗议活动的数据必须放在持续变化的背景下，不仅是政治机会的维度，还包括许多其他理论上相关的“协变量”。这些协变量包括：舆论的变化、媒体的关注、抗议活动的结构性“压力”或“需求”，以及运动本身的组织力量。因此，除了从报纸报道中收集美国抗议活动的数据外，该项目还将收集每个协变量的相应时间序列数据。该项目试图回答两个基本研究问题。首先，剔除其他重要的协变量，制度政治环境的变化特征--政治机会的变化--是否预测了这三个问题领域中每一个领域抗议活动的出现和随后的发展？其次，在此期间，抗议活动与美国针对特定问题的制度结果是否存在正相关？如果抗议与结果之间存在正向关系，那么研究将考察抗议事件的特征(如规模或暴力)和有助于解释这种联系的调解机制(如舆论变化或选举变化)。这项研究将利用事件历史分析，这是一种独特的非常适合研究不断变化的社会和结构条件的技术。这项研究考察了现代环保主义运动在美国的兴起，并与其时期的另外两个运动进行了比较，并在运动成功的正式理论的背景下进行了比较。它将帮助我们了解这种运动是否真的是社会文化变革的主要来源，以及它们在多大程度上只是利用因其他原因而存在的政治机会。这些知识对于一门充满活力的全球变化社会科学来说是必不可少的。

This is a study of collective protest in the United States during the period 1960-1980, with special emphasis on the Environmental Movement, the Women's Movement, and the Peace Movement. These years cover the peak and decline of the protest cycle of the 1960s and 1970s. Analysis will systematically test hypotheses derived from social movement theories, particularly those emphasizing the centrality of political opportunity, using longitudinal data generated from newspaper reports of protest events. In order to test political opportunity theory, protest event data must be placed in the context of ongoing changes, not only in dimensions of political opportunity, but also a host of other theoretically relevant "covariates." These covariates include changes in: public opinion, media attention, the structural "strain" or "demand" for protest activity, and the organizational strength of the movements themselves. Thus, besides assembling data on U.S. protest events from newspaper reports, this project will gather corresponding time-series data on each of these covariates. The project seeks to answer two fundamental research questions. First, net of other important covariates, do changing features of the institutional political environment --shifting political opportunities -- predict the emergence and subsequent development of protest activity in each of these three issue areas? Second, is protest activity positively related to issue-specific institutional outcomes in the U.S. during this period? If there is a positive relationship between protest and outcomes, the research will then examine the features of protest events (such as size or violence) and the mediating mechanisms (such as public opinion change or electoral shifts) that help explain the association. The research will make use of event-history analysis, a technique which is uniquely well suited to the study of changing social and structural conditions. This research examines the rise of the modern Environmentalist Movem ent in the United States, in comparison with two other movements of its period and in the context of formal theories of movement success. It will help us understand whether such movements really are the prime source of socio-cultural transformation and the degree to which they merely exploit political opportunities that exist for other reasons. Such knowledge is essential for a vigorous social science of global change.