Thinking About Labor
Today, roughly this percentage of American workers belong to labor unions.
What is about 10 percent?
The televised violence against protesters in Birmingham dramatically shifted this national factor that helped pressure political leaders.
What is public opinion?
Protest is often described in political science as the “weapon of the weak” because it allows groups without money or institutional access to influence this system of government.
What is democracy?
The political scientist who developed the Political Process Model to explain social movements.
Who is Doug McAdam?
The constitutional amendment that protects freedom of speech and assembly.
What is the First Amendment?
Corporations attempt to influence public policy through this political activity.
What is lobbying?
This 1955–56 protest began after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat.
What was the Montgomery Bus Boycott?
The civil rights struggle pursued both political rights and this second type of advancement.
What are economic gains?
This concept refers to collective political struggle in which ordinary people challenge elites, authorities, or institutions through protest and mobilization.
What is Contentious Politics?
The 1913 Women’s Suffrage March demonstrated that protest can bring attention to political demands even before groups achieve this formal right.
What is the right to vote?
When companies move investment or capital to other countries to avoid regulations or taxes.
What is capital flight?
This massive 1963 protest in Washington, D.C., included Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
What was the March on Washington?
In Tilly’s framework, this signal indicates protesters are peaceful, respectable, and deserving of attention.
What is worthiness?
According to this theory, wealthy individuals and corporations dominate policymaking.
What is Economic-Elite Domination? Or Elite Theory
Martin Luther King Jr. argued citizens have a moral obligation to disobey laws that violate human dignity and equality.
What are unjust laws?
Our reading argued that higher labor costs negotiated by unions sometimes push firms to move production abroad in this process.
What is offshoring?
Violent police repression during protests in this Alabama city in 1963 helped shift national public opinion.
What was Birmingham?
Charles Tilly’s framework argues protest signals strength through Worthiness, Unity, Numbers, and this final element.
What is commitment?
This theory argues that public policy reflects the preferences of the majority of voters.
What is Majoritarian Electoral Democracy?
Courts allow governments to regulate demonstrations using these three categories that limit when, where, and how protests occur.
What are time, place, and manner restrictions?
When workers benefit from union contracts without paying dues, it illustrates this broader collective action problem identified by political economists.
What is the free rider problem?
This voting rule exempted certain white voters from literacy tests and poll taxes if their ancestors had voted prior to the Civil War.
What is the grandfather clause?
According to our lectures, politicians respond most strongly to protests that demonstrate large participation because these events suggest potential changes in this political outcome.
What are election results or electoral outcomes?
According to contentious politics theory, social movements often force change from outside these official structures of government.
What are political institutions?
Positive or negative media coverage can influence this broader public reaction that often determines whether protest movements gain momentum.
What is public support?
During the 1950s and 1960s, approximately this percentage of American workers were unionized.
What is about 30–35 percent?
Doug McAdam’s theory explaining how social movements emerge when political opportunities expand is known as this model.
What is the Political Process Model?
A peaceful protest with a clear message and coordinated participants would strongly display these two elements of Tilly’s WUNC framework.
What are worthiness and unity?
If policy outcomes reflect bargaining among unions, corporations, advocacy groups, and policymakers rather than domination by one actor, this theory best explains the system.
What is Majoritarian Pluralism?
Our lecture distinguished between peaceful protest, civil unrest, and this most extreme form of political conflict involving physical harm or coercion.
What is political violence?