Who Rules the Social Control of Protest? Variability in the State-Countermovement Relationship

Abstract

Drawing theoretical insight from political sociology's state-society literature and organizational theory's new institutionalism, I examine the case of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and its relationship with the Citizens' Council to illustrate that the state-countermovement relationship can be highly variable-much more so than the existing literature often assumes. As different actors came to occupy positions of power within the state of Mississippi, they responded differently to relevant audiences and affected the degree to which the council could exercise leverage with the commission to control protest. The analysis focuses on how the state-countermovement ties of ideology and funding changed over time, even though membership overlap between the commission board and the council remained relatively constant. Three relational structures-frustrated, aligned, and stifled-are identified and discussed as influencing the degree to which the council could gain leverage in Mississippi's multilevel state structure where multiple audiences mattered.