Political Protest Movements Research Articles

The Role of Cooperatives in the Development of the Movement Culture of Populism

Lawrence Goodwyn's Democratic Promise and The Populist Moment have been popular and influential works among American historians.' Reviewers have been favorable to Goodwyn's imaginative interpretation and comprehensive coverage of the American farmers greatest political protest movement, and several recent texts have either adopted Goodwyn's interpretation or listed it as the new standard history of Populism.2 After two decades of scholarly reactions to Richard Hofstadter's charges of anti-Semitism and paranoia, it is useful to have an interpretation that focuses on a broader view of Populism and contains important insights into the nature of radical movements in general. Goodwyn's interpretation is a strong statement that will provide topics for revisionist studies for years to come. This is one of the first. Both Democratic Promise and its somewhat more explicit paperback version, Populist Moment, offer a new interpretation of Populism that pictures

On Participation in Political Protest Movements

Laymen and social scientists alike often believe that people are inspired to participate in political or social movements because of certain dislocating or frustrating personal experiences. The political protests of recent years have been interpreted in terms of similar ideas and formalized in five currently popular theories on the origins of political protest: status inconsistency, cumulative deprivation, relative deprivation, rising expectations, and social isolation. I review a large body of empirical evidence concerning each theory and find, at best, only limited support for them. Next I present some general reasons why the theories may be either inadequate or only partially correct. And, finally, I suggest a novel approach to the explanation and prediction of participation in political movements, portrayed in the form of a path-analytic scheme which can be employed in future empirical research.

Authoritarianism and Political Behavior

I N common sense language, the authoritarian is the individual who is concerned with power and toughness and who is prone to resolve conflict in an arbitrary manner. He is seen as having strong and persistent desires that others submit to his outlook. Social psychology in recent years has added the observation that the authoritarian person has another powerful desire of which he is not fully aware. He himself desires to submit to other individuals whom he sees as more powerful. The predisposition of the authoritarian individual to conform to an authority is directly relevant to the study of political behavior in a democratic society. The F scale developed by the Berkeley group was designed specifically as a personality scale to identify anti-democratic individuals in a population.2 Any reliable and valid method of analysis of such personality variables is of crucial importance in the study of political propaganda impact, the effectiveness of campaign arguments and appeals, the conditions under which political protest movements are likely to attract support, and a host of similar problems. This paper reports the findings of an attempt to investigate (a) the extent of the authoritarian predispositions in two nation-wide samples and (b) the link between such predispositions and certain types of political behavior and attitudes. In the light of our present knowledge and research techniques, it is neither necessary nor feasible to postulate that we are concerned with authoritarian personality. To talk about personality implies a comprehensive understanding of the life development of an individual's emotions. Instead, authoritarianism can be seen as a characteristic psychological reaction pattern to a wide variety of social situations. Since it is a characteristic reaction pattern