Protest Issues Research Articles

Effects of Education on Attitude to Protest

We explain the variability of correlations between education and protest attitudes by specifying four processes and the conditions under which each operates. We postulate that education affects attitudes to protest by increasing commitment to civil liberties, by decreasing support for the use of violence, by increasing knowledge of the protesters' grievances, and by changing one's position in society and hence one's interests and identifications. These four processes account for over half of the variance in the obtained correlations in a secondary analysis of 17 surveys. We conclude that (1) education reduces support for the use of violence by either protesters or authorities; (2) education increases opposition to government repression; (3) when protest issues are class-related, education decreases support for issues identified with blue-collar groups; (4) education increases support for protest among persons remote enough from the protest to lack first-hand knowledge of it.

The District of Columbia Educational Tax Credit Issue: A Research Note

This research note examines a recent tax credit initiative held in The District of Columbia. At issue was a tax credit of $1,200 per family for each child enrolled in a private school. Thus, parents, or guardians with children enrolled in private schools, stood to receive significant lax reductions. This referendum, if successful, would have had dramatic effects on the tax resources available to the District of Columbia and had a profound impact on public services, especially the schools. The effects of the tax credit initiative outcome would have extended beyond the District. Not only was the DC initiative part of a national tax revolt, it was also visibly located in the nation's capital. Depending on the outcome, the results would have encouraged either supporters or opponents of similar tax protest issues across the country. This paper analyzes the result by examining factors associated with voting. This note also offers some observations on tax issue campaigning and its relationship to influencing voters. Special attention will be addressed to the conception of voter's self-interest in deciding whether to support or oppose the tax credit issue. In this regard, it will be argued that voter altitudes toward self-interest, particularly “public regarding” attitudes, are good indicators for explaining the vote.

Cycles of peace protest in West Germany: Experiences from three decades

This article assesses the degree of continuity presumed to exist between West German opposition movements of the 1950s and 1960s, and peace protests of the 1970s and 1980s. It explores the concept of protest ‘cycles’ and outlines the ways in which multiple protest issues have begun to converge over three decades, producing an anti‐nuclear groundswell that has been institutionalised through the Green and Alternative parties. The cumulative impact of three cycles of protest is seen in the significant attitudinal changes in respect of citizen involvement in environmental and national security policy debates in the Federal Republic and in new demands for an improvement in German‐German relations.

Reflections on the Institutionalization of Protest: The West German Peace Movements

Massive demonstrations occurring in the Federal Republic of Germany in opposition to the deployment of Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles are rooted in a thirty-year tradition of peace protest. Protest experiences acquired during the campaign against German rearmament and the early deployment of tactical nuclear missiles in the 1950s fused with those gleaned by student activists in the 1960s and environmentalists in the 1970s. Protest issues have begun to converge over three decades, producing an antinuclear groundswell for which the German “Greens” have become a political clearing house of sorts. For West Germany, the significance of the peace movement lies in the changes in national attitudes toward citizen participation, its commitment to NATO, and the ramifications for inter-German relations. For the global community, the significance rests with changing attitudes toward a collective security system that operates at the expense of national interests and, possibly, national survival.

Sources of Japanese University Conflict

Campus protest occurred all over the world in the 1960s. This study follows earlier attempts to explain not student protest in general, but why protest severity varied among colleges and universities. Using published data on nineteen different forms of conflict, the overall amount of conflict in each of Japan's four-year colleges and universities during the 1968-1969 period is measured by a scale of conflict severity. This dependent variable is then regressed on two sets of explanatory variables—the protest issues on each campus and the variable organizational characteristics of the schools themselves. The Japanese findings largely replicate earlier American observations: the severity of campus conflict was greatest in large, structurally complex (differentiated) and high-quality schools. The internal differentiation of the university and other structural characteristics explain more of the variance than do the issues specific to given campuses. The causal importance of structural differentiation is traced to the “antistructure” ideology of the radical student organizations.

Organized Student Protest and Institutional Climate

In recent years the image of American college students has seemed, at least in the eyes of the general public, to have changed. Considered silent and beat in the 1950's they are now widely regarded as outspoken and rebellious. Whether or not the current stereotype accurately describes today's college student, there is little doubt that a vocal number have made their presence acutely felt on many campuses as well as in the whole of American society. A comprehensive review of the dynamics of students dissent has recently been provided by Keniston (1967). Indications of the number and types of institutions that have experienced forms of discontent, and the extent to which their students are protesting, are contained in a recent study by Peterson (1966). Institutional characteristics such as type of institution, size, percentage of faculty with doctorates, region, percentage of body living on campus, and percentage of body belonging to student left organizations were examined against fact and incidence of organized protest between July 1-964 and June 1965 as reported by 849 deans of students responding in a survey of i,ooo four-year institutions. The deans were asked to report protest by issue; variations in relationship between institutional characteristic and protest issue seemed to occur both as a function of the particular issue and of the particular characteristic, but a number of these relationships were substantial. Volume 5 Number 3 May 1968

Youth, Establishments, and Protest

“Students on the whole did not seek to go beyond the conventional and accepted channels of campus organization until they discovered that organization could not bring itself into position of involvement with the issue of revolution, revolt, or protest. It was then that the younger generation, its ranks already swollen by the non-organization antagonists, began to seek more indigenous ways by which to effect social change. “It is to be noted that the religious leader (chaplain) differs from his faculty colleague in that when a crisis involving justice and equality is upon him or within the college environs, he must act. Failure to act is immoral. The religious leader or chaplain must seek to proclaim justice and equality even at the risk of rejection and persecution.”