Current Projects

"How, When, Where?: The Contingent Impact of U.S. Environmental Movement Organizations and Activities on Two Stages in the Public Policy Process" (with Erik Johnson and John McCarthy).

The current study contextualizes how, when and where movements may be more or less influential on the political process by bringing together diverse research approaches that move toward reconciling the inconclusive and contradictory results of the extant empirical literature The theoretical framework builds on political mediation and movement infrastructure models to highlight the contingent and synergistic ways in which social movements can impact the U.S. national policy making process. Analyses assess the relative effectiveness of movement organizational capacity, protest and advocacy activities in garnering Congressional attention to, and action on, movement-salient issues during different political contexts. Our findings suggest that the U.S. environmental movement directly spurred Congressional agenda setting activities and that the effects of movement organizational capacity, protest and advocacy on agenda setting activity are all amplified during politically opportune periods. There is no evidence that movement organizational capacity or activities directly affect the passage of federal environmental laws. But, during open political periods, organizational capacity and advocacy activities have a positive effect, and protest activities a negative, on law passage. Finally, consistent with a movement infrastructure framework, high levels of both protest and advocacy do facilitate environmental law passage.

In this paper, we focus squarely on the question of how funding for organizations affiliated with social movement goals influences the development of a viable organizational infrastructure for social change. Our specific interest is in foundation involvement in the fields of women’s and civil rights. We approach the question of the role of foundation support in consolidating social change by first situating funding for women and racial minorities in the context of broader support for a variety of “social movement projects” and then providing some background on the foundations that are directly involved in these efforts. We then examine patterns of foundation support for nonprofits that explicitly sponsor women’s and minority civil rights in the U.S. in order to determine which kinds of organizations may be receiving disproportionate support. Our analyses provide some empirical leverage on the implications of foundation funding of social movements, at least with respect to identifying which kinds of organizations are more likely to be viable carriers of social change agendas within these two fields of action.

Here we examine the impact that social movement and conventional philanthropy have had on the development of an organizational infrastructure for social change in the fields of women’s and civil rights since the 1950s. Drawing on organizational and social movement perspectives, we examine times series data on foundation support and organizational dynamics between 1955 and 1980. These analyses reveal the distributional strategies of foundations and provide some empirical leverage on the implications of foundation funding for the seeding and consolidation of social movements, at least with respect to determining which organizations are more likely to be selected as viable carriers of group goals.

Academic observers of contemporary American politics tend to portray the political sector as characterized by little variation in the options for citizen-based action, represented by professional advocacy organizations that provide few avenues for meaningful civic involvement. This article challenges this dominant imagery and examines how much variety exists in the organizational models available for citizen voice at the national level in the U.S. and how the observed models are linked to the goals, strategies, and specific claims advanced by a diverse set of national advocacy groups. Analysis of a sample of Washington, D.C.-based political organizations identified five distinct models of organizing that differ significantly in terms of their structural characteristics and their association with the goals and activities that animate collective action at the national level in the U.S.

Time-series data from 1960-1998 is used to test hypotheses regarding the impact of protest and public opinion on the passage of U.S. environmental legislation. An amplification model of policy impact is introduced which posits that protest impacts legislative action independent of public opinion as suggested by protest event theorists, whereas the impact of public opinion on legislative action is greater depending on the level of protest. Evidence is found for the existence of an amplification mechanism between environmental movement protest and public opinion, where public opinion impacts policy above and beyond its independent effect when protest raises the salience of the issue to legislators. These findings point to the need to restructure analyses of the impact of social movements on public policy.

Some contend that political opportunity theory is ad hoc, lacks clear measurement, and fails to distinguish opportunities from other conditions that contribute to protest. Others argue that the idea of "expanding opportunities" needs to be balanced by consideration of political threats. An annual time-series approach is used to examine the frequency of African-American protest in the United States from 1948 to 1997. Evidence of expanding opportunities created by divided government, strong northern Democratic Party allies, and, during the 1950s, Republican presidential incumbents responding to Cold War foreign policy constraints is found. African-American congressional representation provides routine political access, which reduces protest. The evidence also supports explanations based on collective grievances stemming from black/white income inequality, Vietnam War deaths, and low-to-middle black unemployment.