Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement

by Dennis Chong

• ISBN13: 9780226104409
• ISBN10: 0226104400
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2014-12-10
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Summary

Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement is a theoretical study of the dynamics of public-spirited collective action as well as a substantial study of the American civil rights movement and the local and national politics that surrounded it. In this major historical application of rational choice theory to a social movement, Dennis Chong reexamines the problem of organizing collective action by focusing on the social, psychological, and moral incentives of political activism that are often neglected by rational choice theorists. Using game theoretic concepts as well as dynamic models, he explores how rational individuals decide to participate in social movements and how these individual decisions translate into collective outcomes. In addition to applying formal modeling to the puzzling and important social phenomenon of collective action, he offers persuasive insights into the political and psychological dynamics that provoke and sustain public activism. This remarkably accessible study demonstrates how the civil rights movement succeeded against difficult odds by mobilizing community resources, resisting powerful opposition, and winning concessions from the government.

Author Biography

Dennis Chong is professor of political science at Northwestern University.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
Public-Spirited Collective Action	1	(12)
A collective action problem	4	(1)
Collective action as a prisoner's dilemma	5	(2)
Synopsis	7	(6)
All-Or-Nothing Public Goods	13	(18)
How Boycotts can be sustained	18	(2)
Nonviolent protest	20	(2)
The public relations (PR) game	22	(4)
On police brutality	26	(4)
Summary	30	(1)
Selective Social Incentives and Reputational Concerns	31	(42)
Social incentives	34	(3)
The iterated prisoner's dilemma	37	(8)
Small-scale and large-scale conventions	45	(3)
Reputational concerns	48	(3)
On reputation and cooperation	51	(4)
Reputation and civil rights activism	55	(6)
Commitments in Selma	61	(4)
Private vs. public preferences	65	(2)
Sympathy and moral concerns	67	(4)
Summary	71	(2)
Narrowly Rational Expressive Benefits	73	(17)
The benefits of participation	76	(2)
Self-serving expressive benefits	78	(4)
Perceptions of costs and benefits	82	(4)
More on the perception of costs and benefits: ``As if'' preferences	86	(2)
Correlated costs and benefits	88	(2)
Creating the Motivation to Participate in Collective Action	90	(13)
Socially instrumental value	91	(2)
Fulfilling obligations	93	(7)
Successful collective action	100	(3)
Coordination Problems in Assurance Games	103	(38)
Coordination vs. prisoner's dilemma problems	103	(4)
Lynch mobs	107	(2)
Graphs	109	(3)
Coordination among political activists	112	(4)
Tipping phenomena	116	(2)
Real assurance games	118	(7)
Political entrepreneurs	125	(8)
Greensboro	133	(3)
Data on the student sit-in participants	136	(1)
Refusing to leave well enough alone	137	(3)
Summary	140	(1)
A Formal Model of Collective Action	141	(32)
Some properties of the supply-and-demand model	150	(3)
Analysis of the supply-and-demand model	153	(2)
The time path of the system	155	(9)
Summary of deductions from the supply-and-demand model	164	(1)
Analyzing the origins of the civil rights movement	165	(1)
Changes in the strength of the opposition	166	(2)
Coordinating preferences: Leadership and organizations	168	(2)
Changes in government responsiveness	170	(3)
Strategies of Collective Action	173	(18)
The Albany and Birmingham campaigns	180	(5)
Modeling the Albany and Birmingham campaigns	185	(6)
The Rise and Fall of Collective Action	191	(39)
Changes in the assurance game	194	(3)
Satisfaction and the exhaustion of ideas	197	(1)
Disappointment and backlash	198	(2)
The decline of the civil rights movement	200	(6)
The dynamics of rise and decline	206	(10)
The time path of political mobilization	216	(1)
Solution of the general equation	217	(1)
Stability conditions of the model	218	(2)
The path of the civil rights movement	220	(10)
Conclusion	230	(11)
References	241	(10)
Index	251