Structural Contingencies and the Social Control of Protest
Open Access
- Author:
- Rafail, Patrick
- Graduate Program:
- Sociology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 31, 2012
- Committee Members:
- John David Mccarthy, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Lee Ann Banaszak, Committee Member
D Wayne Osgood, Committee Member
Alan M Sica, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Social Movements
Protest Policing
Social Control - Abstract:
- The policing of protest is a central component of social movement mobilization. Existing explanations of protest policing in western democratic countries are predicated on rationalist assumptions, which assume that demonstrators' behavior is the primary factor shaping police response. Yet, such explanations ignore the political and spatial context where protest occurs, as well as the institutional pressures, policies, and preferences that also shape police action. This dissertation challenges the dominance of such rationalist explanations by emphasizing how a wide variety of elements other than protestor behavior strongly condition police responses. I address four major research questions: First, how is protest policing linked to the social structural, institutional, and political-economic environment where it occurs? Second, (how) are elements of a demonstration other than participant behavior related to police responses? Third, has the policing of protest evolved over time? If so, why has it evolved in the way that it did? Finally, do similar factors influence both overt and covert police repression of protest? To answer these questions I examine three main aspects of protest policing: First, I look at trends in protest policing across 20 major U.S. cities (1996-2006) to see whether there are differences in protest policing by place. The results show extensive variation in police response, even after accounting for the behavior of the protestors. Second, to examine temporal trends in protest policing I analyze several thousand demonstrations occurring in New York City (1960-2006). I find a notable increase in the use of force and arrests at demonstrations over time, which I link to spatial privatization and the adoption of extremely aggressive crime control policies. Finally, to assess whether overt and covert forms of state control follow a similar logic, I examine patterns of covert surveillance of social movement organizations based in Philadelphia (2009-2010). The results indicate a groups' contentious history had little impact on surveillance rates, which were instead strongly related to groups' political ideologies. Overall, I demonstrate that explanations emphasizing behavior are incomplete and perhaps misleading. Furthermore, contextual, temporal, and ideological asymmetries in protest policing represent a form of political inequality and political stratification.