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We model differential participation in protest as a two-stage mobilization process: willingness to engage in protest and conversion of willingness into participation. Treating mobilization as a two-stage process resolves an important puzzle in the literature on differential participation: the lack of constraining effects for biographical unavailability. Using a nationally representative sample of individuals in the United States, we find that while our measures of biographical unavailability have no effect on the second stage of the mobilization process (converting willingness to protest to actual behavior), they show robust negative effects on the first stage of the mobilization process, removing people from the pool of willing protest participants. We also find that gender moderates the relationship between some of our measures of biographical unavailability-particularly marital status-and protest willingness.

AbstractRecent debates in political theory have seen political liberals advocate and defend a doctrine of restraint, according to which citizens may not rely solely on religious reasons when supporting their favored public policies. This debate notwithstanding, very rarely have social scientists assessed the extent to which citizens actually violate this doctrine. This article evaluates the "political decision-making" model of political liberalism. Data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults are used to test this model for legalization of same-sex marriage. Our analyses show that while only a very small percentage of U.S. support this policy solely on the basis of their religious convictions, roughly a quarter oppose it for religious reasons alone. Furthermore, we find that higher levels of religious service attendance and importance of religious faith as well as affiliation with evangelical and black Protestantism significantly increase the likelihood of same-sex marriage opposition entirely on religious grounds.

We model differential participation in protest as a two-stage mobilization process: willingness to engage in protest & conversion of willingness into participation. Treating mobilization as a two-stage process resolves an important puzzle in the literature on differential participation: the lack of constraining effects for biographical unavailability. Using a nationally representative sample of individuals in the United States, we find that while our measures of biographical unavailability have no effect on the second stage of the mobilization process (converting willingness to protest to actual behavior), they show robust negative effects on the first stage of the mobilization process, removing people from the pool of willing protest participants. We also find that gender moderates the relationship between some of our measures of biographical unavailability-particularly marital status-& protest willingness. Tables, Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractBased on a national survey of U.S. adults conducted six weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic, this article investigates how crisis affects religious faith. Almost no Americans reported losing or a weakening of faith in response to the pandemic at this time. By contrast, nearly one-third of believers indicated that the coronavirus outbreak had strengthened their faith. We theoretically develop and empirically test three religious factors—theodicy, practices, and tradition—to explain variation in the strengthening effect of the COVID-19 pandemic among believers. Results from statistical models show that two theodicic interpretations—believing that God: is using the pandemic as a way to tell humanity to change; and will personally protect you from the virus—significantly increased believers' reports of faith strengthening, controlling for other factors. We also found that Black Protestants were more likely to report these interpretations, which in turn strengthened their faith in response to the pandemic.

On January 21, 2017, over four hundred cities across the United States organized sister marches in solidarity with the Women's March on Washington. In this paper, we first compare the size of these marches to that of several significant protest-event sources to show how extraordinary turnout was that day. Then, analyzing a nationally representative sample of sister marches, we present univariate statistics for both event-level characteristics (such as demographics of participants or types of speakers) and mobilization processes (such as composition of organizing teams or recruitment efforts). We situate the descriptive findings in the broader literature on protest events and the women's movement to identify how they converge or diverge from established patterns. In addition, our study shows that many event-level characteristics of the sister marches were distinct relative to a recent national study of protests. Also discussed are the ways in which our results contribute to understanding the sister marches' success in mobilizing millions of people to take to the streets.

Competing visions of who is deserving of rewards and privileges, and different understandings of the fairness of reward allocation processes, are at the heart of political conflict. Indeed, social movement scholars generally agree that a key component of most, if not all, social movements is a shared belief that existing conditions are unfair and subject to change (Gamson 1992; McAdam 1982; Snow et al. 1986; Turner and Killian 1987). In this article we consider the role that residential segregation by education level plays in shaping perceptions of distributive justice and, in turn, providing a context conducive to conservative political mobilization. We apply these ideas in an analysis of Tea Party activism and show that educational segregation is a strong predictor of the number of Tea Party organizations in U.S. counties. In a complementary analysis, we find that individuals with a bachelor's degree are more likely than people who do not have any college education to support the Tea Party; this relationship is strongest in counties with higher levels of educational segregation.