Olzak
Biographic Data
| ID | 2611 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Olzak |
| FAMILY NAME | Olzak |
| SIGNATURE | OLZAK |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stanford University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8287-6716 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1274 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 50 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 18 |
The Effects of Protests, Violent Hate Crimes, and Hate Groups on Support for an Identity Group
This study investigates the impact of exposure to protest and violent hate crimes on changes in support for identity groups. Social identity theories have explained how mechanisms of social comparison encourage outgroup hostilities, leading to hate crimes against targeted identity groups. Social movement theories have suggested how mobilization by identity movements for expanded rights often initiates reciprocal action against them by opponents. …
The Consequences of Violent and Nonviolent Black Lives Matter Protests for Movement Support
This study examines the effect of violent and nonviolent tactics in gaining support for social movements using information on protests by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The theoretical dispute over whether violence benefits or harms a movement remains unsettled, and the empirical evidence is inconclusive. Violence increases media attention and generates recognition of a movement and its goals, but violence also raises fears of instability…
School Shootings, Protests, and the Gun Culture in the United States
Scholars document that attitudes toward guns and gun policy reflect deeply entrenched cultures that overlap with ideological affiliations and party politics. Does exposure to dramatic events such as school shootings and protests regarding gun control affect these patterns? I explore two aspects of the gun culture: attitudes favoring (or rejecting) stricter gun policies and the number of memberships in a key organization supporting the expansion o…
Ethno-nationalism and Right-Wing Extremist Violence in the United States, 2000 through 2018
Since Norman Ryder's (1965) classic essay on cohort analysis was published more than a half century ago, scores of researchers have attempted to uncover the separate effects of age, period, and cohort (APC) on a wide range of outcomes. However, rather than disentangling period effects from those attributable to age or cohort, Ryder's approach is based on distinguishing intra-cohort trends (or life-cycle change) from inter-cohort trends (or social…
The Polarizing Effect of Anti-Immigrant Violence on Radical Right Sympathies in Germany
While radical right parties championing anti-immigrant platforms have made electoral gains throughout Europe, anti-immigrant sentiment—a key indicator of radical right support—has not dramatically increased during this same period. In this article, we seek to help make sense of this paradox by incorporating a contextual factor missing from previous studies: levels of anti-immigrant violence. Our key argument is that higher levels of collective vi…
The Impact of Ideological Ambiguity on Terrorist Organizations
Organizations that have a clear and unambiguous focus acquire greater legitimacy, which raises their capacity for mobilization. Using data on terrorist organizations, this paper explores two empirical implications of this claim: A terrorist organization’s survival and lethality will be threatened to the extent that it has an ambiguous ideological identity. Analyses using panel data from the Extended Data on Terrorist Groups (EDTG) test these argu…
Does Protest Against Police Violence Matter? Evidence from U.S. Cities, 1990 through 2019
An underlying premise of democratic politics is that protest can be an effective form of civic engagement that shapes policy changes desired by marginalized groups. But it is not certain that this premise holds up under scrutiny. This article presents a three-part argument that protest (1) signals the salience of a movement’s focal issue and expands awareness that an issue is a social problem requiring a solution, (2) empowers residents in disadv…
The Risk of Occupying a Broad Niche for Environmental Social Movement Organizations
Since Gamson's (1975) landmark study of social movement organizations, scholars have debated whether it is more advantageous to concentrate on a narrow or diverse set of issues. This paper recasts this debate in terms of organizational survival. Drawing on ideas from theories of category spanning and social movements, we argue that an organization that occupies a distinct niche conveys its purpose more effectively, which increases its chances of …
Going Green: Environmental Protest, Policy, and CO 2 Emissions in U.S. States, 1990–2007
A major goal of the environmental movement is to conserve or improve the natural environment, but evidence showing that environmental mobilization produces positive environmental outcomes is mixed. This article addresses a fundamental question about the relative impact of pro‐environmental mobilization and the scope of an environmental policy regime on the natural environment. Using panel data at the state level from 1990 through 2007, we explore…
The Effect of Category Spanning on the Lethality and Longevity of Terrorist Organizations
Journal Article The Effect of Category Spanning on the Lethality and Longevity of Terrorist Organizations Get access Susan Olzak Susan Olzak Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 95, Issue 2, 7 December 2016, Pages 559–584, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sow081 Published: 07 November 2016 Article history Received: 29 January 2016 Revision received: 12 September 2016 Accepted: 14 September 2016 …
Friends or Foes? How Social Movement Allies Affect the Passage of Legislation in the U.S. Congress
This article considers the role of social movement allies in Congress in advancing proenvironmental legislation. We argue that compared to sponsors of legislation who hold moderate views, sponsors with extreme ideological positions will be less likely to produce legislation desired by the environmental movement. We also argue that protest and organizational advocacy by constituents will increase the rate at which sponsors enact environmental legi…
Ethnic, Racial, and Nationalist Movements
Prisoners and Paupers: The Impact of Group Threat on Incarceration in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Cities
This article uses data on prisoners incarcerated for misdemeanors in late-nineteenth-century U.S. cities to assess a three-part argument that asserts that threats to white dominance prompted efforts of social control directed against African Americans and foreign-born whites: (1) For African Americans, competition with whites for jobs instigated efforts by whites to enforce the racial barrier. (2) For the foreign-born, upward mobility became asso…
Does Globalization Breed Ethnic Discontent
This article examines how different components of globalization affect the death toll from internal armed conflict. Conventional wisdom once held that the severity of internal conflict would gradually decline with the spread of globalization, but fatalities still remain high. Moreover, leading theories of civil war sharply disagree about how different aspects of globalization might affect the severity of ethnic and nonethnic armed conflicts. Usin…
Cross-Cutting Influences of Environmental Protest and Legislation
This research examines the influence of types of protest activities, Congressional hearings and political characteristics on environmental legislation enacted from 1961–1990. We find that rates of environmental protest rise with increases in the amount of previous institutional activities, but extra-institutional activities do not raise the overall rate of protest. Protest has no direct effect on the passage of legislation, but institutional prot…
Ethnic, Women's, and African American Studies Majors in U.S. Institutions of Higher Education
African American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Women's Studies programs in higher education have received wide support from faculty members and students, yet few programs offer a major or have tenure-line faculty positions. Our analysis used sociological theories to generate testable implications about the chances that an institution will offer these majors. We found that the relevant size of students' and faculty's demographic profiles reflect th…
From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline
Ethnic, Racial, and Nationalist Movements
Political expressions of ethnicity and nationalism range broadly, from small‐scale or sporadic protests that may be relatively peaceful (as in civil rights marches), to sustained campaigns of violence against authorities or others (such as ethnic cleansing). Though often analyzed separately, ethnic, racial, and nationalist (E/R/N) movements voice strikingly similar demands for sovereignty and invoke rights of self‐determination. The major E/R/N m…
Organizational Diversity, Vitality and Outcomes in the Civil Rights Movement
Sociologists often assert, but rarely test, the claim that organizational diversity benefits social movements by invigorating movement vitality and facilitating success. Our analysis of black civil rights organizations shows that goal and tactical diversity of a social movement is largely a function of organizational density, level of resources available to the movement, and the number of protests initiated by the movement. Goal diversity increas…
The Global Dynamics of Racial and Ethnic Mobilization
This book tests a new approach to understanding ethnic mobilization and considers the interplay of global forces, national-level variation in inequality and repression, and political mobilization of ethnicity. It advances the claim that economic and political integration among the world's states increases the influence of ethnic identity in political movements. Drawing on a 100-country dataset analyzing ethnic events and rebellions from 1965 to 1…
When Do Movements Matter? The Politics of Contingency and the Equal Rights Amendment
Data on the state-level ERA ratification process are used here to address leading theoretical debates about the role of social movements, public opinion, and political climate on policy outcomes, the goal being to test the claim that these factors depend on each other. Social movement organizations, public opinion, and political party support all influenced the ratification process. But the effects are modified when the interactive nature of publ…
Discursive Opportunities and the Evolution of Right-Wing Violence in Germany
This article explores the link between violence and public discourse. It suggests that media attention to radical right violence and public reactions to violence affect the clustering of targets and the temporal and spatial distribution of violence. The notion of "discursive opportunities" is introduced, and the article argues that it can serve to link political opportunity structure and framing perspectives on collective action. Using a cross-se…
The Impact Of State Reforms On Protest Against Apartheid In South Africa
During 1970–1985, South Africa vacillated between reform and reaffirmation of the repressive regime known as apartheid. Did these reforms slow the pace of protest, or did they facilitate protest, by intensifying discontent? Using event-history data on anti-apartheid protest we suggest that passage of reforms will increase the pace of protest while state repression will dampen it. We further hypothesize that the nature and scope of each reform wou…
Racial Policy and Racial Conflict in the Urban United States, 1869-1924
This article extends existing explanations of racial conflict by suggesting how legislation and court rulings instigate processes of legitimation and competitive exclusion, which in turn affect the likelihood of racial violence. We argue that federal legislation and court cases that reinforced the white-nonwhite racial boundary stigmatized nonwhites and prompted whites to attack nonwhites. However, legislation and court rulings that dismantled se…
The Ecology of Tactical Overlap
Does sharing protest tactics influence the trajectory of protest activities among social movements? Focusing on the New Social Movements (NSMs), the authors apply concepts that have proven useful in the study of organizations. These concepts suggest that legitimation and competition processes influence both the upward and downward trajectories of protest. The sharing of tactics is specified in terms of increased overlap in the tactical repertoire…
Discursive Opportunities and the Evolution of Right-Wing Violence in Germany
This article explores the link between violence and public discourse. It suggests that media attention to radical right violence and public reactions to violence affect the clustering of targets and the temporal and spatial distribution of violence. The notion of "discursive opportunities" is introduced, and the article argues that it can serve to link political opportunity structure and framing perspectives on collective action. Using a cross-se…
When Do Movements Matter? The Politics of Contingency and the Equal Rights Amendment
Data on the state-level ERA ratification process are used here to address leading theoretical debates about the role of social movements, public opinion, and political climate on policy outcomes, the goal being to test the claim that these factors depend on each other. Social movement organizations, public opinion, and political party support all influenced the ratification process. But the effects are modified when the interactive nature of publ…
Analysis of Events in the Study of Collective Action
Recent research on collective action has focused on the occurrence, timing, and sequencing of such events as regime changes, riots, revolutions, protests, and the founding of social movement organizations. Event analysis allows information on the duration, number of participants, presence of violence, or outcome of some particular type of collective action to be compared across social systems or across time periods. This review considers issues o…
Contemporary Ethnic Mobilization
The term intersectionality references the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena. Despite this ...Read More
Poverty, Segregation, and Race Riots: 1960 To 1993
Les AA. montrent que la theorie de la privation economique et celle qui met en exergue l'isolement social des minorites ethniques constituent les principales approches qui permettent d'expliquer le developpement des emeutes raciales entre 1960 et 1993 aux Etats-Unis. Ils presentent un certain nombre de donnees collectees au cours de cette periode concernant ces evenements. Ils examinent l'influence d'un certain nombre de facteurs comme la segrega…
The Ecology of Tactical Overlap
Does sharing protest tactics influence the trajectory of protest activities among social movements? Focusing on the New Social Movements (NSMs), the authors apply concepts that have proven useful in the study of organizations. These concepts suggest that legitimation and competition processes influence both the upward and downward trajectories of protest. The sharing of tactics is specified in terms of increased overlap in the tactical repertoire…
Ethnic Conflict and the Rise and Fall of Ethnic Newspapers
Contemporary research on collective action claims that organizations play a central role in facilitating many kinds of collective actions. We reverse the causal link and ask whether ethnic conflict affects the life chances of social movement organizations. We analyze the effects of ethnic conflict,fluctuations in the economy, and organizational density on the rates offounding andfailure of white immigrant and African-American newspaper organizati…
Ethnic Mobilization in New and Old States: An Extension of the Competition Model
Journal Article Ethnic Mobilization in New and Old States: An Extension of the Competition Model Get access Joane Nagel, Joane Nagel Correspondence to: Nagel, Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Susan Olzak Susan Olzak Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Problems, Volume 30, Issue 2, 1 D…
School Desegregation, Interracial Exposure, and Antibusing Activity in Contemporary Urban America
Prior research emphasized either resource mobilization or grievance explanations of antibusing activity. This article argues that both explanations imply that racial competition generated collective action against busing. It suggests that increases in interracial exposure in schools and neighborhoods trigger racial and ethnic conflict. This article examines these competition arguments using data on antibusing events, school desegration, and inter…
Labor Unrest, Immigration, and Ethnic Conflict in Urban America, 1880-1914
Did strikes effect the extent of ethnic and racial conflicts in late 19th-and early 20th-century America? If so, How? Data on the occurrence of conflicts and of violence against various ethnic or racial groups in the 81 largest cities, 1880-1914, show that the growth of the union movement and the rising supply of low-wage labor increased levels of ethnic competition in urban labor markets, thus raising rates of ethnic comflict. The findings suppo…
The Political Context of Competition: Lynching and Urban Racial Violence, 1882-1914
This research tests arguments that political challenges and economic competition shaped regional and temporal variation in lynchings and urban violence against blacks during the volatile period 1882 through 1914. The fundamental hypothesis is that rates of racial violence rose when interracial competition intensified because of immigration, urbanization of blacks, economic contractions, and political challenges to white supremacy in the South. Ev…
Cross-Cutting Influences of Environmental Protest and Legislation
This research examines the influence of types of protest activities, Congressional hearings and political characteristics on environmental legislation enacted from 1961–1990. We find that rates of environmental protest rise with increases in the amount of previous institutional activities, but extra-institutional activities do not raise the overall rate of protest. Protest has no direct effect on the passage of legislation, but institutional prot…
Does Globalization Breed Ethnic Discontent
This article examines how different components of globalization affect the death toll from internal armed conflict. Conventional wisdom once held that the severity of internal conflict would gradually decline with the spread of globalization, but fatalities still remain high. Moreover, leading theories of civil war sharply disagree about how different aspects of globalization might affect the severity of ethnic and nonethnic armed conflicts. Usin…
Organizational Diversity, Vitality and Outcomes in the Civil Rights Movement
Sociologists often assert, but rarely test, the claim that organizational diversity benefits social movements by invigorating movement vitality and facilitating success. Our analysis of black civil rights organizations shows that goal and tactical diversity of a social movement is largely a function of organizational density, level of resources available to the movement, and the number of protests initiated by the movement. Goal diversity increas…
Prisoners and Paupers: The Impact of Group Threat on Incarceration in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Cities
This article uses data on prisoners incarcerated for misdemeanors in late-nineteenth-century U.S. cities to assess a three-part argument that asserts that threats to white dominance prompted efforts of social control directed against African Americans and foreign-born whites: (1) For African Americans, competition with whites for jobs instigated efforts by whites to enforce the racial barrier. (2) For the foreign-born, upward mobility became asso…
Does Protest Against Police Violence Matter? Evidence from U.S. Cities, 1990 through 2019
An underlying premise of democratic politics is that protest can be an effective form of civic engagement that shapes policy changes desired by marginalized groups. But it is not certain that this premise holds up under scrutiny. This article presents a three-part argument that protest (1) signals the salience of a movement’s focal issue and expands awareness that an issue is a social problem requiring a solution, (2) empowers residents in disadv…
Status in the World System and Ethnic Mobilization
Many countries seem to be confronting challenges from ethnic movements. This study extends arguments from existing theories to consider an explanation of ethnic mobilization at the world system level. The analysis uses structural equation models to compare data on ethnic mobilization in 130 countries from 1965 to 1990. The authors examine hypotheses concerning the impact of peripheral status and integration into the world system on the magnitude …
Ethnic mobilization in Quebec
Racial Policy and Racial Conflict in the Urban United States, 1869-1924
This article extends existing explanations of racial conflict by suggesting how legislation and court rulings instigate processes of legitimation and competitive exclusion, which in turn affect the likelihood of racial violence. We argue that federal legislation and court cases that reinforced the white-nonwhite racial boundary stigmatized nonwhites and prompted whites to attack nonwhites. However, legislation and court rulings that dismantled se…
Deprivation and Race Riots: An Extension of Spilerman's Analysis
Journal Article Deprivation and Race Riots: An Extension of Spilerman's Analysis Get access Susan Olzak, Susan Olzak Stanford University Direct all correspondence to Susan Olzak, Department of Sociology, McClatchy Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Suzanne Shanahan Suzanne Shanahan University College Dublin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford…
The Impact Of State Reforms On Protest Against Apartheid In South Africa
During 1970–1985, South Africa vacillated between reform and reaffirmation of the repressive regime known as apartheid. Did these reforms slow the pace of protest, or did they facilitate protest, by intensifying discontent? Using event-history data on anti-apartheid protest we suggest that passage of reforms will increase the pace of protest while state repression will dampen it. We further hypothesize that the nature and scope of each reform wou…
Ethnic protest in core and periphery states
Social scientists have not yet considered the role of world-level processes that might explain ethnic movements. This article offers the argument that the increasing integration of a world economic and political system facilitates ethnic fragmentation within states. Two key processes are related to integration of the world system: (a) increases in the politics of ethnic inclusion, and (b) decreases in ethnic inequality. Both contribute to the ris…
Friends or Foes? How Social Movement Allies Affect the Passage of Legislation in the U.S. Congress
This article considers the role of social movement allies in Congress in advancing proenvironmental legislation. We argue that compared to sponsors of legislation who hold moderate views, sponsors with extreme ideological positions will be less likely to produce legislation desired by the environmental movement. We also argue that protest and organizational advocacy by constituents will increase the rate at which sponsors enact environmental legi…
Going Green: Environmental Protest, Policy, and CO 2 Emissions in U.S. States, 1990–2007
A major goal of the environmental movement is to conserve or improve the natural environment, but evidence showing that environmental mobilization produces positive environmental outcomes is mixed. This article addresses a fundamental question about the relative impact of pro‐environmental mobilization and the scope of an environmental policy regime on the natural environment. Using panel data at the state level from 1990 through 2007, we explore…
The Role of College Major Departments in the Reproduction of Sexual Inequality
We propose that, in their choices and evaluations of major departments, all students react positively to supportive internal organizationalfeatures and to rewarding links to the external socio-economic system. We also propose, however, that men and women attach differing weights to internal and external features in selecting and reacting to major departments, and that, organizationally, favorable internal characteristics will rarely be coincident…
Bringing Sociology Back in: Conveying the Sociological Imagination in a Changing Undergraduate Climate
This article addresses several important issues relevant to teaching introductory' sociology in a changing climate of student vocationalism and additional pressures on faculty to recruit sociology majors. First, the core of sociology is identified. Then several exercises, which parallel significant substantive and research problems, are suggested. Finally, this article argues that introductory sociology courses should turn their attention to chan…
The Role of College Major Departments in the Reproduction of Sexual Inequality
We propose that, in their choices and evaluations of major departments, all students react positively to supportive internal organizationalfeatures and to rewarding links to the external socio-economic system. We also propose, however, that men and women attach differing weights to internal and external features in selecting and reacting to major departments, and that, organizationally, favorable internal characteristics will rarely be coincident…
Ethnic Mobilization in New and Old States: An Extension of the Competition Model
Journal Article Ethnic Mobilization in New and Old States: An Extension of the Competition Model Get access Joane Nagel, Joane Nagel Correspondence to: Nagel, Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Susan Olzak Susan Olzak Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Problems, Volume 30, Issue 2, 1 D…
Ethnic mobilization in Quebec
The Ethnic Revival in the Modern World
Contemporary Ethnic Mobilization
The term intersectionality references the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena. Despite this ...Read More
Ethnic Ties and Political Mobilization: Comment on Leifer
Race, Ethnicity, and Power: A Comparative Study
Causes of ethnic conflict and protest in Urban America, 1877-1889
Competitive Ethnic Relations
Competitive Ethnic Relations
Causes of Shifts in Occupational Segregation of the Foreign-Born: Evidence from American Cities, 1870-1880
Journal Article Causes of Shifts in Occupational Segregation of the Foreign-Born: Evidence from American Cities, 1870–1880 Get access Susan D. Olzak Susan D. Olzak Cornell University Direct correspondence to the author at the Department of Sociology, Uris Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 68, Issue 2, December 1989, Pages 593–620, https://doi.…
Analysis of Events in the Study of Collective Action
Recent research on collective action has focused on the occurrence, timing, and sequencing of such events as regime changes, riots, revolutions, protests, and the founding of social movement organizations. Event analysis allows information on the duration, number of participants, presence of violence, or outcome of some particular type of collective action to be compared across social systems or across time periods. This review considers issues o…
Labor Unrest, Immigration, and Ethnic Conflict in Urban America, 1880-1914
Did strikes effect the extent of ethnic and racial conflicts in late 19th-and early 20th-century America? If so, How? Data on the occurrence of conflicts and of violence against various ethnic or racial groups in the 81 largest cities, 1880-1914, show that the growth of the union movement and the rising supply of low-wage labor increased levels of ethnic competition in urban labor markets, thus raising rates of ethnic comflict. The findings suppo…
The Political Context of Competition: Lynching and Urban Racial Violence, 1882-1914
This research tests arguments that political challenges and economic competition shaped regional and temporal variation in lynchings and urban violence against blacks during the volatile period 1882 through 1914. The fundamental hypothesis is that rates of racial violence rose when interracial competition intensified because of immigration, urbanization of blacks, economic contractions, and political challenges to white supremacy in the South. Ev…
Ethnic Conflict and the Rise and Fall of Ethnic Newspapers
Contemporary research on collective action claims that organizations play a central role in facilitating many kinds of collective actions. We reverse the causal link and ask whether ethnic conflict affects the life chances of social movement organizations. We analyze the effects of ethnic conflict,fluctuations in the economy, and organizational density on the rates offounding andfailure of white immigrant and African-American newspaper organizati…
The Dynamics of Ethnic Competition and Conflict
The Dynamics of Ethnic Competition and Conflict
This study of ethnic violence in the United States from 1877 to 1914 reveals that not all ethnic groups were equally likely to be victims of violence; the author seeks the reasons for this historical record. Earlier theories of race and ethnic conflict often assumed that ethnic conflict is primarily a function of poverty or deprivation but Olzak suggests that conflict can equally arise during times of economic growth. She explains this by arguing…
The Dynamics of Ethnic Competition and Conflict
School Desegregation, Interracial Exposure, and Antibusing Activity in Contemporary Urban America
Prior research emphasized either resource mobilization or grievance explanations of antibusing activity. This article argues that both explanations imply that racial competition generated collective action against busing. It suggests that increases in interracial exposure in schools and neighborhoods trigger racial and ethnic conflict. This article examines these competition arguments using data on antibusing events, school desegration, and inter…
Poverty, Segregation, and Race Riots: 1960 To 1993
Les AA. montrent que la theorie de la privation economique et celle qui met en exergue l'isolement social des minorites ethniques constituent les principales approches qui permettent d'expliquer le developpement des emeutes raciales entre 1960 et 1993 aux Etats-Unis. Ils presentent un certain nombre de donnees collectees au cours de cette periode concernant ces evenements. Ils examinent l'influence d'un certain nombre de facteurs comme la segrega…
Deprivation and Race Riots: An Extension of Spilerman's Analysis
Journal Article Deprivation and Race Riots: An Extension of Spilerman's Analysis Get access Susan Olzak, Susan Olzak Stanford University Direct all correspondence to Susan Olzak, Department of Sociology, McClatchy Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Suzanne Shanahan Suzanne Shanahan University College Dublin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford…
Status in the World System and Ethnic Mobilization
Many countries seem to be confronting challenges from ethnic movements. This study extends arguments from existing theories to consider an explanation of ethnic mobilization at the world system level. The analysis uses structural equation models to compare data on ethnic mobilization in 130 countries from 1965 to 1990. The authors examine hypotheses concerning the impact of peripheral status and integration into the world system on the magnitude …
Racial Conflict and Protest in South Africa and the United States
Our analysis of thousands of racial confrontations and protests in South Africa and the United States provides support for the hypothesis that some forms of state-sponsored repression fuel racial unrest. In the United States our results indicate that the number of arrests by police at prior collective events deterred protest but it raised the rate of racial conflict between whites and blacks. In South Africa the situation is more complicated: arr…
Ethnic protest in core and periphery states
Social scientists have not yet considered the role of world-level processes that might explain ethnic movements. This article offers the argument that the increasing integration of a world economic and political system facilitates ethnic fragmentation within states. Two key processes are related to integration of the world system: (a) increases in the politics of ethnic inclusion, and (b) decreases in ethnic inequality. Both contribute to the ris…
Sociology (42 works) · Political science (41 works) · Law (31 works) · Politics (23 works) · Ethnic group (22 works) · Economics (16 works) · Law (16 works) · Political economy (16 works) · Criminology (14 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (14 works)