Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Social movements reflect the attempt of a challenging group within society to affect change and achieve goals in a variety of ways, some of which include protest, petition, violence, and pressure techniques outside traditional political channels. The social movement must not only motivate and mobilize a significant segment of society under a common cause or identity but also force or convince those in power to remedy the problem that drives the challenging group. This requires a strong understanding of political opportunity.

In this paper, I explore the importance of opportunity and its relationship to common views of strategies used by social movements as discussed in the literature. Strategy reflects the attempts by a movement to circumvent established barriers in political institutions or in the social norms of the political community at large to achieve its objectives. In this context, opportunity creation is defined as strategic action taken by a social movement to reshape those norms and established power alignments by modifying institutional constraints to its own advantage. These constraints are not fixed; they are instead created and subject to constant change. I propose that social movements can effectively build opportunities for themselves by forming alliances within the existing power structure and attempting to function within the institutional constraints instead of challenging them as political outsiders. In this way, they are not dependent on the government, external alliance shifts, or a changing political climate to gain the opportunity needed to press their claims.

To illustrate this general claim regarding social movements, I will employ content-analysis of cartoons, leaflets, and broadsides to examine the choices of the woman suffrage movement in America from 1850 to 1919 as it evolved from an ideologically based appeal for woman’s political participation in earlier years to a pragmatic and expediency-driven strategy to gain voting rights during the later years of the movement. The course of this social movement clearly reflects the successes and advantages that stem from a strategy of opportunity creation, including increased leverage over those in positions of social and political influence and a broader base of popular support.

Finally, I draw some broader conclusions regarding the impact of opportunity creation on social movements in general and suggest that a movement need not present a challenging framework to achieve results; a policy of frame expansion can be equally if not more effective when combined with opportunity. I also note that successful opportunity structures point to the eventual death of a movement, highlighting the temporal nature of the social movement as a form of political action.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Although the movement for women’s voting rights in the United States has received attention from scholars across a number of disciplines, relatively few studies have focused on explaining outcomes, particularly at the state level. Much of the scholarship focuses on explaining movement activism, while the little existing work on outcomes has mostly only borrowed social movement frameworks that do not explicitly account for politicians’ incentives.In this paper I offer a theoretical framework for understanding the politics of suffrage adoption, one that focuses on the incentives of partisan politicians, and detail how the framework applies to the case of woman suffrage. Building in an account of legislative decision-making on the issue of suffrage extension reveals the ways in which suffrage coalitions, particularly alliances with third parties, structured the chances for adoption of woman suffrage in the American states.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: That children should not have the right to vote is something that most people think of as self-evident. It is so obvious that almost none of the prominent democratic theorists have given it any serious consideration. It is a non-issue.

In this paper, I question this “self-evident” view. The main reason why children are excluded from the suffrage is that they lack political competence. A great deal of evidence, however, suggests that lack of political competence among a large number of the citizens is not a problem for the well-being of democracy. This seriously questions the notion that children should not have the right to vote. I also display the arbitrariness and injustice of the current voting age at 18 years.

The paper concludes with a discussion of the role of parents. The idea that children should have the right to vote very much depends on whether we accept that parents can act as their children’s trustees or not. My argument is that this should not be a problem. Acting through representatives is already an accepted practice in the democratic system. There is no reason why they could not be thought of as their political representatives as well.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper investigates the use of voting system reform as a response to the challenge of democratization and working class incorporation. I examine movements for voting system reform which emerged in response to suffrage expansion in France, the United Kingdom and the United States, throughout the 19th and early 20th century. These were movements to change the way in which
raw votes are translated into seats in legislative bodies. Elites sought to replace the existing majoritarian systems with minority or proportional representation. Scholars have explained such movements as either part of a broader trend of democratization in which reformers hoped to enhance the quality of representation as the scope was simultaneously being expanded, or as an example of electoral engineering whereby incumbents attempted to change the rules in order to ensure their future electoral success. I argue that these movements for voting system reform can best be understood as a constitutive
enterprise, in which elites attempted to shape the political community and its institutions in accordance with their visions of good government. Specifically, this was a project aimed at establishing elite democracy. To this end, reformers pursued policies that conflicted with democratic principles and jeopardized their strategic interests. I demonstrate that the strength of movements for voting system reform varied with the degree of working class mobilization. I argue that through these movements, elites
succeeded in establishing enduring institutional barriers to mass participation and in articulating a model of democratic governance where policy-making is primarily the realm of elites.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The right to vote is denied to roughly two percent of United States citizens on the basis of their status as offenders or ex-offenders. For black males, that statistic is more than six times as great and in some states nearly one-third of male black citizens are denied voting privileges on the basis of current or former legal disability. The possible impact of the loss of minority franchise was highlighted in the 2000 presidential election. Florida, a state that played a critical role in that election, disenfranchises 5.9% of all possible voters on the basis of their status as offenders or ex-offenders, but that percentage grows to 31.2% for black males. Researchers have attempted to prove a nexus between factors - such as historic, symbolic or overt racism, class bias, and political ideology - and state suffrage restrictions. While racial heterogeneity is associated with the level of restrictions, little empirical evidence has been found for the role of other factors. This paper proposes a model with historic racism as the foundation for disproportionate minority male disenfranchisement and elite issue framing and the perception of racial threat driving modern changes in suffrage provisions. Using historical data, robust results were found between felony disenfranchisement provisions and the ratio of slaves to free people in 1830. Analyses of current census data and narratives from news accounts provide additional support for the model.