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2011

Opportunity/Threat Spirals in the U.S. Women's Suffrage and

German Anti-Immigration Movements
Roger Karapin
CUNY Hunter College

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Published as Roger Karapin, “Opportunity/Threat Spirals in the U.S. Women's Suffrage and
German Anti-Immigration Movements,” Mobilization 16 (February 2011), pp. 65-80.

Opportunity/Threat Spirals in Social Movements:

1
The U.S. Women's Suffrage and German Anti-Immigration Movements

For a special issue of Mobilization (2011)

edited by Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow
2
Roger Karapin
Final draft, July 2010

Abstract

Many have noted that protesters sometimes expand political opportunities for later

protests, but there has been little analysis of how this occurs. The problem can be addressed by

analyzing opportunity/threat spirals, which involve positive feedback among: actions by

challengers (bold protests and the formation of alliances between challenger groups);

opportunity-increasing actions by authorities and elites (elite divisions and support, procedural

reforms, substantive concessions, and police inaction); and threat-increasing actions by

authorities and elites (new grievance production and excessive repression). Interactions among

these eight mechanisms are demonstrated in two cases of social movement growth, the U.S.

women's suffrage movement of the 1910s and the German anti-immigration movement of the

early 1990s. The cases show similar positive feedback processes despite many other differences,

which suggests that the specified interactions may operate in a wide range of social movements

in democratic countries.

1
I would like to thank Holly McCammon for pointing me to sources and making her dataset
available, and Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow for comments on an earlier draft.
2
Professor of Political Science at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of
New York. Email: [email protected].
 2

Keywords: anti-immigration movement; contentious politics; opportunity/threat spirals;

political process theory; positive feedback; social movement theory; social movements; women's
suffrage movement
 3
Introduction

Political-opportunity and political-process theories of social movements have been

surprisingly unidirectional. That is, they have mostly posited conditions under which movements

are likely to begin, expand, and succeed in their goals. Causation flows in one direction, from the

political environment to movement activity. Yet movements include actors who aim to build

power and sometimes do so; protesters sometimes affect their environments and hence the course

of protest.

In this article, I argue for the greater inclusion of positive-feedback processes in theories of

why some movements grow in activity and power. Briefly, the claim is that one condition of

movement growth is that positive feedback develops among certain kinds of actions by

protesters, their elite allies, and authorities. The positive feedback creates spirals of increasing

opportunity, threat, or both. The next section shows that theories of movements have touched on

these interactions but have left them largely unexplored. I then describe positive-feedback

processes in terms of eight kinds of actions, or mechanisms, and the ways they tend to reinforce

each other when movements are growing. The mechanisms and the interactions among them are

demonstrated through two case studies, the U.S. women's suffrage movement (1910-20), and,

more briefly, the German anti-immigration movement (1991-93), which were chosen in a

strategy of universalizing comparison. If the same kind of positive-feedback processes occur in

such disparate cases, it is likely they can be found in a wide range of growing social movements

in democratic countries. The conclusions suggest some ways to simplify our analysis of complex

opportunity/threat spirals and how to relate them to external causes.

 4
Where is the Positive Feedback?

Political-process theories have mostly focused on how political environments affect protest

mobilization and outcomes. The main factors identified include the configuration of formal

institutions, including their openness; elite divisions and the provision of elite support to

movements; success chances; threats to the interests of protesters or their constituents; the level

of repression or facilitation; organizational strength; and the nature of dominant discourses

(Eisinger 1973; Jenkins and Perrow 1977; Tilly 1978: 54-56; McAdam 1982: 40-51; Kitschelt

1986; Tarrow 1989a: 34-36; Gamson and Meyer 1996, 279-81). Whether stable or changing

features of the political environment are emphasized, the main causal linkages have been from

the environment to movements.

At the same time, leading political-process theorists have often recognized that protesters

also affect their political environments, perhaps in ways that make later protests more likely (e.g.,

Tarrow 1989a: 36-37, 1994: 96-97; Gamson and Meyer 1996: 278-79, 289; McAdam 1996a: 35-

37; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001: 243-44). However, this aspect of political-process theory

has been relatively undeveloped. As McAdam wrote, the observation that movements make

opportunities is "indisputably true ... [but] not widely reflected in the extant literature" (McAdam

1996a: 35). A decade and a half later, that conclusion is still accurate. Indeed, explicitly

interactive theorizing, which systematically examines how movements and their political

environments affect each other, has been uncommon.

1
Major early exceptions were by Doug McAdam, who made a clear theoretical statement

that movements and political environments affect each other after movement emergence, and

then gave empirical support concerning how the civil rights movement gained elite allies and

triggered counterproductive repression (McAdam 1982: 52-54, 147-49, 167, 174-79). McAdam
 5
also argued that the development of a movement depends on tactical innovations to which

opponents cannot effectively respond, and that later the opponents make tactical adaptations

which undermine the movement's power (McAdam 1983).

Finally, ten years ago, McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2001: 45-50) made a major advance

by reconceiving the main elements of previous, relatively structural theories, including

organizations, opportunities, and repertoires, as interactive processes between protesters and

polity members. What's more, this work identified opportunity/threat spirals as a central and

common process of interaction among challengers and polity members, defined as "sequences of

environmental change, interpretation of that change, action, and counteraction, repeated as one

action alters another actor's environment" (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001: 243, 323).

However, like the previous political-process work, McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly leave

opportunity/threat spirals largely unspecified in theoretical terms and largely unexplored

empirically. When spirals are invoked or illustrated, they are mostly like black boxes (e.g.,

McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001: 243-44, 252-53, 324, 330). Exactly what kinds of actions by

challengers, by authorities, and by other polity members (elites) can contribute to

opportunity/threat spirals? Which actions are most common or powerful? What is each kind of

action likely to lead to? What mechanisms link one action to the counteraction? What sequences

of action and counteraction occur most often, or have the most effect on protests?

Because these questions have not been addressed, we are not much farther along in this

area than we were a decade ago. Theoretical works have made only fragmentary contributions to

our understanding of how positive feedback contributes to social movement growth. Three areas

have received the most attention. First, Sharp (1973) and McAdam (1983) have analyzed how

new protest tactics can throw opponents off balance and trigger violent repression that,
 6
paradoxically, promotes protest by recruiting elite allies and participants for protest groups. The

circumstances under which repression backfires have also been studied by Mason (1989),

Brockett (1993), Schock (2005), and Hess and Martin (2006), among others. Second, theorists of

collective action have analyzed how initial participation in protests helps promote further

participation, by reducing collective-action problems (e.g., Chong 1991; Marwell and Oliver

1993). However, this work has focused on processes among protesters and potential protesters,

not between them and elite allies or authorities. Third, the theory of protest cycles analyzes how

the use of new protest tactics by "early risers" creates opportunities for other movements to

develop, forming a larger wave of protest, which grows until authorities respond decisively with

repression and reforms that divide movement participants (Tarrow 1989a: 51-52, 1994: 7, 86,

155, 156, 180, 189; Koopmans 1993; Meyer 1993; Meyer and Whittier 1994; cf. also Sommer

2000). As important as these strands are, they do not provide an overall picture of positive

feedback among challengers, authorities, and elites.

Mechanisms and Feedback in Opportunity/Threat Spirals

Before trying to provide that overall picture, a few clarifications may be helpful. First, the

scope of this theoretical effort is limited to individual social movements that are oriented toward

the state in established democracies. It does not directly address other kinds of contentious

action, non-democratic regimes, or interactions between related or opposing movements in cycles

2
of protest -- even though opportunity/threat spirals seem to operate in those settings, too.

Second, the theoretical process outlined here is not intended to be complete, even within the

domain of state-oriented movements in democracies. In particular, news media and the public, as

represented by public opinion, comprise additional actors of importance, which mediate among
 7
many of the mechanisms included here (McAdam 1996b; Koopmans 2004), but are largely left

aside here in order to put some limits on the complexity. Organization building, framing, and

identity-formation mechanisms are not included here either, although they may be important

aspects of opportunity/threat spirals.

Within those limits, the theoretical process proposed here is an attempt at a more

comprehensive understanding of positive feedback among protesters, authorities, and elites. I

developed the theory in an earlier book, partly inductively, through a comparison of four cases of

urban-renewal and nuclear-energy conflicts in Germany, and partly by synthesizing disparate

elements of political-process theories and political-process analyses of cases (Karapin 2007: 36-
3
45). In the present version, it includes eight types of action (or mechanisms ), which combine to

form an opportunity/threat spiral, in which actions reinforce each other in a positive-feedback

process. As shown in Figure 1 and described below, each of the eight mechanisms tends to

trigger certain other mechanisms on the list, and thus contributes to positive feedback. In

addition, each tends to promote movement participation more directly, by increasing success

chances, facilitation, sudden grievances, or challenger unity. There are three broad kinds of

actions: actions by protesters; opportunity-increasing actions by authorities and elites; and threat-

increasing actions by authorities and elites.

 8

Actions by protesters

(1) Bold actions means that protesters undertake collective actions that are daring, novel in

methods or targets, seize power resources, or involve large numbers of participants. Especially

given the preferences of the news media, such actions tend to attract attention (McAdam 1996b:

346-50), provoke authorities, and put protesters at risk of repression. Hence they may cause some

elites to increase support (McAdam 1982: 147-49, 167; Schock 2005: 162) or knock authorities

off-balance, causing them to overreact or underreact to protests (Sharp 1973: chs. 10, 12;

McAdam 1983). They may also trigger procedural reforms, substantive concessions, or new

grievance production, each of which also has potential effects on movement participation.
 9
Finally, bold actions by one group of protesters, if not suppressed, can directly encourage others

to protest, either because the initial actions are inspiring or because their efforts are

interdependent (Tarrow 1994: 156; Biggs 2003: 224-28).

(2) Alliance formation and unity among diverse challengers means that protest groups

with a wide range of methods and/or demands work toward some common goals in the same

general setting. The alliance may be explicit or merely an objective one that the actors do not

recognize or that they publicly deny. Demands may range from moderate and incremental to

radical or extreme, while protest methods may range from conventional (predictable) to

disruptive (nonviolent but unpredictable) to militant (threatening or using violence). A diversity

of methods and goals increases the collective capacities of the allied protesters. This makes it

possible to launch bold actions while at the same time keeping open lines of communication to

elites and hence chances for gaining elite support and avoiding police repression (Gamson and

Meyer 1996: 288-89; cf. Tarrow 1994: 155). A diversity of methods also makes it possible to

carry out different kinds of bold actions in the same campaign, e.g., militance by a few,

conventional or disruptive protests by large numbers. Morever, it makes it more likely that

moderate protesters will win procedural reforms or substantive concessions from authorities who

feel threatened by the radical flank (Haines 1988; Button 1978: 174-76; McAdam, McCarthy,

and Zald 1988: 718-19).

Opportunity-increasing actions by authorities and elites

(3) Elite divisions and support means that political elites express disagreements with

each other about the issues on which protesters are making demands, or that some elites express

support for protesters or their demands. The line between elites and authorities is often blurred in
 10
the case of elected officials in democracies, who both direct parts of the state and act as

politicians vying for public support. Weak insiders, who are in the elite circle but are relatively

marginalized there, are more prone to support protesters than are more powerful elites (Grant and

Wallace 1991: 1118-20). Elite divisions are strongly related to other elite processes that lie

outside protest politics, e.g., socioeconomic change or elections and electoral competition, but

can also be affected by some of the mechanisms here. Elite divisions and support increase

protesters' success chances and reduce their risks of repression and hence encourage more bold

actions and other protest participation (Jenkins and Perrow 1977; Tarrow 1994: 87-89; della

Porta 1995: 81).

(4) Procedural reforms means that authorities increase protesters' or the public's routine

access to officials. This may involve new institutions and legal frameworks, or merely a more

inviting use of existing procedures. Procedural reforms reduce the costs of taking action, which

promotes especially routine participation in the movement and provides routine access to elites

who may increase their support for protesters (Tarrow 1994: 86-87, 1989b: 310-23; Karapin

2007: 99-103).

(5) Substantive concessions means that authorities make concessions that favor the

interests of protesters or their constituents and that appear to be in response to particular protests,

often because of their timing. Substantive concessions increase protesters' perceived success

chances and hence encourage participation in the movement generally, and specifically in the

methods that appeared to be successful (McAdam 1983: 743; Kriesberg 2007: 177; Tarrow 1994:

156).

(6) Police inaction means that police are unusually passive in the face of illegal or

disruptive protests. Inactivity could be due to institutional weaknesses in coercive capacity or due
 11
to strategic, tactical, or policy decisions by either the police or higher authorities. Police inaction

reduces the costs and risks of bold actions, and hence encourages their repeated use or spread

(Tilly 1978: 100; della Porta 1995: 82; Willems 1997: 447).

Threat-increasing actions by authorities and elites

(7) New grievance production means that government officials or elites make new

substantive threats to the interests of protesters, refuse to adopt major policy reforms in the face

of strong protests, or either close or obviously manipulate procedural channels. These threats

rapidly increase perceived grievances, which tends to increase movement participation (Walsh

1981). If the threats are seen as severe, they may prompt outrage and thus increase unity within or

between protest groups and win elite support for protesters (Kriesberg 2007: 167).
4
(8) Excessive repression means that police or organized societal forces repress protests in

a way that is perceived as unjustifiably harsh or undifferentiated, i.e., which does not distinguish

between different socially relevant types of protesters or kinds of protest action. By contrast,

consistent, proportionate, and flexible repression tends to effectively suppress protests. Police

overreactions, or their toleration of repression by other actors, may be the result of decisions

made by higher authorities. While repression immediately reduces the movement's capacities and

increases the risks that protesters face, these demobilizing effects are often outweighed by the

outrage provoked by excessive repression, especially if it is conveyed or magnified by media

reporting. Outrage may further radicalize militant protesters and may increase unity among and

recruitment to protest groups (della Porta and Tarrow 1986; della Porta 1995: 80; Sharp 1973:

678-90; Willems 1997: 444-48). In addition, it may win support from the public and elites and

thus paradoxically lead to reduced risks of repression because authorities then bow to elite or
 12
public pressure (Sharp 1973: 658-78; McAdam 1983: 745-46, 748; Kriesberg 2007: 168; Mason

1989: 482; Brockett 1993: 471-72; Smithey and Kurtz 1999; della Porta 1995: 81; Tilly 2006:

224-25). Hence, excessive repression may, through these mechanisms, lead to an overall increase

in bold protests and movement participation. This effect is more likely when opportunities are

generally large, e.g., because elites are already divided (Brockett 1993; Schock 1999: 367-68).

The overall theoretical argument, then, is that when large movements develop, they do so

through a process of mutually reinforcing interactions (positive feedback) among these elements.

As seen in Figure 1, the mechanisms can interrelate with each other in a great number of ways,

but perhaps not in all possible ways. These mechanisms can also help explain the decline of

social movements. Decline often results when authorities make policy reforms (reducing

substantive threats), incorporate some but not other protest groups (reducing protester diversity),

and learn to use police in proactive, flexible, proportionate ways, (reducing sudden grievances

and facilitation) (McAdam 1983; della Porta and Tarrow 1986; Tarrow 1989b: ch. 12).

Before demonstrating this process through the case studies, a few more clarifications may

be helpful. First, this description of the process is agnostic about whether actors are rational and

correctly perceive opportunities and threats, or whether perceived and objective opportunities and
5
threats diverge. Second, here I mostly leave aside the important question of what causes this

positive-feedback process to develop. I do not claim that these mechanisms always have the

indicated effects, only that they have done so in many cases in a wide variety of circumstances. In

many other cases, they have not had those effects, and the reasons presumably lie in other

conditions, whether initial or contemporaneous, structural or processual. In the women's suffrage

case study, I will indicate some of these additional causes, and I will return to this issue in the
 13
conclusions. Similarly, here I can address only tangentially the extent to which these mechanisms

are independent of larger forces and to which the actors possess some agency through the

mechanisms. I think it is likely that the mechanisms have some independence, since they often

arise unpredictably, are contingent on each other, and sometimes depend on accidents of timing.

Dynamics of the U.S. Women's Suffrage Movement, 1910-20

New growth of an old movement

The women's suffrage movement originated at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, began

campaigning for the right to vote just after the Civil War, and founded two national organizations

in 1869. It finally achieved nationwide women's suffrage through congressional passage and state

ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the federal constitution a half century later, in 1919

and 1920. But the movement remained small and progress was slow during its first four decades,

with only 16,000 members in the main national association in 1910 and only four states having

granted women's suffrage by that date. The period from 1896 to 1910 has been called "the

doldrums" for its relative lack of activity (Flexner 1975: 256).

The next ten years saw a massive increase in movement activity, according to many

measures. As seen in Figure 2, the annual rate of major state-level campaigns for women's
6
suffrage shot up seven-fold from the 1891-1910 period to the 1911-19 period. In the first period,

there were only 14 major campaigns in 20 years, or 0.7 per year, while in the second period, there

were 47 major campaigns in 9 years, or 5.2 per year. Peaks in activity were reached in 1912-14

and 1917-19. McCammon, Hewitt, and Smith's (2004: 534) analysis of 883 appeals made during

state-level campaigns over the 1866-1919 period shows a similar surge in activity, with a peak in

1913-14 at about three times the rate of the 1900-1910 period, and a smaller peak in 1917. A
 14
variety of new protest methods also grew greatly in this period. For example, the number of

states which had seen the new tactic of the women's suffrage parade grew from 2 in 1908 to 17 in

1914, and then 24 in 1917 (data from McCammon 2003: 793). Finally, membership of the

National American Women's Suffrage Association (NAWSA) quadrupled to 65,000 in 1914

(Banazsak 1996: 45). Why did the movement awaken from the doldrums to engage in this surge

of activity during the 1910s? And why did activity peak in the 1912-14 and 1917-19 periods?

Figure 2: Major State Campaigns by the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1866-1919

10
1917
Number of major state campaigns

1912

0
1866 1870 1874 1878 1882 1886 1890 1894 1898 1902 1906 1910 1914 1918
Year

Underlying causes of this growth include a massive increase in women in the workforce

and in the number of educated, professional women. Women in employment nearly doubled to

7.4 million from 1890 to 1910, including large numbers of teachers, sales clerks, and office
 15
workers. Women also rose from 15 to 34 percent of all college graduates in the 1870-1920 period

(Giele 1995: 158). From their numbers a critical mass would be mobilized on behalf of women's

suffrage (Flexner 1975: 236). Also, the rise of the urban middle-class progressive movement and

its state and national legislative successes in the 1900s (Wiebe 1967) created potential allies for

the suffrage movement and a political climate in which further reforms seemed possible.

However, another, necessary cause of the growth in women's suffrage movement activity was the

development of an opportunity/threat spiral, which linked new protest methods, rising elite

support, substantive concessions, and large-scale participation in the movement in cycles of

positive feedback. In the following, I will trace causation in three main positive-feedback loops,

which also interacted with each other to create an overall opportunity/threat spiral.

Tactical innovation and elite support

First, a spiral of tactical innovation, rising elite support, and increasing participation

developed. Inspired by experience with the English suffrage movement and discouraged by

previous defeats, activists adopted a variety of new protest methods and undertook bold actions.

These led to broader participation and new success in winning the support of politicians and the

right to vote in some states. In turn, this reinforced the use of new methods in later state-level and

national campaigns, raised participation, and led again to the movement gaining elite support and

voting rights.

When Harriot Stanton Blatch returned to the U.S. from England in 1902, she was dismayed

to find the movement that her mother had helped to build was listless and engaged in uninspiring

activities, chiefly meetings in private homes and public halls (Flexner 1975: 257-58). Beginning

in the late 1900s, Blatch and other women of her generation who had been exposed to the more
 16
adventurous and militant tactics of the English movement helped initiate a period of

experimentation with new methods in the U.S. movement. They often acted through new

organizations, such as the Equality League, the Congressional Union, and the National Woman's

Party. Innovation was also a product of the sudden grievances produced when suffrage

campaigns met with defeat. A study by McCammon found that the pro-suffrage parade, a tactic

that women began to use in 1908, was more likely to be adopted in states where a major suffrage

campaign had failed within the previous year (McCammon 2003: 807-8).

Although the U.S. movement initially did not adopt high-profile tactics used in England

(such as heckling speakers or violence), it did adopt a great variety of new protest methods,

ranging from new organizational routines to public demonstrations. These methods increased the

movement's ability to communicate with potential members and potential elite supporters. Door

to door campaigning and organizing supporters at the precinct and district level with the help of

card files were mundane but valuable new instruments that were first used, with good results, in

New York and Washington states in the 1907-10 period (Flexner 1975: 261-62; Scott and Scott

1982: 30). Lobbying of public officials also became much more carefully planned and

coordinated after 1910 (Banaszak 1996: 134-35).

Since women were not often seen in the public sphere, they took a bold step and got much

attention when they began to hold open-air meetings, parades, trolley tours, automobile

pilgrimages, and silent protests from the late 1900s onward (Lumsden 1997: 27-33; Scott and

Scott 1982: 29-30; McCammon 2003: 788). In addition, suffragists and women trade unionists

formed new alliances, as the NAWSA dropped its advocacy of educational qualifications for

voting in 1909 and female workers came to see voting rights as important to their struggles to

organize. The Women's Trade Union League helped to bring working-class women into the
 17
movement, and the American Federation of Labor's increased support in 1915 helped the

movement make inroads in the industrial states of the northeast and midwest (Keyssar 2000: 203-

6).

The new methods and alliances led to broader participation and new success in winning the

support of politicians and the right to vote in the states. The new organizing methods helped the

movement communicate with its potential followers and mobilize them for political action on

referenda and for lobbying. Public protests showed the movement's commitment, size, and

organization and greatly increased the visibility of their cause among bystanders, the press, and

hence political elites. Bold actions helped win elite support, as seen in a study by Banaszak,

which found that the use of confrontational tactics is correlated with the introduction of suffrage

legislation by state politicians (Banazsak 1996: 177-79).

The effectiveness of these methods in winning elite support, votes, and hence voting rights

was shown in the successful state-level campaigns in the 1910-13 period, which broke a 14-year

losing streak for the movement. A carefully organized district-by-district campaign led to a 2-1

margin of victory in a Washington state referendum in 1910, and a very tightly organized

lobbying campaign won presidential suffrage for women in Illinois in 1913. Moreover, in

California in 1911, suffragists experimented with many new techniques during an intensive six-

month campaign, including billboards, forms of entertainment such as pageants and plays,

national speakers, and a famous touring car called the Blue Liner. They won the referendum for

full suffrage by a very narrow margin of 3,500 votes (Flexner 1975: 263-65, 270).

In turn, these victories increased perceived success chances and encouraged more

participation. Scott and Scott (1982: 30-31) write that "morale rose" with the state-level victories.

Moreover, given how the victories were won, they created interest by other activists in using
 18
similar methods in their own states and in a national campaign for a federal amendment to the

constitution. As the new methods were used in those contexts, they again raised participation,

attracted attention, and gained elite support and voting rights. Alice Paul, a young activist who

returned from England in 1910 with ideas about new tactics and a partisan strategy, became an

NAWSA officer and organized a women's parade in Washington, D.C. at Woodrow Wilson's

inauguration in March 1913. The action was so successful in gaining attention for the movement

that the NAWSA called on state organizations to hold parades in May 1914 and each May

thereafter. By 1914, 17 states had held suffrage parades, and most of them continued the practice

(Scott and Scott 1982: 31; McCammon 2003: 793, 794, 801).

Furthermore, the movement was energized by the rising success chances that were signaled

by the Washington and California victories in 1910 and 1911. NAWSA membership shot up

three-fold from 1911 to 1914 and activity reached a peak in 1914, about three times that of the

1900s, according to data on the movement's appeals (McCammon, Hewitt, and Smith 2004: 534).

The number of state campaigns for voting rights increased sharply, from at most one per year in

the 1897-1909 period, to an average of five per year from 1912 to 1915, to an average of eight

per year from 1917 to 1919 (see Figure 2). Moreover, after 1911, many of these campaigns were

in populous eastern and midwestern states, so the number of participants rose even more sharply
7
than the number of campaigns.

Concessions and opportunities

A second major opportunity spiral involved the interaction among state suffrage

campaigns, elite support, and the winning of voting rights. The granting of voting rights
8
comprised a kind of substantive concession obtained through electoral procedures (statewide
 19
referenda) or granted by state legislatures. Those gains increased the movement's power and

success chances, which in turn helped it to gain the support of politicians who either had to face

female voters or began to see women's suffrage as likely to be adopted in their states.

In 1909, women had won the right to vote in only four states with 17 votes out of 483 in

the Electoral College. Both Republicans and Democrats were largely uninterested in the issue,

seeing no electoral advantage or disadvantage in it. But as women gained the vote in more states,

politicians began to take note. By 1914, 12 states with 91 electoral votes had women's suffrage,

and by 1918, it was 21 states with 213 electoral votes (Scott and Scott 1982: 26, 166-68).

With each victory in a state, the movement as a whole gained more respect and support

from politicians in Congress and state legislatures (Scott and Scott 1982: 42). Those in suffrage

states now had to face female voters, and hence became more willing to support a federal

constitutional amendment, which became the NAWSA's focus after 1915. Politicians in non-

suffrage states were also affected. As more and more of them came to think that women's

suffrage would eventually be adopted in their states, they tried to profit from it rather than be

harmed by it. This was a bandwagon effect, driven by the Democrats' and Republicans'

competition for votes, in what Keyssar calls the endgame in each state. This explains why urban

machine politicians during the 1915-20 period turned from opposing suffrage to neutrality or

support for it (Keyssar 2000: 213-15). It also helps explain why the Republican and Democratic

parties and their presidential candidates both adopted planks in favor of women's suffrage

(though not for a federal amendment) in 1916. Other reasons include dramatic marches by

suffragists at the parties' conventions (one march was held during a drenching rainstorm and

gale) and the desire to undercut the Progressive Party, which had endorsed women's suffrage in

1912 (Scott and Scott 1982: 33-34).

 20
In turn, rising support from the major parties encouraged the state suffrage organizations to

mount campaigns and the NAWSA to support them. In addition, the nine state victories during

the 1910-14 period convinced the NAWSA to greatly increase its mobilization. The organization

had been largely moribund and in leadership crisis in the first half of the decade, during which

the initiative for the victorious campaigns had come from the states. But in December 1915, the

organization chose Carrie Catt and a team of professional leaders to lead a massive campaign for

a federal constitutional amendment. Given the voting power and politicians' support that the state

campaigns had won since 1910, they now saw an opportunity to win in the 36 states that would

be needed to ratify the amendment (Flexner 1975: 281-92).

Bold protests, repression, and outrage

Third, there were important spirals of bold protests, excessive repression, and outrage in

1913 and 1917. Unusually bold demonstrations in favor of suffrage triggered violence from

private citizens and the arrest and mistreatment of nonviolent demonstrators by police. This led

to publicity and outrage, which in turn increased elite support and broadened participation in the

movement.

While the vast majority of the new, demonstrative tactics adopted by the women's suffrage

movement did not provoke repressive responses, two episodes of protests did. Indeed, they are

good examples of what Gene Sharp calls "political jiu-jitsu." The events of 1913 began with a

parade of 5,000 women in the national capital the day before President Wilson's inauguration, on

March 3. Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, now working for the NAWSA's congressional committee,

organized the parade, taking advantage of the crowds of hundreds of thousands who had

assembled for the inauguration. The paraders were spat upon, knocked down, cursed, and
 21
insulted by onlookers, who tried to prevent them from passing. Broken into smaller groups, the

suffragists fought their way up Pennsylvania Avenue, taking an hour to walk ten blocks;

bystanders scuffled and over a hundred people were injured in six hours of activity. The women,

who had received a parade permit with the help of a congressman's suffragist wife, received no

protection from the police, although they eventually did from federal soldiers and some National

Guardsmen (Lumsden 1997: 78-81; Flexner 1975: 272-73).

The parade and the harsh treatment of the women gave the women's suffrage cause

enormous publicity and led to a public outcry. Many political elites sympathized with the

women, as shown by a Senate committee's ensuing investigation, which heard 150 witnesses and

led to the resignation of the police chief (Lumsden 1997: 81). The suffrage movement gained

new impetus from the publicity. Its congressional committee became more active and the

Congressional Union was formed, initially within the NAWSA and later as an independent

group. Broad protest participation in new bold actions was also spurred. Many suffrage groups

made "pilgrimages" to Washington, petitions were circulated, delegations visited Wilson, and an

automobile procession travelled to the Capitol to present 200,000 petition signatures to a group

of senators (Flexner 1975: 273-74; Scott and Scott 1982: 31). As noted above, the success of the

1913 parade led the NAWSA to promote the tactic throughout the country, and 14 states saw

their first women's suffrage parades in the following three years (McCammon 2003: 801).

The second episode was the series of pickets at the White House organized by Alice Paul's

National Woman's Party beginning in January 1917. Picketing the White House, adapted from

the union tactic of picketing a workplace on strike, had never been done before and it was

difficult for police to find a legal infraction in it. Initially, the stationary, silent pickets were

peaceful, as were moving pickets on Inauguration Day in March. By the summer, the slogans on
 22
the picketers' signs were more provocative (referring to "Free Russia" and the lack of democracy

in the U.S. in June, to "Kaiser Wilson" in August). Bystanders tore away the women's banners

and attacked them, while the police offered little or no protection, and sometimes knocked down

the women themselves. Arrests of the protesters (not of their attackers) also began in June,

followed a bit later by short jail sentences, and then longer ones. Terms of imprisonment were for

up to six months in a Virginia workhouse or the Washington, D.C. jail, in miserable conditions

that included vermin and beatings.

As had happened in England, women prisoners protested their conditions and their lack of

political-prisoner status with hunger strikes, and authorities responded with forced feeding. As

news of those brutal procedures was smuggled out, it "made martyrs wholesale" (Flexner 1975:

295). The martyrdom probably had far-reaching effects since altogether 218 women from 26

states were arrested, 97 were jailed, and those arrested included professional and wealthy women,

many from respected Quaker families, as well as young college graduates. Although the NAWSA

denounced the protesters, when news about their prison conditions came to light, there was

public outcry, and the prisoners were all released in November. The next March, a D.C. court

invalidated the arrests and prison sentences (Lumsden 1997: 117-35; Flexner 1975: 292-97; Scott

and Scott 1982: 41; Ford 1991: chs. 4-6, esp. 148, 159, 162, 198).

The pickets and the repression of them had important, though somewhat mixed, effects on

elite and public opinion. The events produced huge publicity for the movement, despite the

Wilson administration's attempts to silence the press (Graham 1983-84: 672-76 & n. 29), and

Flexner implies that they speeded up action by Congress. The chairman of the Senate committee

on women's suffrage inspected conditions in the Virginia prison on September 14, and the next

day his committee issued a favorable report on women's suffrage. Nine days later, the House
 23
created a committee and soon set a date of January 10 to vote on the federal amendment (Flexner

1975: 297). While NAWSA leaders thought the pickets almost cost the movement these gains,

the National Woman's Party leaders understandably thought that the pickets were responsible for

the congressional action. Flexner concludes that these protests had mixed effects on elites, and

she emphasizes that it was the combination of moderate and militant actions, as well as the

involvement of women in the war effort, that produced congressional victory at this time. Scott

and Scott write that "[p]robably the militant tactics did more good than harm" in terms of gaining

elite support, since the President and Congress feared what the women would do next, and hence

embraced the NAWSA as the lesser of two evils (Scott and Scott 1982: 41). Keyssar agrees, and

concludes that the 1917 protests helped produce presidential suffrage for women in 6 states that
9
year, as well as full suffrage for women in New York by a large margin (Keyssar 2000: 214).

Those gains in elite support and the winning of voting rights, in turn, showed that the

movement enjoyed continued high success chances. This helped it maintain its mobilization

through the constitutional ratification process, which ended successfully in 1920.

Comparison to the German Anti-Immigration Movement, 1991-93

Opportunity/threat spirals can be found in a wide range of growing social movements. This

is supported by the following, necessarily brief, summary of the militant anti-immigration

movement that surged in unified Germany during the 1991-93 period. Figure 3 shows the
10
increase and decline in right-wing arson attacks against foreigners' housing. This was the most

visible aspect of the overall movement, which also included many other kinds of violence by

skinheads and neo-Nazis as well as nonviolent protests by adult German neighbors of hostels for

asylum seekers (Karapin 2003). The militant anti-immigration movement was very different from
 24
the U.S. women's suffrage movement in terms of the protesters' social backgrounds (working vs.

middle class), degree of formal organization (low vs. high), goals (exclusionary vs. egalitarian),

and main targets (politically weak immigrants vs. state and federal governments). The

movements also differed in tactics (violence vs. routine and nonviolent methods), their relation to

electoral politics (none vs. strongly overlapping), and socioeconomic settings (deindustrialization

and peace vs. industrialization and war). And yet the surge of anti-foreigner violence was due to

the same general kinds of positive feedback as that which created the suffrage movement's

growth. This occurred mainly through four opportunity/threat spirals, involving two major riots

and the nationwide surges in anti-foreigner violence that followed each riot.

Figure 3: Arson Attacks against Foreigners and the Asylum Debate in Germany, 1990-95

200 120
1992-09
180

100
160 1991-10

140
80

120
Arson attacks

News articles

100 60

80

40
60

40
20

20

0 0
19 1

19 4

19 7

19 10

19 1

19 4

19 7

19 0

19 1

19 4

19 7

19 0

19 1

19 4

19 7

19 0

19 4

19 7

19 0

19 1

19 4

19 7

0
19 1
-0

-0

-0

-0

-0

-0

-1

-0

-0

-0

-1

-0

-0

-0

-1

-0

-0

-0

-1

-0

-0

-0

-1
-
90

90

91

91

91

92

92

92

92

93

93

94

94

95

95

95

95
90

90

91

93

93

94

94
19

Year-month

Arson Attacks Asylum Debate

 25

The two crucial events for this movement were the multi-day riots against foreigners'

housing that developed in the eastern German cities of Hoyerswerda (for seven days in

September 1991) and Rostock (for five days in August 1992). Both riots unfolded through

remarkably similar positive-feedback processes. To start with, officials housed hundreds of

asylum seekers and immigrant workers in large, sometimes overcrowded hostels, in ways that

exacerbated tensions between the foreigners and German residents over noise, dirt, and petty

crime. Next, adult German residents responded to these new grievances with nonviolent protests

(contacting officials, attending meetings), while right-wing youths and neo-Nazis carried out

vigilante actions and threats against the foreigners. Then, elected officials responded to the

challengers' actions by voicing some support for anti-immigration demands, while police

remained inactive against the militants. Next, young militants began physically attacking the

foreigners' housing. Adult residents responded by supporting them, creating a temporary alliance

between protest groups, and police and political leaders responded with extreme passivity. This

allowed the riots to escalate, drawing in hundreds of attackers who were supported by thousands

of spectators. Finally, authorities made major substantive concessions to the violence by

removing the foreigners from these localities (Karapin 2002: 155-60; Willems 1993: 219-30).

Each of these riots triggered a nationwide opportunity spiral and a surge in violence that

lasted for about a month or two. Again, similar positive-feedback processes operated in each

case. News coverage of the riots and the local authorities' widely publicized concessions to them

made it seem that violence could be effective. Moreover, national politicians, led mainly by
 26
Christian Democrats, responded to the riots by intensifying their debate on asylum rights. This

indicated elite support for the anti-immigration movement's demands and increased its success

chances (Koopmans 1996, 205; Karapin 2000, 320). In addition, there was continued police

inactivity and widespread new grievances about the housing of newly arrived asylum seekers

across Germany. Together, these factors encouraged skinhead groups to mount additional bold

attacks in hundreds of German localities (Lüdemann and Erzberger 1994; Koopmans 1996: 204-

5; Karapin 2007: 214-15).

The sudden decline in the anti-immigration movement after June 1993 can be explained in

terms of the interruption and reversal of several key mechanisms in these opportunity/threat

spirals. Police repression increased after neo-Nazis murdered three members of a Turkish family

in Mölln (November 1992); raids and other repressive actions against the far right finally began.

More important, civil society groups mobilized strongly and shifted the public discourse toward

tolerance for immigrants and intolerance for right-wing violence. This discouraged right-wing

militants and their potential supporters, and undermined the anti-immigration movement

(Koopmans 1997: 162). However, the decisive blow to the movement came with a constitutional

amendment restricting asylum rights, passed by the federal parliament in June 1993. This led to

sharp reductions in the entry of asylum seekers, in the new local grievances related to them, in

the elite debate over asylum rights, and hence in elite support for anti-immigration demands

(Koopmans 1996: 205).

Conclusions

Opportunity/threat spirals can be complex. However, their analysis can be simplified by

identifying subprocesses within the process of an overall spiral, which may combine in different
 27
ways to promote the growth of a movement. Several subprocesses appeared in these two cases.
11
Polarization spirals center on positive feedback between movement actions and growing elite

support for them, which may continue until large substantive concessions exhaust the scope for

reform and hence reduce elite divisions. Examples: the suffrage movement as it gained

supporters from Democrats and Republicans, especially in its last five years; and the anti-

immigration movement in its national expansion phases. Police facilitation spirals involve

positive feedback between bold, often innovative, actions and police failure to repress them,

which can also draw in support from other protesters and further immobilize the police.

Examples: the Hoyerswerda and Rostock riots.

Counterproductive repression spirals (Sharp's "political jiu-jitsu") involve positive

feedback between bold protests and harsh, undifferentiated repression by police or by private

actors who are condoned by police. The excessive repression may trigger support from elites and

bystanders for protests, making differentiated and proportionate repression even more difficult

(Sharp 1973: ch. 12; McAdam 1983). Examples: the 1913 inaugural parade and the 1917 White

House pickets, arrests, and hunger strikes. Appeasement spirals involve positive feedback

between movement activity and substantive concessions to them, which raises apparent success

chances (cf. Kriesberg 2007: 177). Examples: the suffrage movement's state-level victories after

1910; and the successes of the Hoyerswerda and Rostock riots in driving immigrants out of their

localities. Other subprocesses can also be identified, although they were not important in these

cases. For example, in threat spirals, protests and state repression reinforce each other (Wright

2007), and elite support and protester alliances may be triggered, promoting protests.

While identifying endogenous positive-feedback processes is important in order to explain

the growth of a movement, it is just as important to explain what causes the feedback to arise,
 28
something I could do only to a limited degree in this article. Generally, such an explanation can

draw on at least three sources, each of which probably matters to some degree. Exogenous

causes, including socioeconomic processes, elite actions, and electoral activity help to set off

spirals. Examples: the entry of women into the workforce for the suffrage movement; and the

arrival of asylum seekers in Germany for the anti-immigration movement.

However, the endogenous mechanisms in positive-feedback processes are at least

somewhat autonomous from external causes. When protesters develop new tactics and form

alliances with protest groups using complementary strategies, they help to expand opportunities

for later protests -- as do elites when they decide to lend support and authorities when they make

blunders in their efforts to control protests. Decisions matter, and in the rising phase of a

movement, protesters tend to make good decisions and their opponents tend to make mistakes.

Examples: the use of new organizational and protest tactics to win state-level suffrage campaigns

after 1910; and officials' creation of large hostels for asylum seekers and the failure of police to

defend them when attacked by right-wing groups. Finally, coincidences and timing also matter,

when they bring together an unusual combination of elements (exogenous, endogenous, or both)

around the same time. Examples: the harsh treatment of imprisoned women demonstrators at a

time when the suffrage amendment was on the verge of passage in Congress; and the

administrative decision to distribute asylum seekers to the eastern states at a time when police

were overtaxed and right-wing skinhead groups were growing there.

Finally, these two cases suggest some areas where the posited mechanisms need

conceptual clarification. "Bold actions" does not capture all the innovative methods that helped

the women's suffrage movement to open opportunities after 1907, but neither would a concept of

"innovative tactics," since not all innovations are effective. Moreover, that movement's large
 29
number of new, effective methods supports the thesis that a diversity of tactics is also important
12
(Morris 1993). The "substantive concessions" mechanism is another one that needs to be

broadened. In the democratization of a partially democratized polity, such as occurred in the

expansion of women's suffrage, concessions may be won through a routine electoral process

(e.g., referenda that amend a state constitution), not only through decisions by public officials.

It is time to place the analysis of opportunity/threat spirals in a more central place in

theorizing about social movements and other forms of contentious politics. In addition to

applications such as those illustrated here, more work is needed in at least three areas. First, we

should ask why spirals develop or fail to, by connecting spiral processes to other variables and

testing rival hypotheses for explaining movement growth; paired comparisons of large and small

movements would be helpful. Second, additions to the mechanisms are needed, e.g., concerning

framing, identity formation, processes of organizational change, and the roles of news media.

Finally, it is likely that other forms of contentious politics, including revolutions and

democratization, can be analyzed in part through opportunity/threat spirals, with mechanisms

modified as appropriate to those phenomena.

 30
Notes

1. Detailed interactive theories have also been developed by Sharp 1973: chs. 9-14; Willems
1997: 431-85; Wright 2007: 34-37. Other explicitly interactive theories include Joppke 1993: ch. 1;
Meyer 1993; Kriesi 2004: 77-79; Kriesberg 2007: 155-79; Goldstone 2004: 357; Amenta 2006.

2. Besides practical reasons (the author's expertise), limiting the scope may make it possible to
get more specific about the mechanisms and interactions that operate in this kind of phenomenon,
while leaving open the question of whether the interactions are different in other kinds of
contentious politics and regimes.

3. The eight mechanisms overlap only partially with those in Dynamics of Contention, and in
the areas of overlap there are differences in their conceptualization.

4. Vigilantes or other non-governmental groups, usually acting with police connivance, may
take this role, as they did in the U.S. civil rights movement (McAdam 1983: 745-46, 748).

5. In some cases, surges in protest activity are due to overly optimistic perceptions of objective
opportunities, and yet may succeed in opening opportunities (Kurzman 1996; Biggs 2003; Schock
2005: 153).

6. Figure 2 is based on the author's analysis of data in Keyssar 2000: 200, 206, 207-8, tables
A.19-20; McCammon, et al. 2001: 52; Flexner 1975: 178, 180, 228, 230, 231, 269, 277, 319, 324,
330; Scott and Scott 1982: 166-68; and a dataset provided by Holly McCammon. I defined major
campaigns as those that involved victories or defeats in referenda on full women's suffrage,
legislative victories on full suffrage (in a few territories in the nineteenth century), and legislative
victories on presidential suffrage (mostly in 1917 and 1919). If only referendum campaigns are
included, there was still a four-fold surge in the annual rate of activity after 1910.

7. See previous note for data sources.

8. While voting rights can be seen as procedural gains, they comprised the ultimate goal of the
movement and hence are more substantive than, say, increased access to officials for suffragists to
argue their case.

9. However, in two of them, the legislative votes were held in January, just as the pickets were
beginning.

10. The data on arson attacks were supplied by the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz; the data
on the asylum debate is from the author's analysis of articles in the daily newspaper die tageszeitung
(cf. Karapin 2000).

11. These are somewhat different from the polarization process in McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly
(2001: 322-27), which focuses on elite contention.

12. This can also be seen in the anti-immigration movement. From 1989 to 1991, adult residents
 31

experimented with a variety of nonviolent protest methods (petitions, attending hearings) while
youths experimented with militant tactics (group assaults of individual foreigners, clandestine
attacks on dwellings). This eventually led to the discovery of a powerful combination, the mass
assault on foreigners' housing by youths with support from crowds of adults. Riots were quickly
combined with a variety of violent attacks on foreigners' housing in the waves that swept Germany
after Hoyerswerda and Rostock.
 32
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