College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item WHY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS BECOME SUSTAINED: THE ROLE OF DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES IN SOCIAL MOVEMENT ORGANIZATION SURVIVAL(2021) Partridge, Diana M; Telhami, Shibley; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Why do some social movements become sustained while others fade away? Is it chance, the strength of the grievances, the type of claims, access to resources, or some other movement feature? Current social movement theory focuses on what sparks social movements rather than what sustains them. Yet arguably, social movements can achieve more profound and long-lasting change when they endure, while short-lived movements are more prone to bring about cosmetic change. This dissertation refocuses on how social movement organization (SMO) decision-making affects SMO sustainability. I argue that SMOs that use community-anchored decision-making processes are more adept at survival because these processes bolster the SMO’s legitimacy; foster interpersonal trust among activists; provide the SMO a modus operandi for how to continue operations during challenging times, and increase the changes the SMO has a contingency plan; and slow the onset of collective action burnout. These four mechanisms render SMOs more resilient to organizational disruption and deterrence from the authorities, increasing the likelihood of SMO survival. By contrast, SMOs that use decision-making processes unanchored in the community are more vulnerable to disruption and deterrence. Community-anchored decision-making processes are not synonymous with highly participatory movements, robust solidarity among activists, or even strong community. A movement can have all these features and still have unanchored decision-making processes, highlighting that not all strong communities are equal in their ability to sustain collective action. I test my hypotheses with case material from contemporary North African social movements. Based on dozens of interviews with social movement activists, journalists, academics, and officials; SMO statements; and government documents and secondary source material, I find strong support for the first and second hypotheses, moderate support for the third, and minimal support for the fourth. The results indeed suggest that SMOs’ decision-making processes affect their survival.Item The Ecology of the Reentry Process: A Gendered Analysis of Community Influences(2014) Alper, Mariel; Simpson, Sally S; Nakamura, Kiminori; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Utilizing original data on a large sample of male and female first-time parolees in Pennsylvania (N=10,579), this dissertation examines parole violations and police arrest recidivism outcomes to assess how community characteristics influence men and women's recidivism during parole. It adds to the literature by examining specific types of technical violations and arrests, including those that do not result in revocation, as they can serve as indicators of the difficulties parolees encounter after prison such as substance abuse and employment difficulties. Additionally, this dissertation adds to the literature by examining whether community effects vary by gender and by race/gender. The findings support the importance of several community characteristics that have been implicated in prior research and uncover previously unexamined gender and gender/race differences. Additionally, the effect of community characteristics varies by the type of recidivism that is examined, suggesting that the way recidivism is conceptualized and measured matters. Disadvantage in the community was associated with higher odds of arrests for men, but lower odds of technical violations. While the availability of service providers increased the odds of monetary violations for both men and women, they were associated with higher odds of employment violations for women and lower odds for men. Offender concentration in the community was associated with higher odds of several types of technical violations for men, including treatment violations, and lower odds of treatment violations for women. On the other hand, offender concentration was also associated with lower odds of drug violations and police arrests for men. For both men and women, lower informal social ties were associated with higher odds of most types of technical violations. Several race-specific effects for men and women were also found. Policy and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed. For example, community effects may be more nuanced than previous theories have suggested and theoretical explanations should incorporate gendered experiences and intersectionality. Additionally, investing in parolees' communities can aid offender reintegration and reduce recidivism and risk assessments should more systematically incorporate community characteristics. Further, findings from this project suggest the need to avoid practices that unintentionally increase recidivism and punitiveness for parolees.