This project examines the success and failures of woman suffrage legislation in 49 U.S. states and territories. The study begins with social movement theories which focus on political opportunity structures, mobilization, and framing as predictors of social movement emergence, but also incorporates ecology and institutional theories of organizations to explain 1) why women suffrage was successful in the western states, but less successful elsewhere, and 2) how the enfranchisement of women in the West paved the way and influenced the fight for suffrage elsewhere in the country. Rather than define suffrage success as the state enfranchisement of women, the study examines the full sequence of events-all legislative initiatives (e.g., bills before state legislatures) presented before state and territorial legislators. The researchers hypothesize that their timing and sequence eventually legitimated the suffrage cause in other states. Western suffrage was facilitated by state building opportunities (e.g., amendments to territorial constitutions were easier to pass than amendments to state constitutions), while structural inertia (e.g., the longer an organization has been in existence, the greater the constraints faced in changing its core features) operated in the southern states. Western adoption legitimated woman suffrage as a principle and raised the cost of ignoring the issue for any other state or set of legislators. Social movement opposition reinforced structural inertia and hindered legitimation and diffusion processes. In addition to standard indicators of mobilizing public opinion sponsored by formal organizations, this study considers the impact of petitions and memorials (collective expressions of public opinion sponsored by formal organizations but drawn upon a loose network of people to demonstrate the legitimacy of change) and women mobilizing into the public sphere (e.g., women in law, medicine, and higher education) on suffrage success. Historians note that suffragists framed their cause using two different arguments: justice and expediency. This study suggests a third framing discourse that became more prominent over time--campaign literature emphasizing the enfranchisement of women in other states. A qualitative comparative analysis supplements findings from event count analysis using maximum likelihood estimation. The comparative analysis provides rich descriptive details; the statistical analysis facilitates use of control variables and estimates of the relative impact of various factors.
