How do social movements build broad popular support and secure sweeping policy changes? This study focuses on demographic, economic, and institutional factors, as well as movement-specific organizational dynamics, to examine under which conditions movement support thrives and results in policy changes. Moreover, this study examines whether movement support and policies diffuse across neighboring states and counties, and how these trends shape one another. As a case in point, this project focuses on the U.S. Prohibition movement, which was one of the largest, longest-lasting, and most successful movements in U.S. history.
The analysis involves an original dataset that contains information about the legal status of prohibition at the county and state level between 1890 and 1919, the year the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was enacted. The dataset includes measures regarding population change, urbanization, economic trends, and interest groups. In addition, the dataset incorporates information from archival materials regarding relevant social movement organizations and activity, electoral context, and media communication that may have shaped movement growth and success. These data allow us to examine the organization and outcomes of the movement both across space and at the state and local level.
This project provides training and research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students at two institutions. Undergraduate research assitants at Christopher Newport University, primarily a teaching college, will be trained in data collection and coding. At UNC, graduate student training will revolve around systematic data collection, coding, and spatial modeling. In addition, the project will result in a large, publically available dataset of use to social scientists and historians. Findings from this study may be of interest to multiple stakeholders, such as legal experts, non-profit organizations, policy makers, and the general public, in addition to an interdisciplinary group of researchers.
How do social movements build broad popular support and secure sweeping policy changes? This study focuses on demographic, economic, and institutional factors, as well as movement-specific organizational dynamics, to examine under which conditions movement support thrives and results in policy changes. Moreover, this study examines whether movement support and policies diffuse across neighboring states and counties, and how these trends shape one another. As a case in point, this project focuses on the U.S. Prohibition movement, which was one of the largest, longest-lasting, and most successful movements in U.S. history. Although much attention has focused on the passage and implementation of prohibition at the federal level, the story of prohibition needs to be told at the state and local level. At each of these levels different factors aligned to bring about prohibition success or failure. At the state level, cultural and demographic characteristics were important and can be thought of as a necessary precondition for prohibition. The existence of cultural groups that were open to the prohibitionist message, however, was not sufficient to bring about dry laws. This demographic advantage had to be translated into either a legislature that would enact such laws or into a statewide referendum in which voters could be encouraged to adopt them. At the local level, prohibitionists again sought to change the composition of those doing the voting. Local demographics could not be easily changed the way state legislatures could. So, dry campaigners (especially the WCTU) worked to bring out the dry vote through partnership with local church organizations. At the same time, they also sought to depress wet voting by two means. Dry campaigns initially sought to eliminate saloons thus directly attacking the sites of liquor organization. Indirectly, eliminating saloons also decreased the economic dependence of localities on liquor tax dollars thereby weakening a key argument liquor interests used to persuade voters to continue alcohol sales. Prohibition can be thought of as not so much the will of the majority as the careful creation of majorities both in state legislators and the voting public to secure legal change. The major project goal was to collect original data documenting the organizational, political, and social factors that shaped the passage of prohibition laws at the local and state level between 1890 and 1920. The research team built two core datasets, and integrated these with data from the US Census and data on the adoption of prohibition laws. The first dataset describes the state level organization of the Anti-Saloon League from 1890-1919. The second dataset includes state level organization characteristics of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union for all fifty states from 1890-1919, and county level characteristics for Iowa, Virginia, Arizona, Michigan and North Carolina during key years. These measures were merged with data describing prohibition outcomes: the passage of dry laws, and the returns from prohibition referenda. This project provided training and research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students at two institutions. Undergraduate research assistants at Christopher Newport University, primarily a teaching college, learned data management and coding of historical materials. At UNC, graduate students conducted systematic data collection, coding, and spatial modeling. This research documents the role of ethnic conflict and threat in producing prohibition outcomes. Specifically, analyses indicate that areas nearby German, Irish, and Italian immigrants were more likely to adopt prohibition laws, suggesting that prohibition was motivated by conflict between these groups and native whites. Preliminary results suggest that the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was not successful in gaining passage of prohibition legislation, while the Anti-Saloon League was extraordinarily successful. Findings from this study may be of interest to multiple stakeholders, such as legal experts, non-profit organizations, policy makers, and the general public, in addition to an interdisciplinary group of researchers.
