The Economics of Movement Success: Business Responses to Civil Rights Mobilization

Abstract

This article explores why movements are successful in obtaining concessions from economic actors. While social movement theorists have suggested that economic actors weigh the costliness of protests, the author considers the vulnerability of movement targets to both the cost of disruptions in routine transactions and the cost of conceding to movement demands. By addressing the magnitude of these costs and their interaction, the author derives an economic opportunity structure to predict the receptivity of economic actors to movement demands and the likely struggles among them over the decision to yield. Also, this cost‐assessment approach reveals patterns of vulnerability across economic sectors to the costs of disruptive mobilization. The author tests this analysis based on case studies of the responses of economic actors to civil rights mobilization in the 1960s in five Southern localities. These cases depict how the character of protest and variation in the configuration of business communities defined the range of movement outcomes from relatively swift accommodation to persistent resistance.

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