Learning from Other People's Actions: Environmental Variation and Diffusion in French Coal Mining Strikes, 1890-1935

This study shows the role of imitation in producing social protests. Resource mobilization theories tend to underestimate workers' need for information. The fact that conditions are right for striking needs to be communicated through news of other strikes. Thus (a) strikes stimulate other strikes, net of objective bargaining conditions, (b) unionization increases the rate of strike imitation, (c) successful strikes generate more imitation than unsuccessful strikes, (d) unionization changes the locus of strike imitation from strike beginnings to endings, and (e) long average strike length changes the locus of imitation from endings to beginnings. These predictions are supported by evidence on Third Rupublic French coal mine strikes.

[1]  C. Tilly.  From mobilization to revolution , 1978 .

[2]  Flávio Penteado Sampaio.  Class and class conflict in an industrial society , 1961 .

[3]  John Cowley,et al.  Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail , 1978 .

[4]  Mark S. Granovetter,et al.  Threshold models of diffusion and collective behavior , 1983 .

[5]  A. Rees.  Industrial Conflict and Business Fluctuations , 1952, Journal of Political Economy.

[6]  T. Schelling,et al.  The Strategy of Conflict. , 1961 .

[7]  O. Ashenfelter,et al.  Bargaining Theory, Trade Unions, and Industrial Strike Activity , 1969 .

[8]  Lewis M. Killian.  Organization, Rationality, and Spontaneity in the Civil Rights Movement. , 1984 .

[9]  Gavin J. Wright.  An evolutionary theory of economic change , 1982 .

[10]  Phil H. Goodstein.  The theory of the general strike from the French Revolution to Poland , 1984 .

[11]  Joseph S. Tracy.  An Investigation into the Determinants of U.S. Strike Activity , 1986 .

[12]  M. Mann.  Consciousness and Action among the Western Working Class , 1973 .

[13]  R. Franzosi.  Strike Data in Search of a Theory: The Italian Case in the Postwar Period , 1989 .

[14]  L. L. Wu,et al.  Issues in smoothing empirical hazard rates. , 1989, Sociological methodology.

[15]  G. Ingham.  Strikes and Industrial Conflict: Britain and Scandinavia , 1974 .

[16]  D. Gallie.  Social Inequality and Class Radicalism in France and Britain , 1984 .

[17]  E. Johnsen.  Richard M. Cyert & James G. March, A Behavioral Theory of The Firm, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1963, 332 s. , 1964 .

[18]  R. L. Hamblin,et al.  The diffusion of collective violence. , 1978, American sociological review.

[19]  R. Lacroix,et al.  Imperfect Information and Strikes: An Analysis of Canadian Experience, 1967–82 , 1986 .

[20]  D. Hibbs.  Industrial Conflict in Advanced Industrial Societies , 1976, American Political Science Review.

[21]  Beth Hayes.  Unions and Strikes with Asymmetric Information , 1984, Journal of Labor Economics.

[22]  D. Strang.  From Dependency to Sovereignty: An Event History Analysis of Decolonization 1870-1987 , 1990 .

[23]  Samuel Cohn.  When Strikes Make Sense-And Why: Lessons from Third Republic French Coal Miners , 1993 .

[24]  J. Craig Jenkins,et al.  Resource Mobilization Theory and the Study of Social Movements , 1983 .

[25]  Alfred Sauvy,et al.  Histoire économique de la France : entre les deux guerres , 1968 .

[26]  M. Shubik,et al.  A Behavioral Theory of the Firm. , 1964 .

[27]  M. Hannan,et al.  Social Dynamics: Models and Methods. , 1986 .

[28]  William A. Gamson,et al.  The strategy of social protest , 1975 .

[29]  S. Winter,et al.  An evolutionary theory of economic change , 1983 .

[30]  R. Walton,et al.  A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations. , 1966 .

[31]  Cynthia L. Gramm,et al.  Learning by Striking: Estimates of the Teetotaler Effect , 1987, Journal of Labor Economics.

[32]  K. Arrow.  The limits of organization , 1974 .

[33]  W. Powell,et al.  The iron cage revisited institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields , 1983 .

[34]  Dennis Chong.  Collective action and the civil rights movement , 1991 .

[35]  Johan P. Olsen,et al.  Ambiguity and choice in organizations , 1976 .

[36]  Henri Hatzfeld.  Du paupérisme à la sécurité sociale : essai sur les origines de la sécurité sociale en France, 1850-1940 , 1971 .

[37]  Edward Shorter,et al.  Strikes in France 1830-1968 , 1975 .

[38]  S. Spilerman,et al.  The Causes of Racial Disturbances: Tests of an Explanation , 1971 .

[39]  A. E. Eaton,et al.  Historical Limits on Neoclassical Strike Theories: Evidence from French Coal Mining, 1890–1935 , 1989 .

[40]  S. Perlman.  A theory of the labor movement , 1949 .

[41]  P. Edwards,et al.  Strikes in the United States, 1881-1974 , 1982 .

[42]  Charles A. Myers,et al.  Industrialism and Industrial Man , 1961 .

[43]  D. Mcadam.  Tactical Innovation and the Pace of Insurgency , 1983 .

[44]  Ralf Dahrendorf,et al.  Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society , 1960 .

[45]  Larry W. Isaac,et al.  AHISTORICISM IN TIME-SERIES ANALYSES OF HISTORICAL PROCESS: CRITIQUE, REDIRECTION, AND ILLUSTRATIONS FROM U.S. LABOR HISTORY* , 1989 .

[46]  E. Hobsbawm.  Workers: Worlds of Labor , 1985 .

[47]  Susan Olzak,et al.  ANAL YSIS OF EVENTS IN THE STUDY OF COLLECTIVE ACTION , 1989 .

[48]  Bert Klandermans,et al.  MOBILIZATION AND PARTICIPATION: SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPANSIONS OF RESOURCE MOBILIZATION THEORY* , 1984 .

[49]  R. Brandis.  The Limits of Organization , 1975 .