American Journal of Sociology 116(1)

Redistributing toward the Rich: Strategic Policy Crafting in the Campaign to Repeal the Sixteenth Amendment, 1938–1958
Isaac William Martin

Beginning in 1938, some American business groups campaigned to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment and limit the federal taxation of income and wealth. Although their proposed upward-redistributive policy would benefit few voters, it won the support of 31 state legislatures. To explain this outcome, this article offers a theory of strategic policy crafting by advocacy groups. Such groups may succeed even in otherwise unfavorable institutional environments if they craft their proposals to fit the salient policy context. Archival evidence and event history analysis support this hypothesis. Public opinion also helps explain legislative support for upward-redistributive policy.

Trouble in Store: Probes, Protests, and Store Openings by Wal-Mart, 1998–2007
Paul Ingram, Lori Qingyuan Yue, and Hayagreeva Rao

The authors consider how uncertainty over protest occurrence shapes the strategic interaction between companies and activists. Analyzing Wal-Mart, the authors find support for their theory that companies respond to this uncertainty through a “test for protest” approach. In Wal-Mart’s case, this consists of low-cost probes in the form of new store proposals. They then withdraw if they face protests, especially when those protests signal future problems. Wal-Mart is more likely to open stores that are particularly profitable, even if they are protested. This uncertainty-based account stands in sharp contrast to full-information models that characterize protests as rare miscalculations.

Changing to Win? Threat, Resistance, and the Role of Unions in Strikes, 1984–2002
Andrew W. Martin and Marc Dixon

Much of what we know about strikes is grounded in the context of postwar Fordism, a unique historical moment of relatively institutionalized labor-management relations. Yet the resurgence of corporate resistance over the past quarter century, coupled with an increasingly hostile political and economic climate, has fundamentally transformed the American industrial landscape. Drawing from this research and insights on social movements and formal organizations, we expect unions will vary considerably in their response to threats. Our analysis, based on a comprehensive data set of U.S. strikes from 1984 to 2002, reveals the importance of such intramovement cleavages for strike activity and for the prospects of organized labor in the contemporary United States. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for scholarship on threat and social movement challenges more generally.

The Civilizing Process and Its Discontents: Suicide and Crimes against Persons in France, 1825–1830
Hugh P. Whitt

A spatial analysis of data for French départements assembled in the 1830s by André-Michel Guerry and Adolphe d’Angeville examines the impacts of modernization and resistance to governmental “Frenchification” policies on measures of violence and its direction. In the context of Unnithan et al.’s integrated model of suicide and homicide, high suicide rates in the northern core and a predilection for violence against others in the southern periphery may be consistently interpreted in terms of theories of the civilizing process and internal colonialism. Alternative explanations of southern violence in 19th-century France are explored and rejected, and additional theoretical applications are suggested.

Racial Boundary Formation at the Dawn of Jim Crow: The Determinants and Effects of Black/Mulatto Occupational Differences in the United States, 1880
Aaron Gullickson

This article examines variation in the social position of mixed-race populations by exploiting county-level variation in the degree of occupational differentiation between blacks and mulattoes in the 1880 U.S. census. The role of the mixed-race category as either a “buffer class” or a status threat depended on the class composition of whites. Black/mulatto occupational differentiation was greatest where whites had high occupational prestige and thus little to fear from a mulatto group. Furthermore, differentiation increased the risk of lynching where whites had relatively low status and decreased the risk of lynching where whites had relatively high status.

Falling Short of the Promise: Poverty Vulnerability in the United States and Britain, 1993–2003
Diana Worts, Amanda Sacker, and Peggy McDonough

The welfare state promises to moderate the duration and concentration of poverty. The authors ask how well this promise has been fulfilled in the United States and Britain from 1993 to 2003. They examine two aspects of poverty vulnerability during this period of welfare reform: (1) its persistence and associated risk factors and (2) the efficacy of social transfers. After accounting for measurement error, sociodemographic characteristics, and the impact of redistributive programs, the authors find that poverty is often persistent and risk is concentrated, especially in the United States. Moreover, the British safety net appears to better protect those at risk.

American Journal of Sociology, July 2010: Volume 116, Issue 1