The effects of target vulnerabilities on social movement outcomes: Wage campaigns in U.S. cities

Abstract

How do target vulnerabilities affect social movement outcomes? Walsh (1986) and Jasper and Poulsen (1993) conceptualize target vulnerabilities as characteristics or practices of organizations that are inconsistent with relevant normative expectations (laws, professional codes, widely-held public expectations, etc.). Organizations' claims to legitimacy, and the access to resources that legitimacy bestows, are based on the presumption of adherence to those normative expectations, so credible threats to that presumption cannot be ignored. We draw on political process theories and the logic of policy change to analyze how target vulnerabilities affect movement outcomes in campaigns for living wages (1994-2003) and for increased minimum wages (2012-2017). For living wage campaigns, we model the effects of political elites' vulnerability to the threat of popular delegitimation and vulnerability to non-participation by municipal workers on the likelihood of city councils 1) holding a vote (access outcome) and 2) adopting a living wage ordinance (advantages outcome). Using sequential regression analyses of these outcomes in 596 U.S. cities, we find that the effects of target vulnerabilities vary across living wage ordinance outcomes: delegitimation vulnerabilities affect the likelihood of access outcomes, whereas adoption advantages are more likely in the presence of non-participation vulnerabilities. We test the generalizability of our model and measures in an analysis of local minimum wage ordinance campaigns. We show that contentious politics at the local level differs from the national-level in ways that render city political elites potentially vulnerable to movement threats of delegitimation and non-participation.