ABSTRACT
The emergence of a protest movement entails a transformation both of consciousness and of behavior. In the United States the principal structuring institution, at least in the early phases of protest, is the electoral-representative system. The significance of this assertion is not that the electoral system provides an avenue of influence under normal circumstances. Once protest erupts, the specific forms it takes are largely determined by features of social structure. Organizers and leaders who contrive strategies that ignore the social location of the people they seek to mobilize can only fail. If mass defiance is neither freely available nor the forms it takes freely determined, it must also be said that it is generally of limited political impact. To refer to an institutional disruption is simply to note the obvious fact that institutional life depends upon conformity with established roles and compliance with established rules.
