ABSTRACT
This chapter purposes to present a simple, parsimonious model of protest diffusion that goes some way to answering the following questions, and to apply it in accounting for the start of the civil rights movement. The questions are, in accounting for the spread of collective protests, a number of questions have to be raised. Under what circumstances does diffusion take place at all? What are the mechanisms of diffusion itself, how does it actually happen? How is it that the same sorts of events that remained isolated incidents become precipitating incidents for the diffusion of collective protests at some subsequent time? A pivotal variable in the theory of collective action is the degree of prior organization within the collectivity susceptible to protest mobilization on particular issues. The diffusion model should be compared with both "classical collective behaviour" theory and other recent accounts of the origin of the civil rights movement designated by their authors as "political process" theories.
