Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 A Continuum of Information
- 2 Measuring Information in Minority Protest
- 3 Viewing Minority Protest from the Hill
- 4 Knocking on the President’s Door
- 5 Appealing to an Unlikely Branch
- Conclusion
- Appendix A Defining Minority Political Protest
- Appendix B Study Description and Coding Across Multiple Institutions
- Appendix C Time Series Methods
- References
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 A Continuum of Information
- 2 Measuring Information in Minority Protest
- 3 Viewing Minority Protest from the Hill
- 4 Knocking on the President’s Door
- 5 Appealing to an Unlikely Branch
- Conclusion
- Appendix A Defining Minority Political Protest
- Appendix B Study Description and Coding Across Multiple Institutions
- Appendix C Time Series Methods
- References
- Index
Summary
Preface
After the 2010 midterm elections, President Barack Obama acknowledged that his party had received a “shellacking.” Sixty-four Democratic members in the House of Representatives lost their jobs, the Republicans picked up six additional seats in the Senate, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi relinquished her position to the tearful Representative John Boehner who lay in the wake of the election aftermath. It was the worst midterm loss suffered by any political party since 1938.
Before Representative Boehner went to the podium to offer his first speech as Speaker, he placed a televised congratulatory call to Tea Party activists in Ohio and said to them, “I’ll never let you down.” To some, this moment confirmed what many had suspected: the antigovernmental Tea Party protests that had taken place over the previous two years were an influential part of electoral outcomes. The non-electoral actions of the Tea Party suggest a revitalization of protest behavior in the contemporary United States. Even in the international setting, protest activities, such as the revolution that occurred in early 2011 in Egypt, have forced the world to take notice of the monumental power of citizens’ protest behavior.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Political Power of ProtestMinority Activism and Shifts in Public Policy, pp. xi - xiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013