Industrial conflict is volatile

The temporal patterns of strikes do not resemble those of births, or school attendance, or traffic accidents. Births, school attendance, traffic accidents, and many other repetitive social phenomena display a kind of quantitative inertia: One year's pattern usually resembles the previous year's quite closely, and large changes only occur gradually.

Strikes differ emphatically from such cumulative social phenomena; they veer rapidly in location and number from one period to the next. To be sure, the frequency of strikes varies with the season in construction, schoolteaching, and a number of other trades that have annual production cycles. The periodicity of labor contracts affects the rhythm of industrial conflict. And to the extent that the business cycle follows a regular pattern – a much-disputed subject – so do the ebb and flow of strikes. Yet a glance at almost any national strike series shows large swings in frequency and amplitude from month to month and year to year. Indeed, strikes often arrive in great waves that wash over an entire region or country.

The volatility of strike activity resembles that of open political struggle. As represented by demonstrations, marches, meetings, petitions, partisan attacks, and related forms of contention, political struggles shift rapidly from pallid to intense, from small to immense. War, revolution, rebellion, and other forms of strategic interaction likewise swing quickly. When multiple parties struggle openly for advantage, volatility becomes the rule.

Why should that be? Three related features of strategic interaction contribute to its rapid variations in intensity.