Confronting the State, the Corporation, and the Academy: The Influence of Institutional Targets on Social Movement Repertoires.

Within social movement research, there is increased interest in how movements use repertoires of action strategically to achieve stated goals. Much attention has been paid to characteristics of the actors themselves, and there is considerable debate if more formalized actors prefer the use of more conventional protest tactics. Yet the selection of repertoires depends not only upon the type of actor or the claim that actor makes, but the specific target of protest. While the state is generally regarded as the primary granter of new benefits for movements, many movements - from organized labor to the environmental movement - target corporate, educational, and other institutions. Employing a unique dataset of all protests reported in the New York Times between 1960 and 1990, we examine how repertoire choice is, in part, contingent upon the target in question. Although educational institutions and corporations are targeted by a narrower range of social groups who make a more limited variety of protest claims, the repertoires used to pressure these two institutions are much less conventional and more diverse than those used against the state. We offer some possible explanations for this phenomenon, including the role of the state in shaping the institutionalization of insurgent protest forms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]