¹ See Muller, Edward N., “A Test of a Partial Theory of Potential for Political Violence,” American Political Science Review, 66 (September, 1972), 928–959.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² See Table 2 at page 504 of Wanderer, Jules J., “An Index of Riot Severity and Some Correlates,” American Journal of Sociology, 74 (March, 1969), 500–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ The Survey Division of the Statistical Laboratory at Iowa State University drew the sample and conducted the interviewing between March and May 1970. It is a disproportionately stratified, multistage, random probability sample. On the basis of an update to the 1960 Census conducted by the Waterloo City Planning Commission in 1967, the area of the city containing most black residents was sampled at a higher rate than the area containing most white residents. Thus, while blacks make up only 8 per cent of the Waterloo population, they constitute 38 per cent of this sample. Within each stratum a response rate of 80 per cent completions was obtained.

⁴ These are Short-Term Welfare Gratification and Long-Term Welfare Gratification. See the appendix in Muller, , “A Test of a Partial Theory of Potential for Political Violence,” pp. 955–959.Google Scholar

⁵ Gurr, Ted Robert, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 24.Google Scholar

⁶ Gurr, , Why Men Rebel, p. 27.Google Scholar

⁷ See the discussion at pages 27 and 28 of Gurr, Why Men Rebel.

⁸ See pages 24 to 28 of Gurr, Why Men Rebel. Here Gurr hypothesizes about relationships between relative deprivation and potential for collective violence. Potential for political violence is a subset of potential for collective violence (see page 158).

⁹ Feierabend, Ivo K., Feierabend, Rosalind L., and Nesvold, Betty A.. “Social Change and Political Violence: Cross-National Patterns,” in Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Graham, Hugh Davis and Gurr, Ted Robert (New York: Signet Books, 1969), p. 609.Google Scholar

¹⁰ See hypotheses (1) and (2) at page 609 of “Social Change and Political Violence: Cross-National Patterns.”

¹¹ See the discussion and literature cited therein at pages 522 and 523 of Orum, Anthony M. and Orum, Amy, “The Class and Status Bases of Negro Student Protest,” Social Science Quarterly, 49 (December, 1968), 521–533.Google Scholar What we call the “reference group” version of the AD concept Orum and Orum label the “relative deprivation” perspective. Since the reference group hypothesis formulated by the Orums is devoid of explicit tense references, we have reformulated it in two parts.

¹² For example, we cannot just take it for granted that because an individual's aspirations are not met he is not achieving what he perceives as his just deserts. Cf. Gurr's statement that “people become most intensely discontented when they cannot get what they think they deserve, not just what they want in an ideal sense …” (“A Comparative Study of Civil Strife,” in Violence in America, ed. Graham, and Gurr, p. 568).Google Scholar

¹³ This particular warning has been made by most proponents of the achievement discrepancy hypothesis. Compare the statement by Gurr at page 568 of “A Comparative Study of Civil Strife”: “Relative deprivation is not whatever the outside observer thinks people ought to be dissatisfied with. It is a state of mind…” See also the statement by Feierabend et al. at page 609 of “Social Change and Political Violence: Cross-National Patterns,” “It should also be pointed out that it is perceived rather than actual social attainment that is important.” Finally compare the statement by Davies, James C. at page 6 of “Toward a Theory of Revolution,” American Sociological Review, 27 (February, 1962), 5–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “It is the dissatisfied state of mind rather than the tangible provision of ‘adequate’ or ‘inadequate’ supplies of food, equality, or liberty which produces the revolution.”

¹⁴ Gurr, , “A Comparative Study of Civil Strife,” p. 572.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Gurr, , Why Men Rebel, pp. 63–66.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Feierabend, et al., “Social Change and Political Violence: Cross-National Patterns,” p. 627.Google Scholar

¹⁷ The definitions below are adapted from Grofman, Bernard, “Utility and Aspiration,” Department of Political Science, State University of New York at Stony Brook, ditto, 1971.Google Scholar For a general introduction to the literature on aspiration theory see McWhinney, W. H., “Aspiration Levels and Utility Theory,” General Systems Yearbook, 10 (1965), 131–143.Google Scholar

¹⁸ See Lewin, K., Dembo, T., Festinger, L., and Sears, P., “Level of Aspiration,” in Personality and the Behavioral Disorders, ed. Hunt, J. McV. (New York: Ronald Press, 1944), pp. 333–378.Google Scholar By expected utility is meant the subjective probability of an event's occurrence times its utility, where utility is assumed to be expressed on an interval scale which satisfies the Von Neumann-Morgenstern axioms. (See any introductory text on decision theory.)

¹⁹ See Simon, Herbert, “A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 69 (February, 1955), 99–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ See Siegel, Sidney, “Level of Aspiration and Decision-Making,” Psychological Review, 64 (1957), 253–261.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

²¹ Suggested by McWhinney, “Aspiration Levels and Utility Theory.”

²² Proposed by Grofman, “Utility and Aspiration.”

²³ See pages 640 to 645 of Spilerman, Seymour, “The Causes of Racial Disturbances: A Comparison of Alternative Explanations,” American Sociological Review, 35 (August, 1970), 627–649.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁴ See Cantril, Hadley, The Pattern of Human Concerns (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1965), pp. 22–26.Google Scholar

²⁵ By Gurr's classification, 62 per cent of all personal concerns had to do with welfare values; if we include the approximately 16 per cent of interpersonal values which relate to the family as part of the welfare value category, then 78 per cent of all personal concerns referred to welfare values. See Gurr, , Why Men Rebel, p. 70.Google Scholar

²⁶ See the appendix in Muller, , “A Test of a Partial Theory of Potential for Political Violence,” pp. 955–959.Google Scholar

²⁷ See: Gurr, , Why Men Rebel, pp. 50–52Google Scholar; Geschwender, James A., “Social Structure and the Negro Revolt: An Examination of Some Hypotheses,” Social Forces, 43 (December, 1964), 248–256CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially p. 249.

²⁸ Why Men Rebel, pp. 46–50.

²⁹ Bowen, Don R., Bowen, Elinor, Gawiser, Sheldon, and Masotti, Louis H., “Deprivation, Mobility, and Orientation Toward Protest of the Urban Poor,” in Riots and Rebellion, ed. Masotii, Louis H. and Bowen, Don R. (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1968) p. 187–200.Google Scholar These authors investigated a form of the RC hypothesis in which the measure of perceived change in discrepancy was dichotomized in various ways.

³⁰ See: Feierabend, et al., “Social Change and Political Violence: Cross-National Patterns,” pp. 638–643Google Scholar; Gurr, , “A Comparative Study of Civil Strife,” pp. 572–576.Google Scholar

³¹ See: Why Men Rebel, pp. 52–56; James C. Davies, “The J-Curve of Rising and Declining Satisfactions as a Cause of Some Great Revolutions and a Contained Rebellion,” in Graham and Gurr Violence in America; Davies, “Toward a Theory of Revolution”; Geschwender, “Social Structure and the Negro Revolt: An Examination of Some Hypotheses.”

³² Davies, , “The J-Curve,” p. 671.Google Scholar

³³ See Davies, , “The J-Curve,” pp. 698–705.Google Scholar

³⁴ Actually the J-Curve label is somewhat confusing, since the pattern of change which Davies has in mind is really an upside down J, reversed and tilted to the right, as follows:

Thus, what we call a reverse J-Curve is really a rightside up J, reversed and tilted to the left, as follows:

In these figures we have adapted the ordinate to our achievement discrepancy concept; in Davies' formulation the ordinate refers to “needs” and the J-Curve describes a situation in which expected need satisfaction and actual need satisfaction have been increasing over time, followed by continued increase in expected need satisfaction but decrease in actual need satisfaction.

³⁵ See the appendix in Muller, , “A Test of a Partial Theory of Potential for Political Violence,” p. 955–959.Google Scholar

³⁶ The behaviors were: (1) taking part in protest meetings or marches that are permitted by the local authorities; (2) refusing to obey a law which one thinks is unjust, if the person feels so strongly about it that he is willing to go to jail rather than obey the law; (3) trying to stop the government from functioning by engaging in sit-ins, mass demonstrations, take-overs of buildings, and things like that; (4) trying to stop the government from functioning by engaging in violent protest demonstrations, including actions such as fighting with the police and destroying public and private property; (5) trying to challenge the power of the government by arming oneself in preparation for battles with government authorities such as the police and the National Guard.

³⁷ See Muller, Edward N., “Measurement of Readiness for Unconventional Political Participation,” Department of Political Science, State University of New York at Stony Brook, mimeo 1972.Google Scholar

³⁸ Since both PPV and the Achieved Relative Gratification variables have the same range, if PPV were a perfect inverse linear function of Achieved Relative Gratification, then a person with a score of “O” on Achieved Relative Gratification should have a score of “10” on PPV and a person with a score of “10” on Achieved Relative Gratification should have a score of “O” on PPV. However, the equation for PPV regressed against W_p, for example, estimates that, given a score of “O” on W_p, a person will have a score of only 3,542 on PPV (—.166 × O + 3.542 = 3.542); whereas, given a score of “10” on W ^p, a person's predicted PPV score is 1.882 (—.166 × 10 + 3.542 = 1.882).

³⁹ See: Bowen et al., “Deprivation, Mobility, and Orientation Toward Protest of the Urban Poor;” Crawford, Thomas J. and Naditch, Murray, “Relative Deprivation, Powerlessness, and Militancy: The Psychology of Social Protest,” Psychiatry (May, 1970), 208–223.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

⁴⁰ See Table 2 at page 193 in “Deprivation, Mobility, and Orientation Toward Protest of the Urban Poor.”

⁴¹ See: Table 1 at page 211 of Crawford and Naditch, “Relative Deprivation, Powerlessness, and Militancy: The Psychology of Social Protest”; pages 136 and 137 in Sears, David O. and McConahay, John B., “Racial Socialization, Comparison Levels, and the Watts Riot,” Journal of Social Issues, 26 (Number 1, 1970), 121–140CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Table 1 at page 586 of Ransford, H. Edward, “Isolation, Powerlessness, and Violence: A Study of Attitudes and Participation in the Watts Riot,” American Journal of Sociology, 73 (1968), 581–591.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

⁴² When the Long-Term Welfare Gratification measure constructed by Muller (see appendix in “A Test of a Partial Theory of Potential for Political Violence”) is trichotomized into “low” (—10 to —1), “medium” (0 to 10), and “high” (11 to 20) categories, the same kind of relationship appears: persons in the low (negative change) and high (positive change) categories consistently show higher mean PPV than persons in the medium (very little change) category.

⁴³ Our alpha level for rejection of the null hypothesis is .01.

⁴⁴ See Table 5 at page 197 of Bowen et al., “Deprivation. Mobility, and Orientation Toward Protest of the Urban Poor,” present-to-future shift on the Self-Anchoring scale is dichotomized into a change category (“Upward and Downward Mobility”) and a no-change category (“No Mobility”).

⁴⁵ See Muller, “A Test of a Partial Theory of Potential for Political Violence.”

⁴⁶ See Figure 5 in Muller, , “A Test of a Partial Theory of Potential for Political Violence,” p. 952.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ See the appendix in Muller, “A Test of a Partial Theory of Potential for Political Violence,” pp. 955—959. Respondents were asked to report the degree to which they agreed or disagreed with statements such as the following: “The national government is pretty much run for the benefit of all the people instead of for a few big interests looking out for themselves;” “Most of the people running the national government are crooked;” “The national government can be trusted to do what is right just about always;” “Most policemen in the United States would be willing to take a bribe;” “On the whole, the police in the United States treat everyone equally, regardless of whether they are rich or poor, white or Negro;” “The courts in the United States give everyone a fair trial, regardless of whether they are rich or poor, white or Negro;” “If the courts in the United States find someone guilty of committing a crime, the length of his sentence will depend on whether he is rich or poor, white or Negro.”

⁴⁸ See the appendix in Muller, , “A Test of a Partial Theory of Potential for Political Violence,” pp. 955–959.Google Scholar The questions referred to (1) riots that have taken place in large cities; (2) white groups that have fought with the police and destroyed public and private property in the cities in order to protest against American involvement in the war in Vietnam and other things that they dislike about American society; (3) Negro groups that have urged Negroes to arm themselves in order to be ready for shoot-outs with the police.

⁴⁹ The |PFG| and |EIG| terms also make an independent contribution, although somewhat smaller than that made by |AIG|. But particularly with |PFG| in the equation, the number of complete data cases is quite low.

⁵⁰ In this respect, the Waterloo sample differs from the Cleveland sample. See Table 6 at page 198 in Bowen et al., “Deprivation, Mobility, and Orientation Toward Protest of the Urban Poor.”

⁵¹ See Table 4 in Muller, , “A Test of a Partial Theory of Potential for Political Violence,” p. 938.Google Scholar

⁵² See Bowen et al., “Deprivation, Mobility, and Orientation Toward Protest of the Urban Poor.”

⁵³ Tocqueville, Alexis de, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (New York: Doubleday, 1955).Google Scholar The paradox observed by de Tocqueville is discussed in Charles Wolf, Jr., “The Present Value of the Past,” mimeo., The Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California, 1969. Wolf cites the work of many scholars who have elaborated upon the de Tocqueville Paradox, but notes that “Although they rarely ascribe it to ‘irrationality,’ … they usually are quite unclear … about a precise mechanism to account for the paradox” (p. 13).

⁵⁴ See Geschwender, “Social Structure and the Negro Revolt: an Examination of Some Hypotheses.”

⁵⁵ See Wolf, “The Present Value of the Past.”

⁵⁶ This explanation is offered by Bowen et al., “Deprivation, Mobility and Orientation to Protest of the Urban Poor,” to account for their Self-Anchoring scale findings in the Cleveland study.