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This article critically examines two key assumptions of the research on social protest. First, it explores the validity of the typologies of regime type that guide the literature on social protest and the presupposition that democracies are reasonably responsive to popular demands, including to those made through public contestation. Since citizenship rights are not evenly distributed among all citizens in these countries, it is argued that this assumption is unwarranted. Second, the article challenges the presupposition that protestors are driven by one form of rationality, namely instrumental rationality. In contrast, following Weber, it is argued that participants in public contestation may be directed by different rationalities. Specifically, protestors may seek to do more than simply influence policy outcomes. These arguments are developed with reference to the case of Palestinian citizens of Israel who initiated various forms of social protest under military rule, which lasted from 1948 to 1966.

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The Palestinian citizens of Israel have been concentrating in blue-collar, less well paid, and insecure jobs. This is viewed as a result of two processes: their gradual incorporation into the state/Jewish labour market, and at the same time, the reproduction of an elaborate division of labour within a split labour market. Unlike the bulk of the existing research, which explains the disadvantaged position of these Palestinians by variables relating to the process of stratification, such as education, age, and residential area, it is argued that this subject is better explained by variables relating to the political position of the Palestinian minority in Israel, and the structural changes in the economy and the labour market. This analysis takes into account the dominant role that the state has assumed in managing the economy and regulating the labour market, and the subjugation of the economy to what is ideologically conceived as representing the `common good' of the Jewish majority. The implications of the existence of a split labour market for the Palestinian minority and the Jewish majority is also discussed.