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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Sociological Review.Conventional accounts of protest cycles posit a demonstration effect-successful protests incite other constituencies to activism. I offer an alternative theory that builds on population ecology models of organizational behavior I argue that the expansion of social movement organizations, or organizational density, is also an essential component of protest cycles. Multivariate analyses of the effects of civil rights protest and organizational growth on feminist protest and organizational foundings between 1955 and 1985 demonstrate that organizational density promotes the diffusion of protest. Protest also engenders activism by others, but only under favorable political conditions. This implies that an enduring organizational niche and political allies in power are necessary for protest to spread beyond single movements and create protest opportunities for other challengers.

There is a long tradition of racial, ethnic-, and gender-based voluntary associations enhancing the civic, economic, and political participation of marginalized groups in U.S. society through the provision of services and resources directly to group members. In the 1960s, women, Blacks, and other ethnic groups mapped political objectives onto this traditional form of voluntary organization, along with investing in direct political protest and advocacy for civil and social rights. One result was the development of a hybrid organizational form that combines political advocacy and service provision as its core identity. Because of its dual commitment to promoting the interests of women and racial or ethnic minorities through both service provision and advocacy, however, this organizational form faces distinctive environmental uncertainties and boundary conditions.

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