Disadvantaged Communities, Sudden Threats, and the Founding of Social Movement Organizations: The Case of Anti-Mafia Organizations

We examine the contribution of disadvantaged communities to protest and the creation of social movement organizations (SMOs). While some view disadvantaged groups’ dissatisfaction with the status quo as critical, others expect them to be reluctant to initiate collective action because they tolerate grievances that tend to be stable over time. We suggest that sudden threats that stir up the urgency to fight against the status quo serve as a catalyst for the influence of disadvantaged communities on protest and SMO creation. Quantitative analyses of the emergence of SMOs that fought against the Mafia in Palermo, Italy, reveal two main findings. First, murders of individuals who challenged the Mafia increase anti-Mafia protest events especially in disadvantaged communities. Second, SMO creation is less likely to occur in disadvantaged communities. But protest events strengthen SMO creation, and this relationship is stronger in disadvantaged communities. An experiment in the context of racism in policing provides additional evidence of these links while also pointing to anger as an important mechanism. Overall, this study helps identify situations in which disadvantaged communities’ latent grievances, ignited by sudden threats, work in tandem with protests to create a distinct route to SMO foundings.