Sacrifice for the Cause: Group Processes, Recruitment, and Commitment in a Student Social Movement

Recruitment and commitment in protest movements are best explained by analyzing group-level political processes such as consciousness-raising, collective empowerment, polarization, and collective decision-making. Such processes increase protesters' political solidarity their commitment to the cause and their belief in the non-institutional tactics that further that cause. Other frameworks, such as the rational choice and collective behavior approaches, are less adequate in accounting for recruitment and commitment. Rational choice perspectives neglect group processes by suggesting that decisions about whether to join or stay at a protest are based largely on isolated individual costlbenefit calculations. The collective behavior view that protests are spawned by confused and insecure individuals in situations of social unrest cannot be reconciled with the fact that most protests originate among close-knit groups of politically committed activists using carefully planned strategies and tactics. These conclusions are based on a study of the 1985 Columbia University divestment protest.