Research attempting to predict repression, including the policing of protest, has tended to rely on pooled time series data, which statistically produces coefficients that estimate the average relationship between each variable and the outcome across the entire pooled time period. When relationships are very stable, this statistical assumption, referred to as temporal homogeneity, is unproblematic. But, when enforced without testing, it threatens to artificially “stabilize” temporally heterogenous relationships. In terms of protest policing, this has resulted in relatively ahistorical empirical explanations of protest policing. This article imports modeling techniques from work on identifying historical periods to show how temporal moving regressions can be built to recognize and model temporal heterogeneity in the factors influencing protest policing. We present three important uses for these models: testing exhaustively for temporal heterogeneity in apparently stable findings; testing for temporal heterogeneity that may reconcile otherwise contradictory findings; and inductively combining orthogonal research lines. We demonstrate the utility of each in examinations of protest policing. More generally, we show the potential of temporal moving regressions for uncovering new insights and bringing greater historical sensitivity to research on protest and beyond.
AnderssonE.BockD.FrisenM. (2006). Some statistical aspects of methods for detection of turning points in business cycles. Journal of Applied Statistics, 33(3), 257-278. https://doi.org/10.1080/02664760500445517
3.
BeckE. M.TolnayS. E. (1990). The killing fields of the Deep South: The market for cotton and the lynching of blacks, 1882-1930. American Sociological Review, 55(4), 526-539. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095805
4.
BoudreauV. (2005). Precarious regimes and matchup problems in the explanation of repressive policy. In DavenportC.JohnstonH.MuellerC. (Eds.), Repression and mobilization (pp. 33-57). University of Minnesota Press.
5.
BromleyD. G.ShupeA. D.Jr. (1983). Repression and the decline of social movements: The case of new religions. In FreemanJ. (Ed.), Social movements of the sixties and seventies (pp. 335-347). Longman.
6.
BrownR. L.DurbinJ.EvansJ. M. (1975). Techniques for testing the constancy of regression relationships over time. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (Methodological), 37(2), 149-192. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2517-6161.1975.tb01532.x
7.
DavenportC. (1995). Multi-dimensional threat perception and state repression: An inquiry into why states apply negative sanctions. American Journal of Political Science, 39(3), 683-713. https://doi.org/10.2307/2111650
DavenportC.SouleS. A.ArmstrongD. A.II. (2011). Protesting while Black? The differential policing of American activism, 1960 to 1990. American Sociological Review, 76(1), 152-178. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122410395370
11.
della PortaD. (1998). Police knowledge and protest policing: Some reflections on the Italian case. In della PortaD.ReiterH. (Eds.), Policing protest: The control of mass demonstrations in Western democracies (pp. 228-252). University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctttv1tv.13
12.
della PortaD.FillieuleO. (2004). Policing social protest. In SnowD. A.SouleS. A.KriesiH. (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to social movements (pp. 217-241). Blackwell Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1111/b.9780631226697.2003.00011.x
13.
della PortaD.ReiterH. (Eds.). (1998). Policing protest: The control of mass demonstrations in Western Democracies. University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctttv1tv
14.
EarlJ. (2003). Tanks, tear gas and taxes: Toward a theory of movement repression. Sociological Theory, 21(1), 44-68. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9558.00175
EarlJ.SouleS. A.McCarthyJ. D. (2003). Protest under fire? Explaining the policing of protest. American Sociological Review, 68(4), 581-606. https://doi.org/10.2307/1519740
19.
GamsonW. A. (1990). The strategy of social protest. Dorsey. (Original work published in 1975)
20.
GibsonJ. L. (1988). Political intolerance and political repression during the McCarthy Red Scare. American Political Science Review, 82(2), 511-529. https://doi.org/10.2307/1957398
21.
GriffinL. J.IsaacL. W. (1992). Recursive regression and the historical use of “time” in time-series analysis of historical process. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 25(4), 166-179. https://doi.org/10.1080/01615440.1992.10112723
22.
IsaacL.ChristiansenL.MillerJ.NickelT. (1998). Temporally recursive regression and social historical inquiry: An example of cross-movement militancy spillover. International Review of Social History, 43(Suppl. 6), 9-32. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002085900011507X
23.
IsaacL. W.GriffinL. J. (1989). Ahistoricism in time-series analyses of historical process: Critique, redirection, and illustrations from U.S. labor history. American Sociological Review, 54(6), 873-890. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095713
24.
IsaacL. W.StreetD. A.KnappS. J. (1994). Analyzing historical contingency with formal methods: The case of the “relief explosion” and 1968. Sociological Methods & Research, 23(1), 114-141. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124194023001005
McCarthyJ. D.McPhailC. (1998). The institutionalization of protest in the United States. In MeyerD. S.TarrowS. (Eds.), The social movement society: Contentious politics for the new century (pp. 83-110). Rowman & Littlefield.
29.
McCarthyJ. D.McPhailC.CristJ. (1999). The diffusion and adoption of public order management systems. In KriesiH.Della PortaD.RuchtD. (Eds.), Social movements in a globalizing world (pp. 71-93). St. Martin’s Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27319-5_5
30.
McPhailC.McCarthyJ. D. (1998). Interaction along and collective action by police and protestors. Protest, The Public Sphere and Public Order, University of Geneva, Switzerland.
31.
McPhailC.SchweingruberD.McCarthyJ. D. (1998). Policing protest in the United States: 1960-1995. In della PortaD.ReiterH. (Eds.), Policing protest: The control of mass demonstrations in Western democracies (pp. 49-69). University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctttv1tv.5
32.
NoakesJ.KlockeB. V.GilhamP. (2005). Whose streets? Police and protester struggles over space in Washington, DC, 29-30 September 2001. Policing and Society: An International Journal of Research and Policy, 15(3), 235-254. https://doi.org/10.1080/10439460500168576
33.
RafailP.SouleS. A.McCarthyJ. D. (2012). Describing and accounting for the trends in US Protest Policing, 1960−1995. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 56(4), 736-765. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002711431793
34.
ReganP. M.HendersonE. A. (2002). Democracy, threats and political repression in developing countries: Are democracies internally less violent?Third World Quarterly, 23(1), 119-136. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436590220108207
35.
Reynolds-StensonH. (2017). Protesting the police: Police brutality claims as a predictor of police repression of protest. Social Movement Studies, 17(1), 48-63. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2017.1381592
StockdillB. C. (1996). Multiple oppressions and their influence on collective action: The case of the AIDS movement [Doctoral dissertation, Northwestern University]. Evanston, IL.
38.
TillyC. (1978). From mobilization to revolution. Addison-Wesley.
39.
WangD. J.SouleS. A. (2012). Social movement organizational collaboration: Networks of learning and the diffusion of protest tactics, 1960-1995. American Journal of Sociology, 117(6), 1676-1722. https://doi.org/10.1086/664685
40.
WesternB.KleykampM. (2017). A Bayesian change point model for historical time series analysis. Political Analysis, 12(4), 354-374. https://doi.org/10.1093/pan/mph023
41.
WhiteR. W. (1999). Comparing state repression of pro-state vigilantes and anti-state insurgents: Northern Ireland, 1972-1975. Mobilization, 4(2), 189-202. https://doi.org/10.17813/maiq.4.2.w37v18p176754jv4
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
