How Democracy’s Resisters Forge Organizational Change: Insights from the Emergence of Christian Right Broadcasting Companies

Matthew Brooke, Harvard University

Christian Right broadcasting companies are critical, yet understudied, organizational players in the increasingly anti-democratic US right. Why and how did Christian Right broadcasting companies come into being? My answers to these questions build theory on how right-wing social movements forge organizational change to meet the challenge of democratic transitions. I demonstrate that CRBCs emerged much earlier than previously known: specifically, when grassroots activists created new organizational forms to resist the dismantling of white supremacy in the American South. These findings are puzzling because theory predicts that social movements forge innovation in the political sphere when they lack existing channels of political power and organization. To resolve this puzzle, I use novel data on US radio stations and their programming to show why and how democracy’s resisters first created new organizational forms and then adapted these new forms to survive in an increasingly democratic context. My theoretical contribution suggests a seemingly paradoxical conclusion: under certain conditions, democratization can bring into being new and enduring types of political organizations only tenuously committed to democratic norms. Findings furthermore suggest that Christian Right broadcasting companies are important mechanisms linking white backlash to civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s to rightwing anti-democratic authoritarianism in the present-day.

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 Presented in Session 160. The Politics of Protest and Resistance