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Historically, economic issues have often been the key grievances articulated by pro- testors (Rudé, 1964). Food riots to protest the lack of sufficient food, attacks on fac- tories and businesses to prevent mechani- zation, and sabotage to disable machinery and other property are often economically motivated. These activities were com- mon in preindustrial England and France (Hobsbawm & Rudé, 1975; Tilly, 1995). More recently, bank failures in Japan and Korea produced economic crises in several Southeast Asian countries, where curren- cies declined sharply in value. The reduced purchasing power that resulted led to widespread rioting in Indonesia in Febru- ary 1998 (“Indonesians die,” 1998). Rioters frequently targeted businesses and homes of ethnic Chinese, whom they blamed for soaring prices. These protests may reflect the strain caused by widespread unemploy- ment and inadequate incomes. The evidence that economic issues drive strain and produce collective action is mixed. Whereas economic grievances seem to be related to people’s attitudes and their support of radical policies (Plutzer, 1987), other researchers have had great difficulty connecting economic conditions to actual collective behavior or protest (Myers, 1997; Shorter & Tilly, 1974; Spilerman, 1970, 1976). Useem (1998) argues that these am- biguous findings can be clarified if we make a distinction between routine (election ral- lies, peaceful protest) and nonroutine (ri- ots, rebellion, violence) collective action. Whereas routine collective action cannot be well explained by strain, there is more evidence that strain does produce nonrou- tine collective action (Myers, 1997; Myers & Li, 2001; Olzak & Shanahan, 1996). Surveys of three distinctive groups, Ger- man students, Indian Muslims, and British Muslims, tested a theory of the antecedents of normative (demonstrations, picketing) and nonnormative (civil disobedience, ri- ots) collective action. Perceptions of unfair group disadvantage are predicted to lead to group-based anger and aggressive, nonnor- mative, action. Perceptions of disadvantage combined with the belief in the group’s ef- ficacy to solve its problems are predicted to lead to normative action. The results supported the theory, suggesting a group’s response to relative deprivation depends partly on its beliefs about the efficacy of normative protest (Tausch et. al., 2011). A meta-analysis finds that perceived efficacy is highly related to participation in protest (van Zomeren et al., 2008). Relative Deprivation. In the eighteenth century, the revolt against the feudal socio- economic structure occurred first in France. Yet France had already lost many feudal characteristics by the time the French Rev- olution began in 1789. The French peasant was free to travel, to buy and sell goods, and to contract services. In Germany, however, the feudal social structure was still intact. Thus, based on objective conditions, we would have expected a revolution to oc- cur in Germany before it did in France. Why didn’t it? One analyst (de Tocqueville, 1856/1955) argued that the decline of medi- eval institutions in France caused peasants to become obsessed with the ownership of land. The improvement in their objective situation created subjective expectations for further improvement. Peasant partici- pation in the French Revolution was moti- vated by the desire to fulfill subjective ex- pectations—to obtain land—rather than by a desire to eliminate oppressive conditions.