The research papers provided on this site examine Proposition One and the campaigns surrounding it through historical analysis, primary source research, and contemporary scholarship. Together, they explore the political strategies, rhetoric, organizing efforts, and broader social context that shaped both the initiative and the movement that defeated it. These papers are included to support deeper study of the campaign and to contribute to the public historical record of this pivotal moment in Idaho’s civil rights history.
This paper articulates a poststructural, genealogical perspective on how discourse functions in political battles. Drawing from Kenneth Burke and Michel Foucault and others who have developed their respective perspectives, it proposes a power-strategy framework for interpreting how victimage rhetoric in the form of negative constructions of an opponent's subjectivity are deployed in political, power struggles.
Tabloid Politics: Power and Subjection in an Anti-Gay Campaign (pdf)
DownloadDrawing its analytic frame from the works of Michel Foucault and Kenneth Burke as explicated in Michael Blain's, "Power, war and melodrama in the discourses of political movements," this paper presents a critical discourse analysis of 239 Idaho Statesman articles in an examination of the rhetorical strategies employed by both supporters and opponents of the 1993 Idaho Citizens Alliance anti-gay initiative.
Strategic Discourse and Social Conflict in Idaho's Anti-Gay Initiative (pdf)
DownloadThis movement analysis of the Idaho Citizens Alliance during the 1993 initiative campaign Proposition One examines the ICA as a grassroots political organization using Sydney Tarrow's "Power In Movement" model of Political Opportunity Structure, Mobilizing Structure, and Framing Collective Action.
A Movement Analysis of the Idaho Citizens Alliance (pdf)
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