Dynamics of ContentionDissatisfied with the compartmentalization of studies concerning strikes, wars, revolutions, social movements, and other forms of political struggle, McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly identify causal mechanisms and processes that recur across a wide range of contentious politics. Critical of the static, single-actor models (including their own) that have prevailed in the field, they shift the focus of analysis to dynamic interaction. Doubtful that large, complex series of events such as revolutions and social movements conform to general laws, they break events into smaller episodes, then identify recurrent mechanisms and proceses within them. Dynamics of Contention examines and compares eighteen contentious episodes drawn from many different parts of the world since the French Revolution, probing them for consequential and widely applicable mechanisms, for example, brokerage, category formation, and elite defection. The episodes range from nineteenth-century nationalist movements to contemporary Muslim-Hindu conflict to the Tiananmen crisis of 1989 to disintegration of the Soviet Union. The authors spell out the implications of their approach for explanation of revolutions, nationalism, and democratization, then lay out a more general program for study of contentious episodes wherever and whenever they occur. |
Contents
WHAT ARE THEY SHOUTING ABOUT? | 3 |
LINEAMENTS OF CONTENTION | 38 |
COMPARISONS MECHANISMS AND EPISODES | 72 |
Tentative Solutions | 89 |
MOBILIZATION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE | 91 |
CONTENTIOUS ACTION | 124 |
TRANSFORMATIONS OF CONTENTION | 160 |
Applications and Conclusions | 191 |
REVOLUTIONARY TRAJECTORIES | 193 |
NATIONALISM NATIONAL DISINTEGRATION AND CONTENTION | 227 |
CONTENTIOUS DEMOCRATIZATION | 264 |
CONCLUSIONS | 305 |
349 | |
371 | |
Common terms and phrases
active activists actors African analysis antislavery autonomy Beijing brokerage campaign cantons category formation causal mechanisms central challengers Chapter civil rights claims coalition collective action combinations Communist conflict constituted contentious episodes contentious politics cultural democracy democratization dynamic economic elite emerged episodes of contention ethnic example explain federal forms of contention FSLN groups Hindu Hu Yaobang Hutu identify identity shift inequality institutions Italian Italian unification Kazakh Kazakhstan Kenya Kikuyu leaders Marcos Mau Mau mechanisms and processes Mexico military mobilization Muslim Nairobi nationalist Nicaragua object shift officials Olenguruone opportunity opposition organizations outcomes participants Party Philippines polarization political actors popular produced protected consultation protest public politics radical reform regime regional relations repertoires repression revolutionary Sandinista scale shift Sidney Tarrow similar social movements Somoza South Soviet Soviet Union structures struggle Swiss Switzerland Third Estate threat tion trajectories transgressive trust networks Union workers Yellow revolution