Building Blocs ─ How Parties Organize Society

Do political parties merely represent divisions in society? Until now, scholars and other observers have generally agreed that they do. ButBuilding Blocs argues the reverse: that some political parties in fact shape divisions as they struggle to remake the social order. Drawing on the contributors' expertise in Indonesia, India, the United States, Canada, Egypt, and Turkey, this volume demonstrates further that the success and failure of parties to politicize social differences has dramatic consequences for democratic change, economic development, and other large-scale transformations.

This politicization of divisions, or "political articulation," is neither the product of a single charismatic leader nor the machinations of state power, but is instead a constant call and response between parties and would-be constituents. When articulation becomes inconsistent, as it has in Indonesia, partisan calls grow faint and the resulting vacuum creates the possibility for other forms of political expression. However, when political parties exercise their power of interpellation efficiently, they are able to silence certain interests such as those of secular constituents in Turkey. Building Blocs exposes political parties as the most influential agencies that structure social cleavages and invites further critical investigation of the related consequences.

Cihan Tugal is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of California, Berkeley, and author ofPassive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism (SUP, 2009). Manali Desai is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Cambridge and author ofState Formation and Radical Democracy in India, 18601990. Cedric de Leon is Associate Professor of Sociology at Providence College and author ofParty and Society: Reconstructing a Sociology of Democratic Party Politics (2014) andOrigins of the Right to Work: Anti-Labor Democracy in Nineteenth Century Chicago (forthcoming).