This book offers an in-depth analysis of the confrontation between popular movements and repressive regimes in Central America during the three decades beginning in 1960, particularly in El Salvador and Guatemala. Examining both urban and rural groups as well as both nonviolent social movements and revolutionary movements, this study has two primary theoretical objectives. First, to clarify the impact of state violence on contentious political movements. Under what conditions will escalating repression provoke challengers to even greater activity (perhaps even the use of violence themselves) and under what conditions will it intimidate them back into passivity? Second, to defend the utility of the political process model for studying contentious movements, indeed, finding in this model the key to resolving the repression-protest paradox. The study is based on the most thorough set of events data on contentious political activities collected from Latin American countries.
How do a few Third World political movements become global causes célèbres, while most remain isolated? This book rejects dominant views that needy groups readily gain help from selfless nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Instead, they face a Darwinian struggle for scarce resources where support goes to the savviest, not the neediest. Examining Mexico's Zapatista rebels and Nigeria's Ogoni ethnic group, the book draws critical conclusions about social movements, NGOs, and 'global civil society'.
The New Transnational Activism, first published in 2005, shows how even the most prosaic activities can assume broader political meanings when they provide ordinary people with the experience of crossing transnational space. This means that we cannot be satisfied with defining transnational activists through the ways they think. The defining feature of transnationalism in this book is relational, and not cognitive. This emphasis on activism's relational structure means that even as they make transnational claims, transnational activists draw on the resources, the networks, and the opportunities in which they are embedded, and only then - if at all - on more distant transnational links. But we can no more sharply draw a line between domestic and international politics in studying transnational activism than we could ignore local politics in studying its national equivalent. Understanding the processes that link the local, the national and the international is the major undertaking of
The Cuban exodus is estimated to consist of around 12 percent of the country's population. It harbors several distinct waves of migrants, alike only in their final rejection of Cuba. Silvia Pedraza links the revolution and exodus not only as cause and consequence but also as profoundly social and human processes that were not only political and economic but also cognitive and emotive. Ironically for a community that defined itself as being in exile, virtually no studies of its political attitudes exist, and certainly none that encompass the changing political attitudes over 47 years of the exodus. Through the use of two major research strategies - participant observation and in-depth, semi-structured interviews - Pedraza captures the processes of political disaffection and emphasizes the contrasts among the four major waves of the exodus not only in their social characteristics but also in their attitudes as members of different political generations.
Activists Forever? explores the consequences of political involvement on an individual's life. While much of the research in this area has focused on the motivations of entire protests groups, the editors of this volume propose an approach that focuses on actors. This book examines political involvement's socio-biographical effects, or the ways in which political commitment generates or modifies dispositions to act, think, and perceive, in a way that is either consistent with or in contrast to the results of previous socialization. The contents explore what political involvement leads to rather than what causes involvement. Using a variety of case studies, this collection of essays provides global coverage with a focus on participation in major protests in the 1960s and significantly broadens our understanding by looking outside the United States. These essays look at the lasting effects of activists' knowledge, connections, and symbolic capital on their future participation in
How do civil society organizations mobilize on climate change? Why do they choose certain strategies over others? What are the consequences of these choices? Networks in Contention examines how the interactions between different organizations within the international climate change movement shape strategic decisions and the kinds of outcomes organizations are able to achieve. First, it documents how and why cleavages emerged in this once-unified movement around the time of the 2009 Copenhagen Summit. Second, it shows how an organization's position in the movement's network has a large influence on the tactics it adopts. Finally, it demonstrates how the development of new strategies within this network has influenced the trajectory of global climate politics. The book establishes the ways in which networks are consequential for civil society groups, exploring how these actors can become more effective and suggesting lessons for the future coordination of activism.
How do civil society organizations mobilize on climate change? Why do they choose certain strategies over others? What are the consequences of these choices? Networks in Contention examines how the interactions between different organizations within the international climate change movement shape strategic decisions and the kinds of outcomes organizations are able to achieve. First, it documents how and why cleavages emerged in this once-unified movement around the time of the 2009 Copenhagen Summit. Second, it shows how an organization's position in the movement's network has a large influence on the tactics it adopts. Finally, it demonstrates how the development of new strategies within this network has influenced the trajectory of global climate politics. The book establishes the ways in which networks are consequential for civil society groups, exploring how these actors can become more effective and suggesting lessons for the future coordination of activism.
Drawing on an original survey of more than 5,000 respondents, this book argues that, contrary to claims by the 1994 Zapatista insurgency, indigenous and non-indigenous respondents in southern Mexico have been united by socioeconomic conditions and land tenure institutions as well as by ethnic identity. It concludes that - contrary to many analyses of Chiapas's 1994 indigenous rebellion - external influences can trump ideology in framing social movements. Rural Chiapas's prevalent communitarian attitudes resulted partly from external land tenure institutions, rather than from indigenous identities alone. The book further points to recent indigenous rights movements in neighboring Oaxaca, Mexico, as examples of bottom-up multicultural institutions that might be emulated in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.
In the last two decades, the LGBT movement has gained momentum that is arguably unprecedented in speed and suddenness when compared to other human rights movements. This book investigates the recent history of this transnational movement in Europe, focusing on the diffusion of the norms it champions and the overarching question of why, despite similar international pressures, the trajectories of socio-legal recognition for LGBT minorities are so different across states. The book makes the case that a politics of visibility has engendered the interactions between movements and states that empower marginalized people - mobilizing actors to demand change, influencing the spread of new legal standards, and weaving new ideas into the fabrics of societies. It documents how this process of 'coming out' empowers marginalized social groups by moving them to the center of political debate and public recognition and making it possible for them to obtain rights to which they have due claim.
In the last two decades, the LGBT movement has gained momentum that is arguably unprecedented in speed and suddenness when compared to other human rights movements. This book investigates the recent history of this transnational movement in Europe, focusing on the diffusion of the norms it champions and the overarching question of why, despite similar international pressures, the trajectories of socio-legal recognition for LGBT minorities are so different across states. The book makes the case that a politics of visibility has engendered the interactions between movements and states that empower marginalized people - mobilizing actors to demand change, influencing the spread of new legal standards, and weaving new ideas into the fabrics of societies. It documents how this process of 'coming out' empowers marginalized social groups by moving them to the center of political debate and public recognition and making it possible for them to obtain rights to which they have due claim.
Why is contemporary China such a politically contentious place? Relying on the memories of the survivors of the worst catastrophe of Maoist rule and documenting the rise of resistance and protest at the grassroots level, this book explains how the terror, hunger, and loss of the socialist past influences the way in which people in the deep countryside see and resist state power in the reform era up to the present-day repression of the People's Republic of China central government. Ralph A. Thaxton, Jr provides us with a worm's-eye view of an 'unknown China' - a China that cannot easily or fully be understood through made-in-the-academy theories and frameworks of why and how rural people have engaged in contentious politics. This book is a truly unique and disturbing look at how rural people relate to an authoritarian political system in a country that aspires to become a stable world power.
Party in the Street explores the interaction between political parties and social movements in the United States. Examining the collapse of the post-9/11 antiwar movement against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this book focuses on activism and protest in the United States. It argues that the electoral success of the Democratic Party and President Barack Obama, as well as antipathy toward President George W. Bush, played a greater role in this collapse than did changes in foreign policy. It shows that how people identify with social movements and political parties matters a great deal, and it considers the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street as comparison cases.
What are the micro-level interactions and conversations that underlie successful and failed diffusion? By comparing the spread of direct action tactics from the 1999 Global Justice Movement protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle to grassroots activists in Toronto and New York, Lesley Wood argues that dynamics of deliberation among local activists both aided and blocked diffusion. To analyze the localization of this cycle of protest, the research brings together rich ethnography, interviews, social network analysis and catalogs of protest events. The findings suggest that when diverse activists with different perspectives can discuss innovations in a reflexive, egalitarian manner, they are more likely to make strategic and meaningful choices.
This volume analyzes regime politics in the developing world. By focusing on the civilian, collective actors that forge democracy and sustain it, this book moves beyond materialist arguments focusing on gross domestic product (GDP), poverty, and inequality. With case material from four continents, this volume emphasizes the decisive role played by parties and movements in forging democracy against the odds. These pivotal collectivities are consistently the key civilian collectivities that successfully mobilized for democracy, that helped forge enduring democratic institutions, and that shaped the quality of the democracies that emerged; they are the ones tasked with mobilizing along a range of social cleavages, confronting seemingly inhospitable conditions, and coordinating the process of regime change. While the presence of parties and movements alone is not sufficient to explain democracy, their absence is detrimental to enduring democratic regimes. Thus, this volume refocuses our
Clandestine Political Violence compares four types of clandestine political violence: left-wing (in Italy and Germany), right-wing (in Italy), ethnonationalist (in Spain), and religious fundamentalist
Close to three hundred stores and supermarkets were looted during week-long food riots in Argentina in December 2001. Thirty-four people were reported dead and hundreds were injured. Among the looting
At the turn of the twenty-first century, a tide of nonviolent youth movements swept across Eastern Europe. Young people demanded political change in repressive political regimes that emerged since the collapse of communism. The Serbian social movement Otpor (Resistance) played a vital role in bringing down Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. Inspired by Otpor's example, similar challenger organizations were formed in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, and Ukraine. The youth movements, however, differed in the extent to which they could mobilize citizens against the authoritarian governments on the eve of national elections. This book argues that the movement's tactics and state countermoves explain, in no small degree, divergent social movement outcomes. Using data from semi-structured interviews with former movement participants, public opinion polls, government publications, non-governmental organization (NGO) reports, and newspaper articles, the book traces state-movement interactions in five
