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  3. Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics

Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics breaks apart the narrow disciplinary and subfield boundaries that have fragmented the study of both traditional social movements and their non-routine politics. The exploration of noninstitutionalized political actions, including revolutions, democratization, cycles of protest, and ethnic conflicts, enables the connections between a wide array of political and social phenomena to be examined in national, comparative, and global perspective.

  • General Editors: David S. Meyer, University of California, Irvine
  • Associate Editors: Mark Beissinger, Princeton University, New Jersey, Donatella della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Jack A. Goldstone, George Mason University, Virginia, Doug McAdam, Stanford University, California and Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, California, Holly J. McCammon, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, Sarah Soule, Stanford University, California, Suzanne Staggenborg, University of Pittsburgh, Sidney Tarrow, Cornell University, New York, Elizabeth J. Wood, Yale University, Connecticut, Deborah Yashar, Princeton University, New Jersey
  • Founding Editors: Doug McAdam, Stanford University, California, Sidney Tarrow, Cornell University, New York, Charles Tilly, Columbia University, New York

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78 results in Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics

Page 1 of 4

Invisible Revolutionaries
  • Women's Participation in Ukraine's Euromaidan
  • Olena Nikolayenko
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2025
    Print publication:
    30 April 2025
  • Invisible Revolutionaries sheds light on the critical role women play in contemporary revolutions around the world. The book argues that women's engagement in contentious politics is often far less visible than men's participation, when measured by the physical presence of women in protest space. Using the case of the 2013–2014 Euromaidan in Ukraine, the book outlines the different models and dimensions for women's participation in revolutions and illustrates how women in Ukraine have been at the forefront of pro-democracy movements, fiercely resisting Russia's invasion and fighting for national independence and democratic development. Drawing on data from large-N surveys and oral history projects, the book uncovers the diverse motivations and forms of women's participation and traces the multifaceted outcomes of women's activism. The book makes a significant contribution, addressing a key moment in Ukraine's history that is of renewed importance after the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022.

The Making of Leaderful Mobilization
  • Power and Contention in Hong Kong
  • Edmund W. Cheng, Samson Yuen
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    06 February 2025
  • The past few decades saw the transformation of Hong Kong from a liberal enclave to a revolutionary crucible at China's offshore. The Making of Leaderful Mobilization takes you through the evolution of protests in this restive city, where ordinary citizens gradually emerged as the protagonists of contention in place of social movement organizations. The book presents a theory of mediated threat that illuminates how threat perceptions fueled shifting forms of mobilization – from brokered mobilization where organizations played guiding roles to leaderful mobilization driven by peer collaboration among the masses. Bringing together event analysis, opinion polls, interviews, and social media data, this book provides a thorough and methodical anatomy of Hong Kong's contentious politics. It unveils the processes and mechanisms of collective action that likely prevailed in many contemporary social movements worldwide. Our temporal approach also uncovers the multiple pathways reshaping hybrid regimes, underscoring their resilience and fragility.

The Rise, Fall, and Influence of the Tea Party Insurgency
  • Patrick Rafail, John D. McCarthy
  • Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023
  • Emerging in 2009, the Tea Party movement had an immediate and profound impact on American politics and society. This book draws on a decade's worth of original, extensive data collection to understand why the Tea Party emerged, where it was active, and why it disappeared so quickly. Patrick Rafail and John McCarthy link the Tea Party's rise to prominence following the economic collapse that came to be known as the Great Recession. Paying special attention to the importance of space and time in shaping the Tea Party's activities, Rafail and McCarthy identify and explain the movement's disappearance from the political stage. Even though grassroots Tea Party activism largely ceased by 2014, they demonstrate the movement's effect on the Republican Party and American democracy that continues today.

The Arab Spring Abroad
  • Diaspora Activism against Authoritarian Regimes
  • 2nd edition
  • Dana M. Moss
  • Published online:
    14 April 2022
    Print publication:
    21 April 2022
  • The Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 sent shockwaves across the globe, mobilizing diaspora communities to organize forcefully against authoritarian regimes. Despite the important role that diasporas can play in influencing affairs in their countries of origin, little is known about when diaspora actors mobilize, how they intervene, or what makes them effective. This book addresses these questions, drawing on over 230 original interviews, fieldwork, and comparative analysis. Examining Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni mobilization from the US and Great Britain before and during the revolutions, Dana M. Moss presents a new framework for understanding the transnational dynamics of contention and the social forces that either enable or suppress transnational activism. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Proletarian Lives
  • Routines, Identity, and Culture in Contentious Politics
  • Marcos E. Pérez
  • Published online:
    24 March 2022
    Print publication:
    31 March 2022
  • Based on multi-year ethnographic fieldwork on the Unemployed Workers' Movement in Argentina (also known as the piqueteros), Proletarian Lives provides a case study of how workers affected by job loss protect their traditional forms of life by engaging in progressive grassroots mobilization. Using life-history interviews and participant observation, the book analyzes why some activists develop a strong attachment to the movement despite initial reluctance and frequent ideological differences. Marcos Pérez argues that a key appeal of participation is the opportunity to engage in age and gender-specific practices associated with a respectable blue-collar lifestyle threatened by long-term socioeconomic decline. Through their daily involvement in the movement, older participants reconstruct the routines they associate with a golden past in which factory jobs were plentiful, younger activists develop the kind of habits they were raised to see as valuable, and all members protect communal activities undermined by the expansion of poverty and violence.

The Advantage of Disadvantage
  • Costly Protest and Political Representation for Marginalized Groups
  • LaGina Gause
  • Published online:
    17 February 2022
    Print publication:
    24 February 2022
  • Does protest influence political representation? If so, which groups are most likely to benefit from collective action? The Advantage of Disadvantage makes a provocative claim: protests are most effective for disadvantaged groups. According to author LaGina Gause, legislators are more responsive to protesters than non-protesters, and after protesting, racial and ethnic minorities, people with low incomes, and other low-resource groups are more likely than white and affluent protesters to gain representation. Gause also demonstrates that online protests are less effective than in-person protests. Drawing on literature from across the social sciences as well as formal theory, a survey of policymakers, quantitative data, and vivid examples of protests throughout U.S. history, The Advantage of Disadvantage provides invaluable insights for scholars and activists seeking to understand how groups gain representation through protesting.

Violent Resistance
  • Corinna Jentzsch
  • Published online:
    13 January 2022
    Print publication:
    13 January 2022
  • Why do communities form militias to defend themselves against violence during civil war? Using original interviews with former combatants and civilians and archival material from extensive fieldwork in Mozambique, Corinna Jentzsch's Violent Resistance explains the timing, location and process through which communities form militias. Jentzsch shows that local military stalemates characterized by ongoing violence allow civilians to form militias that fight alongside the government against rebels. Militias spread only to communities in which elites are relatively unified, preventing elites from coopting militias for private gains. Crucially, militias that build on preexisting social conventions are able to resonate with the people and empower them to regain agency over their lives. Jentzsch's innovative study brings conceptual clarity to the militia phenomenon and helps us understand how wartime civilian agency, violent resistance, and the rise of third actors beyond governments and rebels affect the dynamics of civil war, on the African continent and beyond. This title is available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Contentious Episodes in the Age of Austerity
  • Studying the Dynamics of Government–Challenger Interactions
  • Edited by Abel Bojar, Theresa Gessler, Swen Hutter, Hanspeter Kriesi
  • Published online:
    05 November 2021
    Print publication:
    11 November 2021
  • Based on extensive data and analysis of sixty contentious episodes in twelve European countries, this book proposes a novel approach that takes a middle ground between narrative approaches and conventional protest event analysis. Looking particularly at responses to austerity policies in the aftermath of the Great Recession (2008–2015), the authors develop a rigorous conceptual framework that focuses on the interactions between three types of participants in contentious politics: governments, challengers, and third parties. This approach allows political scientists to map not only the variety of actors and actor coalitions that drove the interactions in the different episodes, but also the interplay of repression/concessions/support and of mobilization/cooperation/mediation on the part of the actors involved in the contention. The methodology used will enable researchers to answer old (and new) research questions related to political conflict in a way that is simultaneously attentive to conceptual depth and statistical rigor.

The Arab Spring Abroad
  • Dana M. Moss
  • Published online:
    18 October 2021
    Print publication:
    30 September 2021
  • The Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 sent shockwaves across the globe, mobilizing diaspora communities to organize forcefully against authoritarian regimes. Despite the important role that diasporas can play in influencing affairs in their countries of origin, little is known about when diaspora actors mobilize, how they intervene, or what makes them effective. This book addresses these questions, drawing on over 230 original interviews, fieldwork, and comparative analysis. Examining Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni mobilization from the US and Great Britain before and during the revolutions, Dana M. Moss presents a new framework for understanding the transnational dynamics of contention and the social forces that either enable or suppress transnational activism.

Movements and Parties
  • Critical Connections in American Political Development
  • Sidney Tarrow
  • Published online:
    17 August 2021
    Print publication:
    26 August 2021
  • How do social movements intersect with the agendas of mainstream political parties? When they are integrated with parties, are they coopted? Or are they more radically transformative? Examining major episodes of contention in American politics – from the Civil War era to the women's rights and civil rights movements to the Tea Party and Trumpism today – Sidney Tarrow tackles these questions and provides a new account of how the interactions between movements and parties have been transformed over the course of American history. He shows that the relationships between movements and parties have been central to American democratization – at times expanding it and at times threatening its future. Today, movement politics have become more widespread as the parties have become weaker. The future of American democracy hangs in the balance.

Colonial Institutions and Civil War
  • Indirect Rule and Maoist Insurgency in India
  • Shivaji Mukherjee
  • Published online:
    15 May 2021
    Print publication:
    03 June 2021
  • What explains the peculiar spatial variation of Maoist insurgency in India? Mukherjee develops a novel typology of colonial indirect rule and land tenure in India, showing how they can lead to land inequality, weak state and Maoist insurgency. Using a multi-method research design that combines qualitative analysis of archival data on Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh states, Mukherjee demonstrates path dependence of land/ethnic inequality leading to Maoist insurgency. This is nested within a quantitative analysis of a district level dataset which uses an instrumental variable analysis to address potential selection bias in colonial choice of princely states. The author also analyses various Maoist documents, and interviews with key human rights activists, police officers, and bureaucrats, providing rich contextual understanding of the motivations of agents. Furthermore, he demonstrates the generalizability of his theory to cases of colonial frontier indirect rule causing ​ethnic secessionist insurgency in Burma, and the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan.

Workers and Change in China
  • Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness
  • Manfred Elfstrom
  • Published online:
    14 January 2021
    Print publication:
    21 January 2021
  • Strikes, protests, and riots by Chinese workers have been rising over the past decade. The state has addressed a number of grievances, yet has also come down increasingly hard on civil society groups pushing for reform. Why are these two seemingly clashing developments occurring simultaneously? Manfred Elfstrom uses extensive fieldwork and statistical analysis to examine both the causes and consequences of protest. The book adopts a holistic approach, encompassing national trends in worker–state relations, local policymaking processes and the dilemmas of individual officials and activists. Instead of taking sides in the old debate over whether non-democracies like China's are on the verge of collapse or have instead found ways of maintaining their power indefinitely, it explores the daily evolution of autocratic rule. While providing a uniquely comprehensive picture of change in China, this important study proposes a new model of bottom-up change within authoritarian systems more generally.

Grassroots Environmentalism
  • Suzanne Staggenborg
  • Published online:
    21 October 2020
    Print publication:
    15 October 2020
  • Grassroots activism is essential to the success of the contemporary environmental movement, which depends on the organization of local activists as well as state, national, and international organizations. Yet grassroots activists confront numerous challenges as they attempt to organize diverse participants and devise fresh strategies and tactics. Drawing on more than seven years of fieldwork following diverse organizations in Pittsburgh over time, this book sheds light on the struggles that activists face and the factors that sustain movements. Suzanne Staggenborg examines individual motivations and participation, organizational structures and cultures, relationships in movement communities, and strategies and tactics, including issue framing. The book shows that collective action campaigns and tactics generate solidarity, maintain involvement, and bring in new participants even as organizers struggle to devise effective new types of actions.

Ruling by Other Means
  • State-Mobilized Movements
  • Edited by Grzegorz Ekiert, Elizabeth J. Perry, Xiaojun Yan
  • Published online:
    29 July 2020
    Print publication:
    30 July 2020
  • What do states gain by sending citizens into the streets? Ruling by Other Means investigates this question through the lens of State-Mobilized Movements (SMMs), an umbrella concept that includes a range of (often covertly organized) collective actions intended to advance state interests. The SMMs research agenda departs significantly from that of classic social movement and contentious politics theory, focused on threats to the state from seemingly autonomous societal actors. Existing theories assume that the goal of popular protest is to voice societal grievances, represent oppressed groups, and challenge state authorities and other powerholders. The chapters in this volume show, however, that states themselves organize citizens (sometimes surreptitiously and even transnationally) to act collectively to advance state goals. Drawn from different historical periods and diverse geographical regions, these case studies expand and improve our understanding of social movements, civil society and state-society relations under authoritarian regimes.

Resisting Redevelopment
  • Protest in Aspiring Global Cities
  • Eleonora Pasotti
  • Published online:
    09 March 2020
    Print publication:
    19 March 2020
  • The politics of urban development is one of the most enduring, central themes of urban politics. In Resisting Redevelopment, Eleonora Pasotti explores the forces that enable residents of 'aspiring global cities,' or economically competitive cities, to mobilize against gentrification and other forms of displacement, as well as what makes mobilizations successful. Scholars and activists alike will benefit from this one-of-a-kind comparative study. Impressive in its scope, this book examines twenty-nine protest campaigns over a decade in ten major cities across five continents, from Santiago to Seoul to Los Angeles. Pasotti sheds light on an approach that is both understudied and remarkably effective - the practice of successful organizers deploying 'experiential tools,' or events, social archives, neighborhood tours, and performances designed to attract participants and transform the protest site into the place to be. With this book, Pasotti promises to provide a creative and novel contribution to the literature of contentious politics.

Labor and Politics in Indonesia
  • Teri L. Caraway, Michele Ford
  • Published online:
    02 March 2020
    Print publication:
    05 March 2020
  • Two decades after Indonesia's transition to democracy, its labor movement has emerged as a vibrant and influential political actor. Labor and Politics in Indonesia provides the first in-depth analysis of this development, investigating how a structurally weak labor movement carved out a strategic foothold in a country with no recent history of union engagement in politics. Caraway and Ford show how Indonesia's labor movement achieved many of its goals first through the disruptive power of contentious politics and later by combining street and electoral politics. Labor and Politics in Indonesia challenges the dominant theoretical approaches in the study of Indonesian politics, demonstrating how this movement became an active, and surprisingly effective, participant in Indonesia's democracy. Caraway and Ford break new theoretical ground in their analysis of how legacies of authoritarianism, the post-transition political opportunity structure, and the tactical creativity of Indonesia's unions combined to propel Indonesia's labor movement to success.

Protectors of Pluralism
  • Religious Minorities and the Rescue of Jews in the Low Countries during the Holocaust
  • Robert Braun
  • Published online:
    15 March 2019
    Print publication:
    21 March 2019
  • Protectors of Pluralism argues that local religious minorities are more likely to save persecuted groups from purification campaigns. Robert Braun utilizes a geo-referenced dataset of Jewish evasion in the Netherlands and Belgium during the Holocaust to assess the minority hypothesis. Spatial statistics and archival work reveal that Protestants were more likely to rescue Jews in Catholic regions of the Low Countries, while Catholics facilitated evasion in Protestant areas. Post-war testimonies and secondary literature demonstrate the importance of minority groups for rescue in other countries during the Holocaust as well as other episodes of mass violence, underlining how the local position of church communities produces networks of assistance, rather than something inherent to any religion itself. This book makes an important contribution to the literature on political violence, social movements, altruism and religion, applying a range of social science methodologies and theories that shed new light on the Holocaust.

Street Citizens
  • Protest Politics and Social Movement Activism in the Age of Globalization
  • Marco Giugni, Maria T. Grasso
  • Published online:
    15 March 2019
    Print publication:
    04 April 2019
  • What are protest politics and social movement activism today? What are their main features? To what extent can street citizens be seen as a force driving social and political change? Through analyses of original survey data on activists themselves, Marco Giugni and Maria T. Grasso explain the character of contemporary protest politics that we see today - the diverse motivations, social characteristics, values and networks that draw activists to engage politically to tackle the pressing social problems of our time. The study analyzes left-wing protest culture as well as the characteristics of protest politics, from the motivations of street citizens to how they become engaged in demonstrations to the causes they defend and the issues they promote, from their mobilizing structures to their political attitudes and values, as well as other key aspects such as their sense of identity within social movements, their perceived effectiveness, and the role of emotions for protest participation.

Activists Forever?
  • Long-Term Impacts of Political Activism
  • Edited by Olivier Fillieule
  • Erik Neveu
  • Published online:
    31 December 2018
    Print publication:
    03 January 2019
  • 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 politics, as well as their personal and professional lives.

Playing by the Informal Rules
  • Why the Chinese Regime Remains Stable despite Rising Protests
  • Yao Li
  • Published online:
    30 November 2018
    Print publication:
    13 December 2018
  • Growing protests in non-democratic countries are often seen as signals of regime decline. China, however, has remained stable amid surging protests. Playing by the Informal Rules highlights the importance of informal norms in structuring state-protester interactions, mitigating conflict, and explaining regime resilience. Drawing on a nationwide dataset of protest and multi-sited ethnographic research, this book presents a bird's-eye view of Chinese contentious politics and illustrates the uneven application of informal norms across regions, social groups, and time. Through examinations of protests and their distinct implications for regime stability, Li offers a novel theoretical framework suitable for monitoring the trajectory of political contention in China and beyond. Overall, this study sheds new light on political mobilization and authoritarian resilience and provides fresh perspectives on power, rules, legitimacy, and resistance in modern societies.

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