From Mobilization to Revolution.
TL;DR: The recent fallecimiento del sociólogo e historiador Charles Tilly (Lombard, Illinois, 1929-Bronx, Nueva York, 2008) puede servir de pretexto for rememorar una trayectoria investigadora sin duda excepcional, plasmada a lo largo de medio siglo en más de 600 artículos and 51 libros and monografías, that le convirtieron en el más influyente especialista
Abstract: El reciente fallecimiento del sociólogo e historiador Charles Tilly (Lombard, Illinois, 1929-Bronx, Nueva York, 2008) puede servir de pretexto para rememorar una trayectoria investigadora sin duda excepcional, plasmada a lo largo de medio siglo en más de 600 artículos y 51 libros y monografías, que le convirtieron en el más influyente especialista en el análisis de la confrontación política en su relación con los grandes procesos de cambio social. Su audiencia mixta de historiadores interesados en sus métodos de análisis innovadores y de sociólogos que buscan modelos alternativos de acción colectiva y estrategias de investigación histórica que den respuesta a las cuestiones teóricas se explica en buena parte porque empleó un lenguaje ambivalente, pero razonablemente comprensible, y una metodología que siempre aspiró a situarse en el cruce entre la historia y la sociología. Su trayectoria intelectual puede ser contada como un dilatado tránsito desde el reduccionismo estructuralista de sus orígenes hacia lo que él mismo llamó “realismo relacional”: una nueva perspectiva de observación donde las transacciones, los vínculos sociales y las conversaciones se convertían en el tejido constitutivo de la vida social.
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TL;DR: This article showed that the current prevalence of internal war is mainly the result of a steady accumulation of protracted conflicts since the 1950s and 1960s rather than a sudden change associated with a new, post-Cold War international system.
Abstract: An influential conventional wisdom holds that civil wars proliferated rapidly with the end of the Cold War and that the root cause of many or most of these has been ethnic and religious antagonisms. We show that the current prevalence of internal war is mainly the result of a steady accumulation of protracted conflicts since the 1950s and 1960s rather than a sudden change associated with a new, post-Cold War international system. We also find that after controlling for per capita income, more ethnically or religiously diverse countries have been no more likely to experience significant civil violence in this period. We argue for understanding civil war in this period in terms of insurgency or rural guerrilla warfare, a particular form of military practice that can be harnessed to diverse political agendas. The factors that explain which countries have been at risk for civil war are not their ethnic or religious characteristics but rather the conditions that favor insurgency. These include poverty—which marks financially and bureaucratically weak states and also favors rebel recruitment—political instability, rough terrain, and large populations.We wish to thank the many people who provided comments on earlier versions of this paper in a series of seminar presentations. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation (Grants SES-9876477 and SES-9876530); support from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences with funds from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; valuable research assistance from Ebru Erdem, Nikolay Marinov, Quinn Mecham, David Patel, and TQ Shang; sharing of data by Paul Collier.
5,994 citations
Cites background from "From Mobilization to Revolution."
...Building on similar efforts by other civil war researchers,3 we constructed a list of violent civil conflicts 2 There are 79 wars in their sample, but they lose about 34 due to missing values on explanatory variables, which are mainly economic....
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...There are both practical and theoretical considerations pointing the other way, however....
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...There is an additional reason why a lower per capita income should favor the technology of insurgency: (c) Recruiting young men to the life of a guerrilla is easier when the economic alternatives are worse....
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TL;DR: In this article, Frame alignment, of one variety or another, is a necessary condition for participation, whatever its nature or intensity, and that it is typically an interactional and ongoing accomplishment.
Abstract: This paper attempts to further theoretical and empirical understanding of adherent and constituent mobilization by proposing and analyzing frame alignment as a conceptual bridge linking social psychological and resource mobilization views on movement participation. Extension of Goffinan's (1974) frame analytic perspective provides the conceptualltheoretical framework; field research on two religious movements, the peace movement, and several neighborhood movements provide the primary empirical base. Four frame alignment processes are identified and elaborated: frame bridging, frame amplification, frame extension, and frame transformation. The basic underlying premise is that frame alignment, of one variety or another, is a necessary condition for participation, whatever its nature or intensity, and that it is typically an interactional and ongoing accomplishment. The paper concludes with an elaboration of several sets of theoretical and research implications.
5,347 citations
Cites background from "From Mobilization to Revolution."
...…convergence theory (Turner and Killian, 1972), the hearts and minds approach (Leites and Wolf, 1970), and breakdown theory (Tilly et al., 1975); and the resource mobilization perspective associated with the work of McCarthy and Zald (1973, 1977), Oberschall (1973), and Tilly (1978), among others....
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...…atrophied, fallen into disuse, or have been suppressed because of the lack of an opportunity for expression due to a repressive authority structure (Tilly, 1978) or the absence of an organizational outlet (McCarthy, 1986); they may have become taken for granted or cliched (Zijderveld, 1979); they…...
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...…of protest are characterized by, among other things, "the appearance of new technologies of protest" that "spread from their point of origin to other areas and to other sectors of social protest" (Tarrow, 1983a:39), thus adding to what Tilly (1978) refers to as the "repertoire" of protest activity....
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...As Tilly (1978) and his associates have shown, collective actors come and go....
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Book•
01 Jan 1994TL;DR: The history of contention in social movements can be traced to the birth of the modern social movement as discussed by the authors, and the dynamics of social movements have been studied in the context of contention.
Abstract: Introduction 1 Contentious politics and social movements: Part I The Birth of the Modern Social Movement: 2 Modular collective action 3 Print and association 4 Statebuilding and social movements Part II From Contention to Social Movements: 5 Political opportunities and constraints 6 The repertoire of contention 7 Framing contention 8 Mobilising structures and contentious politics Part III The Dynamics of Movement: 9 Cycles of contention 10 Struggling to reform 11 Transnational contention/conclusion: the future of social movements
3,676 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a new institutionalism emphasizes the relative autonomy of political institutions, the possibilities for inefficiency in history, and the importance of symbolic action to an understanding of politics.
Abstract: Contemporary theories of politics tend to portray politics as a reflection of society, political phenomena as the aggregate consequences of individual behavior, action as the result of choices based on calculated self-interest, history as efficient in reaching unique and appropriate outcomes, and decision making and the allocation of resources as the central foci of political life. Some recent theoretical thought in political science, however, blends elements of these theoretical styles into an older concern with institutions. This new institutionalism emphasizes the relative autonomy of political institutions, possibilities for inefficiency in history, and the importance of symbolic action to an understanding of politics. Such ideas have a reasonable empirical basis, but they are not characterized by powerful theoretical forms. Some directions for theoretical research may, however, be identified in institutionalist conceptions of political order.
3,248 citations
Cites background from "From Mobilization to Revolution."
...The establishment of public policies, or competition among bureaucrats or legislators, activates and organizes otherwise quiescent identities and social cleavages (Olsen & Saetren, 1980; Tilly, 1978)....
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...Class differences translate into political differences with great reliability across time and across cultures; differences in the organization and ideology of social class seem to lead to predictable differences in political organization and institutions (Tilly, 1978)....
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Book•
01 Jan 2005TL;DR: The authors presented a model of social change that predicts how the value systems play a crucial role in the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions, and that modernisation brings coherent cultural changes that are conducive to democratisation.
Abstract: This book demonstrates that people's basic values and beliefs are changing, in ways that affect their political, sexual, economic, and religious behaviour. These changes are roughly predictable: to a large extent, they can be interpreted on the basis of a revised version of modernisation theory presented here. Drawing on a massive body of evidence from societies containing 85 percent of the world's population, the authors demonstrate that modernisation is a process of human development, in which economic development gives rise to cultural changes that make individual autonomy, gender equality, and democracy increasingly likely. The authors present a model of social change that predicts how the value systems play a crucial role in the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions - and that modernisation brings coherent cultural changes that are conducive to democratisation.
3,016 citations
References
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on strike activity during the 1950-1969 period in ten industrial societies, and introduce a three-dimensional characterization of strike activity which forms the basis of the subsequent statistical analyses.
Abstract: This study focuses on strike activity during the 1950–1969 period in ten industrial societies, The first section of the paper deals with issues of strike measurement and introduces a three-dimensional characterization of strike activity which forms the basis of the subsequent statistical analyses. The next section examines postwar trends in industrial conflict in order to evaluate the argument that strike activity is “withering away” in advanced industrial societies. Time plots of the aggregate volume of industrial conflict show that there has been no general downward movement in strike activity during the postwar period.The third part of the paper develops a number of theoretically plausible statistical models to explain year-to-year fluctuations in the volume of strikes. The empirical results of this section indicate that (1) there is a pronounced inverse relationship between strike activity and the level of unemployment, which suggests that on the whole strikes are timed to capitalize on the strategic advantages of a tight labor market; (2) industrial conflict responds to movements in real wages rather than money wages, which indicates that labor is not misled by a “money illusion”; (3) Labor and Socialist parties are not able to deter strike activity in the short-run despite their strong electoral incentive to do so; and (4) the volume of strikes does seem to be influenced by the relative size of Communist parties, which suggests that such parties remain important agencies for the mobilization of discontent and the crystallization of labor-capital cleavages.
159 citations