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Reviewed by:
  • Contentious Politics
  • Bert Klandermans
Contentious Politics By Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow. Paradigm Publishers, 2007. 243 pages. $65 cloth, $22.95 paper.

In 2001 Dynamics of Contention appeared. It was a italic attempt by Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly to develop a single explanatory framework for a wide range of contentious politics. Friends, foes and colleagues who had been awaiting the work with high anticipation reacted with a sense of ambivalence. On the one hand, they admired the book's ambition; on the other hand, they were disappointed. They made three justified complaints: "First, [the work] pointed to mechanisms and processes by the dozen without defining and documenting them carefully, much less showing how exactly they worked. Second, it remained unclear about the methods and evidence students and scholars could use to check out its explanations. Third, instead of making a straightforward presentation of its teachings, it reveled in complications, asides, and illustrations." (p. xi of the book reviewed) Contentious Politics is the authors' answer to their friends and critics. Tilly, Tarrow and McAdam (as the silent partner) explain to their readers one more time what they have in mind in the hopes that they [End Page 1855] like it better this time. The result is a very readable and instructive book full of innovative theoretical insights and useful guidelines for students and well-informed scholars, but first time readers who want to explore and understand their own life world as well.

Yet, it would do no justice to the book if we were to portray it here only as a reiteration and clarification of its predecessor. The book is more and does more. What again was it all about? The main message was and is "that similar mechanisms and processes operate across the whole range of contentious politics, and that existing opportunity structures and established repertoires shape the forms and degrees of contention."(161) In an endeavor that reminds us of Smelser's Theory of Collective Behavior (Free Press 1971) a theoretical framework is erected to account for such different forms of contentious politics as social movements, ethnic and religious conflicts, civil wars and revolutions. The authors argue that peaceful forms of contention such as social movements are more likely to occur in democratic regimes, while lethal conflicts tend to develop in mainly authoritarian regimes.

Contentious politics is about contention, collective action and politics. It involves interactions in which actors make claims on behalf of shared interests and in which governments are involved. Contentious performances and contentious repertoires are further descriptive elements. Contentious repertoires change over time and differ between regimes. The question is why. This is where mechanisms such as brokerage, diffusion, coordinated action, certification and identity shift; and processes such as mobilization, demobilization and scale shift come into play. A typology of regime types (democratic-undemocratic/high capacity-low capacity) is proposed that grow different repertoires of contention. There is more to the framework, but these are some of the main concepts, mechanisms and processes. The framework is gradually unfolded in the first five chapters (Making Claims; How to Analyze Contention; Regimes, Repertoires, and Opportunities; Contentious Interaction; and Mobilization and Demobilization). In Chapter 6 the framework is applied in accounts of the Polish Solidarity Movement and the American women's movement. In Chapter 7 lethal conflicts such as the civil war in Sudan, the religious conflict in Ireland, and the revolution in Nicaragua are taken as examples to illustrate the working of the theory. The framework is also employed to explain why in Poland and the U.S. movement type of contention evolves and lethal conflicts in Sudan, Ireland and Nicaragua. Less convincing is the chapter about composite regimes (Chapter 8). The term composite regimes is proposed to point to regimes that grow both movement types of contention and lethal conflicts but for different populations. Contention in composite regimes is illustrated with the contentious events in Gaza staged by the settlers as far as movement activity is concerned and the Palestines as far as lethal conflicts are concerned. The [End Page 1856] Pinochet affair is less clear as an illustrative example. Nor is it very clear why transnational contention is included in this...

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