Leading from the Periphery and Network Collective Action

An analysis of the overlooked role of the peripheral vanguard in the context of a network theory of collective action.

Navid Hassanpour (Author)

9781107141193, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 February 2017

228 pages, 55 b/w illus. 1 map 23 tables
23.6 x 15.8 x 1.8 cm, 0.44 kg

'… the book is an important, novel, and valuable contribution to the study of social movements, and constitutes a blueprint for how one can conduct research on relevant historical processes interweaving useful insights from extensive data collection, formal modeling, and experiments.' Delia Baldassarri, American Journal of Sociology

Political revolutions, economic meltdowns, mass ideological conversions and collective innovation adoptions occur often, but when they do happen, they tend to be the least expected. Based on the paradigm of 'leading from the periphery', this groundbreaking analysis offers an explanation for such spontaneity and apparent lack of leadership in contentious collective action. Contrary to existing theories, the author argues that network effects in collective action originating from marginal leaders can benefit from a total lack of communication. Such network effects persist in isolated islands of contention instead of overarching action cascades, and are shown to escalate in globally dispersed, but locally concentrated networks of contention. This is a trait that can empower marginal leaders and set forth social dynamics distinct from those originating in the limelight. Leading from the Periphery and Network Collective Action provides evidence from two Middle Eastern uprisings, as well as behavioral experiments of collective risk-taking in social networks.

1. Mobilization from the margins
2. Decentralization of revolutionary unrest: dispersion hypothesis
3. Vanguards at the periphery, a network formulation
4. Civil war and contagion in small worlds
5. Peripheral influence, experimentations in collective risk taking
6. Decentralization and power, novel modes of social organization
Appendix.

Subject Areas: Impact of science & technology on society [PDR], Political science & theory [JPA], Politics & government [JP], Sociology [JHB]