Political Consumerism
Global Responsibility in Action

Political Consumerism captures the creative ways in which consumers and citizens turn to the market as their arena for politics.

Dietlind Stolle (Author), Michele Micheletti (Author)

9781107010093, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 August 2013

382 pages, 9 b/w illus. 20 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.73 kg

"Political consumerism has become a growing form of social and political activism in recent decades, and Dietlind Stolle and Michele Micheletti have produced the authoritative study of the use and impact of political consumerism in politics today. This book should be the standard citation in the growing debate about political consumerism and other new forms of citizen action."
Russell J. Dalton, University of California, Irvine

Political Consumerism captures the creative ways in which citizens, consumers and political activists use the market as their arena for politics. This book theorizes, describes, analyzes, compares and evaluates the phenomenon of political consumerism and how it attempts to use market choice to solve complex globalized problems. It investigates theoretically and empirically how and why consumers practice citizenship and have become important political actors. Dietlind Stolle and Michele Micheletti describe consumers' engagement as an example of individualized responsibility taking, examining how political consumerism nudges and pressures corporations to change their production practices, and how consumers emerge as a force in global affairs. Unlike other studies, it also evaluates if and how consumer actions become effective mechanisms of global change. Stolle and Micheletti offer a candid discussion of the limitations of political consumerism as a form of participation and as a problem-solving mechanism.

1. Reconfiguring political responsibility
2. Reconfiguring political participation
3. Who are political consumers?
4. Mapping political consumerism in Western democracies
5. The organizational setting for political consumerism
6. Discursive political consumerism
7. Does political consumerism matter? Effectiveness and limits of political consumer action repertoires
8. Political consumerism's scope and challenges.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Comparative politics [JPB]