States, Parties, and Social Movements

This book, first published in 2003, is about how social protest movements become involved with political parties and elections.

Jack A. Goldstone (Edited by)

9780521016995, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 3 March 2003

312 pages, 9 b/w illus. 18 tables
22.9 x 15.3 x 2 cm, 0.422 kg

"All the contributions are valuable and interesting...Contributors have produced well crafted and richly documented essays, which all improve our understanding of important dimensions of political contention. They successfully remind us of the inadequacy of conventional distinctions between supposedly different forms of politics." American Journal of Sociology

Studies of social movements and of political parties have usually treated them as separate and distinct. In fact they are deeply intertwined. Social movements often shape electoral competition and party policies; they can even give rise to new parties. At the same time, political parties and campaigns shape the opportunities, personnel, and outcomes of social movements. In many countries, electoral democracy itself is the outcome of social movement actions. This book, first published in 2003, examines the interaction of social movements and party politics since the 1950s, both in the United States and around the world. In studies of the US Civil Rights movement, the New Left, the Czechoslovak dissident movements, the Mexican struggle for democracy, and other episodes, this volume shows how party politics and social movements cannot be understood without appreciating their intimate relationship.

Part I. States and Social Movements: 1. Countermovements, the state, and the intensity of racial contention in the American south Joseph Luders
2. State vs. social movement: FBI counterintelligence against the new left David Cunningham
3. Setting the state's agenda: church-based community organizations in American urban politics Heidi J. Swarts
4. State pacts, elites, and social movements in Mexico's transition to democracy Jorge Cadena-Roa
Part II. Parties and Social Movements: 5. Parties out of movements: party emergence in post-communist Eastern Europe John K. Glenn
6. From movement to party to government: why social policies in Kerala and West Bengal are so different
7. Parties, movements, and constituencies in categorizing race: state-level outcomes of multiracial category legislation Kim Williams
8. Protest cycles and party politics: the effects of elite allies and antagonists on student protest in the United States, 1930–90.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], Sociology & anthropology [JH]