Contentious Politics

Revolutions, social movements, religious and ethnic conflict, nationalism and civil rights, and transnational movements: these forms of contentious politics combine in Charles Tilly's and Sidney Tarrow's Contentious Politics. The authors present a set of analytical tools and procedures for study, comparison, and explanation of these very different sorts of contention. Drawing on many historical and contemporary cases, the book shows that similar principles describe and explain a wide variety of struggles as well as many more routine forms of politics.

This fully revised and updated edition explores some of the major contentious events that have taken place since the original book was published in 2007, including the Occupy movement in the United States, the campaign for free elections in the city of Hong Kong, insurrections against Middle Eastern dictatorships, and armed conflicts on the border of the former Soviet Union. Comprehensive and empirically rich, Contentious Politics, 2nd edition remains a valuable resource for developing a more nuanced understanding of modern social movements and political conflicts for students and scholars.


About the Author
Charles Tilly was Joseph L. Buttenweiser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University, and before his death in 2008 was the author of Identities and Social Ties (Paradigm 2005), Trust and Rule (Cambridge 2005), Democracy (Cambridge 2007), and Contentious Performances (Cambridge 2008). He was the first winner of the Albert Hirschman prize for distinguished contributions to the social sciences from the Social Science Research Council.

Sidney Tarrow is Maxwell M. Upson Emeritus Professor of Government and Visiting Professor of Law at Cornell University. His latest books are Strangers at the Gates: Movements and States in Contentious Politics (Cambridge 2012), The Language of Contention: Revolutions in Words, 1789-2012 (Cambridge 2013) and War, States, and Contention (Cornell 2015). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science and a holder of the John McCarthy Prize for Social Movement Scholarship.