1. Regimes and Contention
- Author:
- Charles Tilly
- Publication Date:
- 05-1998
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
- Abstract:
- How do diverse forms of political contention—revolutions, strikes, wars, social movements, coups d'état, and others—interact with shifts from one kind of regime to another? To what extent, and how, do alterations of contentious politics and transformations of regimes cause each other? These questions loom behind current inquiries into democratization, with their debate between theorists who consider agreements among elites to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for democracy and those who insist that democracy only emerges from interactions between ruling-class actions and popular struggle. They arise when political analysts ask whether (or under what conditions) social movements promote democracy, and whether stable democracy extinguishes or tames social movements. They appear from another angle in investigations of whether democracies tend to avoid war with each other.
- Topic:
- Democratization and Politics