Sidney Tarrow

The Strategy of Paired Comparison: Toward a Theory of Practice:

Paired comparison is a strategy of political analysis that has been widely used but seldom theorized. This is because it is often assimilated to single-case studies or regarded as a degenerate form of multicase analysis. This article argues that paired comparison is a distinct strategy of comparative analysis with advantages that both single-case and multicase comparisons lack. After reviewing how paired comparison has been dealt with in comparative politics, the article details a number of its advantages and pitfalls, illustrates them through the work of four major pairing comparativists, and proposes what is distinct about the strategy. It closes with a number of suggestions for using paired comparison more effectively.

Transactional and Participatory Activism in the Emerging European Polity The Puzzle of East-Central Europe

In this article, the authors examine the potential for concerted collective action in the societies that emerged from state socialism in East-Central Europe after 1989. Although scholars have found strong individual-level evidence that protest potential is weaker here than in other parts of the world, the authors question whether individual-level data adequately tap all the dimensions of activism that are relevant to contentious politics. They propose a differentiated model of civil society consisting of (a) internal potential for citizen action and (b) relational aspects of social activism and argue that some forms of the latter—and in particularly, what they call “transactional activism”—are more robust than what evidence at the individual level suggests. They also examine some local and transnational-level data from the region and speculate about the capacities for collective action they find there and their potential for contributing to the construction of a transnational Europe.

Polanyi in Brussels: Supranational Institutions and the Transnational Embedding of Markets

Many have argued that the success of European integration is predicated on reinforcing market structures and some have gone further to state that the creation of a transnational market results in a decoupling of markets from their national political and social frameworks, thus threatening to unravel historical social bargains. Drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi and John Ruggie and using their insights regarding the social embedding of markets, we dissent from this view by examining how the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has handled a key sector of the emerging European market—labor mobility. We argue that rather than disembedding markets, decisions of the ECJ—just as Polanyi and Ruggie would have predicted—activate new social and political arrangements. We find evidence for the development of a new legal and political structure, largely inspired by the Court but also imbricated in European Union legislation, at the regional level.

Social Movements in Contentious Politics: A Review Article

Political Protest and Social Change: Analyzing Politics. By Charles F. Andrain and David E. Apter. New York: New York University Press, 1996. 387p.

Ballots and Barricades: On the Reciprocal Relationship between Elections and Social Movements

50.00 cloth,

Inside Insurgencies: Politics and Violence in an Age of Civil War

19.95 paper. The Politics of Social Protest: Comparative Perspectives on States and Social Movements. By J. Craig Jenkins and Bert Klandermans, eds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. 381p.

The Europeanisation of conflict: Reflections from a social movement perspective

49.95 cloth,

“Aiming at a Moving Target”: Social Science and the Recent Rebellions in Eastern Europe

19.95 paper. New Social Movements in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis. By Hanspeter Kriesi, Ruud Koopmans, Jan Willem Duyvendak, and Marco G. Giugni. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. 310p.

Interactive Diffusion: The Coevolution of Police and Protest Behavior With an Application to Transnational Contention

54.95 cloth,

The Europeanization of Movements? A New Approach to Transnational Contention

21.95 paper. Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor. By Elizabeth J. Perry. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993. 327p.