In this classic work of sociology, Doug McAdam presents a political-process model that explains the rise and decline of the black protest movement in the United States. Moving from theoretical concerns to empirical analysis, he focuses on the crucial role of three institutions that foster protest: black churches, black colleges, and Southern chapters of the NAACP. He concludes that political opportunities, a heightened sense of political efficacy, and the development of these three institutions played a central role in shaping the civil rights movement. In his new introduction, McAdam revisits the civil rights struggle in light of recent scholarship on social movement origins and collective action. "[A] first-rate analytical demonstration that the civil rights movement was the culmination of a long process of building institutions in the black community."--Raymond Wolters, Journal of American History "A fresh, rich, and dynamic model to explain the rise and decline of the black insurgency movement in the United States."--James W. Lamare, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

In this classic work of sociology, Doug McAdam presents a political-process model that explains the rise and decline of the black protest movement in the United States. Moving from theoretical concerns to empirical analysis, he focuses on the crucial role of three institutions that foster protest: black churches, black colleges, and Southern chapters of the NAACP. He concludes that political opportunities, a heightened sense of political efficacy, and the development of these three institutions played a central role in shaping the civil rights movement. In his new introduction, McAdam revisits the civil rights struggle in light of recent scholarship on social movement origins and collective action. "[A] first-rate analytical demonstration that the civil rights movement was the culmination of a long process of building institutions in the black community."—Raymond Wolters, Journal of American History "A fresh, rich, and dynamic model to explain the rise and decline of the black insurgency movement in the United States."—James W. Lamare, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

By many measures--commonsensical or statistical--the United States has not been more divided politically or economically in the last hundred years than it is now. How have we gone from the striking bipartisan cooperation and relative economic equality of the war years and post-war period to the extreme inequality and savage partisan divisions of today? In this sweeping look at American politics from the Depression to the present, Doug McAdam and Karina Kloos argue that party politics alone is not responsible for the mess we find ourselves in. Instead, it was the ongoing interaction of social movements and parties that, over time, pushed Democrats and Republicans toward their ideological margins, undermining the post-war consensus in the process. The Civil Rights struggle and the white backlash it provoked reintroduced the centrifugal force of social movements into American politics, ushering in an especially active and sustained period of movement/party dynamism, culminating in today's tug of war between the Tea Party and Republican establishment for control of the GOP. In Deeply Divided, McAdam and Kloos depart from established explanations of the conservative turn in the United States and trace the roots of political polarization and economic inequality back to the shifting racial geography of American politics in the 1960s. Angered by Lyndon Johnson's more aggressive embrace of civil rights reform in 1964, Southern Dixiecrats abandoned the Democrats for the first time in history, setting in motion a sustained regional realignment that would, in time, serve as the electoral foundation for a resurgent and increasingly more conservative Republican Party.

"A Manhattan Institute for Policy Research book"--T.p. verso. Includes index. Bibliography: p. 167-173.

Shifts the focus away from luminaries such as Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, and Marion Barry, to examine how the lives of more representative civil rights activists have been affected by intense political experience. Traces their career choices, and explores what kind of citizenship they practice. Paper edition (unseen), $16.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Party in the Street explores the interaction between political parties and social movements in the United States. Examining the collapse of the post-9/11 antiwar movement against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this book focuses on activism and protest in the United States. It argues that the electoral success of the Democratic Party and President Barack Obama, as well as antipathy toward President George W. Bush, played a greater role in this collapse than did changes in foreign policy. It shows that how people identify with social movements and political parties matters a great deal, and it considers the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street as comparison cases.

In recent years there has been an outpouring of work at the intersection of social movement thoery, organizational theory, economic, and political sociology. The problems at the core of these areas, Fligstein and McAdam argue, have a similar analytic and theoretical structure. Synthesizing much of this work, A Theory of Fields offers a general perspective on how to understand the problems related to understanding change and instability in modern, complex societies through a theory of strategic action fields.

Black Ballots is an in-depth look at suffrage expansion in the South from World War II through the Johnson administration. Steven Lawson focuses on the "Second Reconstruction"-the struggle of blacks to gain political power in the South through the ballot-which both whites and black perceived to be a key element in the civil rights process. Examining the struggle of civil rights groups to enfranchise Negroes, Lawson also analyzes the responses of federal and local officials to those efforts. He describes the various techniques-from the white primary, the poll tax, literacy tests, and restrictive registration procedures through sheer intimidation-that were developed by white southerners to perpetuate disfranchisement and the sundry methods used by blacks and their white allies to challenge them.

An account of the origins, development, and personalities of the Civil Rights movement from 1953-1963.

This book reports the results of a comparative study of twenty communities earmarked for environmentally risky energy projects.