scholarly journals The Coalition of the Unwilling: Contentious Politics, Political Opportunity Structures, and Challenges for the Contemporary Peace Movement

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Carty
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Peace Movement ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
Bush Doctrine ◽  
Political Opportunity Structures

The Bush Doctrine, which was installed after the 9-11 attacks on the United States under the guise of the war on terrorism, postulated a vision of the United States as the world’s unchallenged superpower and the invasion of Iraq became one of the central fronts of this war. After failing to get approval by the United Nations for the invasion, the Bush Administration’s attempt to assemble a coalition of the willing became critical to the battle for public opinion to back the war. While the administration was able to garner some support, the coalition eventually unravelled and all troops are expected to depart by 2011 in what is perceived by many as a failure of U.S. foreign policy. This article discusses how different strands of social movement theory, including resource mobilization and the political process model, can be combined to examine how the coalition of the unwilling emerged and what effect it had on the failure of the United States to sustain support for the Iraq war. It contributes to the literature on social movements by assessing the ways in which structural- and micro-level mobilization efforts are often interconnected in order to explain both the how and the why of social movements, usually treated separately in much of the extant research.

scholarly journals “Nervous nellies and nay-sayers”: Social movements and Canada-United States free trade

SURG Journal ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 14-20
Author(s):  
Spencer Hamelin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Steel Workers ◽  
Economic Union

Free trade is part of neo-liberal economics, which is centred on the free market principles of limited government regulation and private sector competition. Free trade focuses on the elimination of trade barriers and tariffs. In Canada, the movement toward free trade began in 1985 with the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, which encouraged free trade between the United States and Canada, and concluded with the 1988 federal election that sealed Canada’s fate within economic union with the United States. This article will combine a Neo-Marxist and Political Process Theory framework to address how during the period from 1985 to 1988, Canadian social movements adopted innovative tactics and mobilized against free trade to gain greater influence over trade policy. Keywords: free trade; social movements; Canada; United States; Auto Pact; United Steel Workers; Canadian Auto Workers, National Action Committee on the Status of Women; Council of Canadians; Macdonald Commission

scholarly journals Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, and Political Opportunities:

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Turillo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
Political Process Theory ◽  
Use Of Social Media

 In the summer of 2020, while mired in the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States experienced an unprecedentedly massive wave of protests led by the Black Lives Matter movement. Given the novelty of this upswell and the lack of a clear precedent thereof, there does not yet exist much scholarly analysis into why and how this movement expanded as significantly as it did or what developmental routes it may take as in the future. My research seeks to remedy this gap by employing the political process theory of social movement activity to interpret how the COVID pandemic increased opportunities for insurgent activity, how Black Lives Matter was in a prime position to take advantage of those opportunities, and how the movement can and should approach its future development to retain the support and leverage it accumulated during the 2020 protests. Through informal qualitative analysis rooted in the political process model, I suggest that COVID led to greater public recognition of institutional maladies in the United States, which Black Lives Matter was able to channel toward protest activity thanks to the low-cost, high-reward membership system inherent in its non-hierarchical structure and tactful use of social media. I then briefly consider different developmental paths that Black Lives Matter may take and assert that carefully implemented attempts at formalization will allow the movement to retain its organizing potential regardless of any volatile external opportunities.

Liberal Internationalism from George W. Bush to Barack Obama

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
Global War On Terrorism ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Global War

This chapter examines the United States' liberal democratic internationalism from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. It first considers the Bush administration's self-ordained mission to win the “global war on terrorism” by reconstructing the Middle East and Afghanistan before discussing the two time-honored notions of Wilsonianism espoused by Democrats to make sure that the United States remained the leader in world affairs: multilateralism and nation-building. It then explores the liberal agenda under Obama, whose first months in office seemed to herald a break with neoliberalism, and his apparent disinterest in the rhetoric of democratic peace theory, along with his discourse on the subject of an American “responsibility to protect” through the promotion of democracy abroad. The chapter also analyzes the Obama administration's economic globalization and concludes by comparing the liberal internationalism of Bush and Obama.

Violence, Social Movements, and Black Freedom Struggles

Contention ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
AK Thompson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Today ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Research Agendas ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Freedom Struggles

George Floyd’s murder by police on 26 May 2020 set off a cycle of struggle that was notable for its size, intensity, and rate of diffusion. Starting in Minneapolis, the uprising quickly spread to dozens of other major cities and brought with it a repertoire that included riots, arson, and looting. In many places, these tactics coexisted with more familiar actions like public assemblies and mass marches; however, the inflection these tactics gave to the cycle of contention is not easily reconciled with the protest repertoire most frequently mobilized during movement campaigns in the United States today. This discrepancy has led to extensive commentary by scholars and movement participants, who have often weighed in by considering the moral and strategic efficacy of the chosen tactics. Such considerations should not be discounted. Nevertheless, I argue that both the dynamics of contention witnessed during the uprising and their ambivalent relationship to the established protest repertoire must first be understood in historical terms. By considering the relationship between violence, social movements, and Black freedom struggles in this way, I argue that scholars can develop a better understanding of current events while anticipating how the dynamics of contention are likely to develop going forward. Being attentive to these dynamics should in turn inform our research agendas, and it is with this aim in mind that I offer the following ten theses.

Remarks by Bert Lockwood

1973 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 82-86
Author(s):  
Bert Lockwood ◽  
Beatrice Brickell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Justice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Southern Rhodesia

I would like to address myself to international outlaws and what domestic procedures are available to arrest their activities. While at first glance the nexus between domestic justice and international justice may seem tenuous, I wonder: Is it surprising that the same administration that is so insensate over the deprivation of the human rights of blacks in Southern Rhodesia is the same administration that proclaimed early in its tenure that if you have seen one slum you have pretty much seen them all, and hasn’t visited another since? Is it surprising that the same administration that evidences so little concern over the political rights of the majority in Rhodesia is the same administration that “bugs” and sabotages the political process within the United States?

Afghanistan Meets the Amazon: Reading The Kite Runner in America

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Aubry
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Novel ◽  
United States Military ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
Global War On Terrorism ◽  
Customer Reviews ◽  
Global War ◽  
Fictional Representations

This essay considers the American reception of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner in the context of the Bush administration's global war on terrorism by examining the customer reviews of the novel posted on Amazon. As many of the responses indicate, identification serves as a paradoxical means of negotiating with fictional representations of foreignness. The intense and painful empathy inspired by The Kite Runner serves a valorizing function for American readers, strengthening their sense of their own humanity—an effect that resists strict political categorization. Hosseini's ambivalent conception of what it means to be human, I argue, supports a diversity of competing attitudes toward the United States' military intervention in the Middle East and central Asia, while simultaneously catering to fantasies of escape from ideological and cultural divisions altogether.

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