Building Blocs

How Parties Organize Society
Herausgeber: De Leon, Cedric; Tu&; Desai, Manali

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Cihan Tugal is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of California, Berkeley, and author of Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism (SUP, 2009).Manali Desai is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Cambridge and author of State Formation and Radical Democracy in India, 1860¿1990.Cedric de Leon is Associate Professor of Sociology at Providence College and author of Party and Society: Reconstructing a Sociology of Democratic Party Politics (2014) and Origins of the Right to Work: Anti-Labor Democracy in Nineteenth Century Chicago (forthcoming).

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 256
• Erscheinungstermin: 27. Mai 2015
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 236mm x 156mm x 22mm
• Gewicht: 466g
• ISBN-13: 9780804793902
• ISBN-10: 0804793905
• Artikelnr.: 41749672

Autorenporträt

Cihan Tüal is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of California, Berkeley, and author of Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism (SUP, 2009).Manali Desai is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Cambridge and author of State Formation and Radical Democracy in India, 1860-1990.Cedric de Leon is Associate Professor of Sociology at Providence College and author of Party and Society: Reconstructing a Sociology of Democratic Party Politics (2014) and Origins of the Right to Work: Anti-Labor Democracy in Nineteenth Century Chicago (forthcoming).

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: Political Articulation: The Structured Creativity of Parties
chapter abstract
This chapter outlines the theory of political articulation upon which it
builds a new theory of parties. It begins by providing a systematic review
of the existing literature on parties and social movements, arguing that
existing theoretical frameworks do not sufficiently account for the process
of creating both social change and social order. It argues that attention
to political articulation is crucial in providing such an account. Building
on the work of several theorists, including Gramsci, Laclau, and Althusser,
the chapter discusses how parties draw together different constituencies
and create common ground, while at the same time constructing boundaries of
'us' vs 'them'. This fundamentally political process is central to the
formation of the major cleavages in society, while the integration process
is fundamental to social order. The chapter outlines the means of
articulation employed by different parties, and outlines the reasons why
some parties are more successful than others.
1The Political Origins of Working Class Formation in the United States:
chapter abstract
The scholarly debate on the origins of working class formation correspond
to what Pierre Bourdieu (1989) once called the "objectivist" and
"subjectivist" moments of class. Objectivists claim that class formation
results from the structural location of workers and their employers in the
system of production. Subjectivists by contrast insist that workers come to
identify as a class in the course of labor disputes with their employers.
Yet the erratic trajectory of workers' political identity in Civil War era
Chicago does not fit either of these frameworks neatly. Chicago workers
came to recognize themselves as a class organically, in their own way and
time, as subjectivists would expect, but they did so in contexts beyond
workplace struggles, namely, in the political arena, where parties compete
to articulate coalitions or blocs by naturalizing and denaturalizing social
divisions such as race and class.
2Continuity or change? Rethinking Left Party Formation in Canada
chapter abstract
Scholars usually take for granted that an independent left party would take
root in Canada. But despite favorable political terrain, no left party
achieved long-term success prior to the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation
in the 1930s. Why did the CCF succeed where previous parties failed? Using
an "articulation" model of politics, focused on parties' role in assembling
and naturalizing political coalitions, I show that the CCF succeeded
because ruling parties' repressive and neglectful response to
Depression-era labor and agrarian protest left these constituencies
politically excluded. This allowed the CCF to articulate an independent
farmer-labor alliance that eluded its predecessors. The CCF was
ideologically and organizationally coherent enough to avoid co-optation,
while being flexible enough to unite previously fragmented constituencies.
Repressive ruling party policies created a "common foe" that broke farmer
and labor groups away from previous allegiances, while CCF ideology and
practice forged a new independent coalition.
3Religious Politics, Hegemony, and the Market Economy: Parties in the
Making of Turkey's Liberal-Conservative Bloc and Egypt's Diffuse
Islamization
chapter abstract
This chapter on Islamist parties in Egypt and Turkey demonstrates the
autonomous role of politics in crystallizing certain cleavages and
rebuilding society around them. It first focuses on Turkey to demonstrate
this claim. Divisions between Kurds and Turks, secular and pious sectors,
upper and lower classes, and ultimately the ruling elite and the people
have impacted the political scene for decades. These divisions found their
expression in the opposition of the center-left and the center-right until
the late 1980s, but after that point, Islamist leaders worked to revise
these divisions. By redefining the normal citizen as a wronged yet
entrepreneurial Muslim, they attacked the secular elite and thereby
rendered free market identity "popular." As evidence of this claim, the
chapter discusses how the lack of a professionalized Islamic party has
restricted the process of Islamic neoliberalization in Egypt.
4Democratic Disarticulation and its Dangers: Cleavage Formation and
Promiscuous Powersharing in Indonesian Party Politics
chapter abstract
Even the most strongly felt cultural and ideological identifications do not
necessarily find enduring expression in national politics. When Indonesia
democratized in the late 1990s, it appeared that party competition would be
characterized by two primary cleavages that had been incubated under
Suharto's "New Order": a regime cleavage pitting reformist opponents of the
recently fallen dictatorship against its holdovers, and a religious
cleavage distinguishing parties by their views on the proper political role
for Islam. Yet some fifteen years later, neither a reformist nor a
religious bloc exists in Indonesian politics. This chapter seeks to explain
how this surprising outcome came to pass. In so doing, it aims to highlight
the dangers that democratic disarticulation poses not only in Indonesia,
but in young democracies around the world.
5Weak Party Articulation and Development in India, 1991-2014
chapter abstract
This chapter discusses the case of weak articulations in India between
1999-2014, arguing that the two major parties, BJP and Congress, have
failed to create stable articulations that would enable a developmental
transformation. Although India has undertaken a market path to development,
it is characterized by high levels of poverty, as well as weakly
coordinated capitalist growth. The two key questions are: why has a growing
consensus for market-based development not translated into a momentum for
developmentalism, and second, why, has growing democratization not led to a
greater redistributive developmental thrust from below? The root cause of
these problems, this chapter shows, lies not simply in the absence of state
autonomy or in excessive democracy, but in the nature of the political
articulations led by the two parties.
6Coda: Hegemony, Class and Democracy in Gramsci's Prison Notebooks
chapter abstract
This chapter compares Gramsci's concept of hegemony with the notion of
articulation as presented in the book. It argues that the two issues of
social class and democracy were central to Gramsci's notion of hegemony,
and that a focus on these phenomena will aid the research program of
articulation going forward.