Different forms of contentious politics such as social movements, revolutions, ethnic mobilizations, and cycles of protest share a number of causal properties, but disciplinary fragmentation has obscured their similarities. Recent works and this new journal - Mobilization - provide opportunities for comparison and synthesis. A network of researchers is undertaking a broad survey of contentious politics in hopes of producing an intelligible map of the field, a synthesis of recent inquiries, a specification of scope conditions for the validity of available theories, and an exploration of worldwide changes in the character of contention. Discussions of 1) social movements, cycles and revolutions; 2) collective identities and social networks; 3) social movements and institutional politics; and 4) globalization and transnational contention illustrate the promise and perils of the enterprise.
Political contention; Social movement; Collective action; Social network; Transnational movement