Preface

Summary

Since the completion of the first edition of Power in Movement in 1993, more has happened in the field of contentious politics and social movements than in perhaps any five-year period since the late 1960s. The 1989 collapse of state socialism was already accomplished, but it was too soon for its lessons to be reflected in much scholarly work. Those largely peaceful movements led to states that have been far from stable; in some cases they led to violent and volatile movements and, in one case – the former Yugoslavia – produced a savage civil war. I have tried to absorb some of the lessons of those transformations into this edition of the book.

The events of 1989 and what followed also demonstrated something to which I alluded in the final chapter of the first edition, but still had very little purchase upon: the rapid diffusion of contention across national boundaries. I am still cautious about predicting a world of movement without borders, but particularly in western Europe, evidence is accumulating that European union may be triggering a new wave of movements that cross the boundaries of the nation-state. Even outside the West, transnational advocacy networks have grown up to resemble in some ways the national social movements that are the main subject of the book. These changes have become so insistent that they are accorded a separate chapter in this edition.