In the revolutionary tradition, the name of Louis Blanqui is either remembered with derision or as a noble failure. Yet during his lifetime, Blanqui was a towering figure of revolutionary courage and commitment as he organized nearly a half-dozen failed revolutionary conspiracies and spent half of his life in jail. This is Blanqui's story.

Insurgent cohesion is central to explaining patterns of violence, the effectiveness of counterinsurgency, and civil war outcomes. Cohesive insurgent groups produce more effective war-fighting forces and are more credible negotiators; organizational cohesion shapes both the duration of wars and their ultimate resolution. In Networks of Rebellion, Paul Staniland explains why insurgent leaders differ so radically in their ability to build strong organizations and why the cohesion of armed groups changes over time during conflicts. He outlines a new way of thinking about the sources and structure of insurgent groups, distinguishing among integrated, vanguard, parochial, and fragmented groups. Staniland compares insurgent groups, their differing social bases, and how the nature of the coalitions and networks within which these armed groups were built has determined their discipline and internal control. He examines insurgent groups in Afghanistan, 1975 to the present day, Kashmir (1988–2003), Sri Lanka from the 1970s to the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, and several communist uprisings in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. The initial organization of an insurgent group depends on the position of its leaders in prewar political networks. These social bases shape what leaders can and cannot do when they build a new insurgent group. Counterinsurgency, insurgent strategy, and international intervention can cause organizational change. During war, insurgent groups are embedded in social ties that determine they how they organize, fight, and negotiate; as these ties shift, organizational structure changes as well.

The appearance of ideologically motivated anti-communist insurgent groups in the Third World is an important new phenomenon that has received little serious attention. Analysis has focused on American attitudes, while the indigenous roots and motivations of such groups have remained largely unexplored. Michael Radu fills in the gap in The New Insurgencies, with case studies and contributions from Anthony Arnold, Paul Henze, Justus van de Kroef, and Jack Wheeler.As the authors show, more often than not, Third World anti-communist insurgencies express a general rejection of values and ideologies from outsiders. Many of these insurgencies reflect violent opposition to regimes installed by the Soviets during the 1970s, yet they only rarely articulate a struggle for liberal democracy. Nationalism, religion, or the preservation of traditional political and economic patterns are more often the true motivations. And while insurgents often apply military and occasionally political methods used by successful Marxist-Leninist insurgencies of this century, they tend to be rural based and close to the aspirations of the peasant masses rather than directed by the educated and urbanized elites.The New Insurgencies includes case studies of major anti-communist movements today, including those in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Angola, and Nicaragua. It shows that in each, the role of local powers such as South Africa, Thailand, and Pakistan rather than direct U.S. support has been critical to the insurgents' effectiveness. In part this may be because the old bipartisan Washington consensus based on anti-communism has evaporated; and Radu explores why this has occurred.Regardless of Washington's support, the new insurgencies are likely to persist. Their impact on U.S., Soviet, and world policy will be profound. The New Insurgencies combines extensive use of firsthand data, including personal knowledge of some of the major personalities involved, with extensive bibliogra

Scholars commonly take the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789, written during the French Revolution, as the starting point for the modern conception of human rights. According to the Declaration, the rights of man are held to be universal, at all times and all places. But as recent crises around migrants and refugees have made obvious, this idea, sacred as it might be among human rights advocates, is exhausted. This book suggests that we need to think of a different idea of universality that exceeds the juridical universialism of the Declaration. Insurgent Universality investigates alternative trajectories of modernity that have been repressed, hindered, and forgotten. Investigating radical upheavals, Tomba excavates an alternative idea of universality that is based on popular political practices that disrupt and reject the existing political and economic order. The book shows how this tradition builds bridges between European and non-European political and social experiments.

During the first decade of the twenty-first century, worker resistance in China increased rapidly despite the fact that certain segments of the state began moving in a pro-labor direction. In explaining this, Eli Friedman argues that the Chinese state has become hemmed in by an "insurgency trap" of its own devising and is thus unable to tame expansive worker unrest. Labor conflict in the process of capitalist industrialization is certainly not unique to China and indeed has appeared in a wide array of countries around the world. What is distinct in China, however, is the combination of postsocialist politics with rapid capitalist development.Other countries undergoing capitalist industrialization have incorporated relatively independent unions to tame labor conflict and channel insurgent workers into legal and rationalized modes of contention. In contrast, the Chinese state only allows for one union federation, the All China Federation of Trade Unions, over which it maintains tight control. Official unions have been unable to win recognition from workers, and wildcat strikes and other forms of disruption continue to be the most effective means for addressing workplace grievances. In support of this argument, Friedman offers evidence from Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces, where unions are experimenting with new initiatives, leadership models, and organizational forms.