Contentious Politics in Brazil and China: Beyond Regime is a highly accessible and compelling examination of two fast-emerging countries in the global arena. It is not common to see Brazil and China examined side-by-side, but authors December Green and Laura Luehrmann show the utility of this unorthodox comparison: By moving beyond region and regime, this book offers a thought-provoking analysis of two very different countries dealing with many concerns and problems in surprisingly similar ways. With a focus on current issues, Contentious Politics in Brazil and China covers migration, urbanization, criminality, the environment, sexual politics and HIV-AIDS response, foreign policy, and international relations. This text not only illuminates each country's realities more clearly than traditional regional or regime-type comparisons can, but it offers unexpected insights into the study of state-society relations.

Contentious Politics in Brazil and China: Beyond Regime is a highly accessible and compelling examination of two fast-emerging countries in the global arena. It is not common to see Brazil and China examined side-by-side, but authors December Green and Laura Luehrmann show the utility of this unorthodox comparison: By moving beyond region and regime, this book offers a thought-provoking analysis of two very different countries dealing with many concerns and problems in surprisingly similar ways. With a focus on current issues, Contentious Politics in Brazil and China covers migration, urbanization, criminality, the environment, sexual politics and HIV-AIDS response, foreign policy, and international relations. This text not only illuminates each country's realities more clearly than traditional regional or regime-type comparisons can, but it offers unexpected insights into the study of state-society relations.

Raised to be "flowers of the nation," the first generation born after the founding of the People's Republic of China was united in its political outlook and at first embraced the Cultural Revolution of 1966, but then split into warring factions. Investigating the causes of this fracture, Guobin Yang argues that Chinese youth engaged in an imaginary revolution from 1966 to 1968, enacting a political mythology that encouraged violence as a way to prove one's revolutionary credentials. This same competitive dynamic would later turn the Red Guard against the communist government. Throughout the 1970s, the majority of Red Guard youth were sent to work in rural villages, where they developed an appreciation for the values of ordinary life. From this experience, an underground cultural movement was born. Rejecting idolatry, these relocated revolutionaries developed a new form of resistance that signaled a new era of enlightenment, culminating in the Democracy Wall movement of the late 1970s and the Tiananmen protest of 1989. Yang's final chapter on the politics of history and memory argues that contemporary memories of the Cultural Revolution are factionalized along these lines of political division, formed fifty years before.

The Philippines makes an interesting case for examining direct and collective acts of contention against the neoliberal project of economic globalization. Crippled by foreign debt, indiscriminate liberalization of trade, falling stock markets, and perpetual corruption, the Philippines is also a democratic polity and one of the few countries in Asia with a vibrant and dynamic civil society sector. This collection has chapters on the Freedom from Debt Coalition's campaign on debt relief, the Stop-the-New-Round Coalition's advocacy to change international trade rules and barriers, the global taxation initiative as embodied in Tobin tax advocacy in the country, the Transparency and Accountability Network's anti-corruption effort, and the Philippine Fair Trade Forum's enterprise on fair trade. Localizing and Transnationalizing Contentious Politics is the first work of its kind to focus on five global civil society movements in the Philippines and their responses to the inequities of neoliberal globalization. Northern scholars have acknowledged the persistent absence of the South in research on activism around global issues, and this book can help fill this gap. Using political process theory as a framework, the book traces the emergence, development and diffusion of these social movements in the Philippines. Globalization is taken as the environment in which they operate to highlight the role of increased interdependence and internationalization, and the predominance of a particular ideology in the dynamics of contention.

Bulldozers, violent thugs, and nonviolent brokers -- The theory : state power, repression, and implications for development -- Outsourcing violence : everyday repression via thugs-for-hire -- Case studies : thugs-for-hire, repression, and mobilization -- Networks of state infrastructural power : brokerage, state penetration, and mobilization -- Brokers in harmonious demolition : mass mobilizers, mediators, and huangniu -- Comparative context : South Korea and India.

Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has revolutionized popular expression in China, enabling users to organize, protest, and influence public opinion in unprecedented ways. Guobin Yang's pioneering study maps an innovative range of contentious forms and practices linked to Chinese cyberspace, delineating a nuanced and dynamic image of the Chinese Internet as an arena for creativity, community, conflict, and control. Like many other contemporary protest forms in China and the world, Yang argues, Chinese online activism derives its methods and vitality from multiple and intersecting forces, and state efforts to constrain it have only led to more creative acts of subversion. Transnationalism and the tradition of protest in China's incipient civil society provide cultural and social resources to online activism. Even Internet businesses have encouraged contentious activities, generating an unusual synergy between commerce and activism. Yang's book weaves these strands together to create a vivid story of immense social change, indicating a new era of informational politics.

Protest has proliferated in the early part of the twenty-first century, forcing change in political systems and challenging established patterns of behaviour. The factors driving these protests range from religion and inequality through to the effectiveness of the state and its role in protecting the rights of citizens. The growth in discontent represented by these protests potentially threatens the stability of the state by raising questions about the right of governments to govern. Anger and frustration embodied in many of these actions has resulted in the growth of support for populist political actors promising simplified solutions to the complex underlying issues. In this way, the inability of the state to address the claims of its population potentially places its continued viability at risk. The cases in this collection examine a range of protest movements from around the world, in both democratic and authoritarian political systems, to provide an overview of contemporary issues and protest forms. Addressing contemporary protest in this manner is an important task in supporting our understanding of the root causes of the current tensions and their possible future effects. This book is a compilation of articles from a special issue of Contemporary Social Science with additional papers selected from Contemporary Politics, Journal of Contemporary China and Democratization.