Violently divided societies present major challenges to institutions seeking to establish peace in places characterised by ethnic conflict and high levels of social segregation. Yet such societies also contain groups that refuse to be confined within separate forms of ethnic community and instead develop alternative modes of action that generate shared identities, build trust and foster consensual, peaceful politics. Advancing a unique social movement approach to the study of violently divided societies, this book highlights how various social movements function within a context of violent ethnic politics and provide new ways of imagining citizenship that complements peacebuilding. By analysing the impact of social movements on divided societies, this book contributes to debates about the complexity of belonging and identity, and constructs a nuanced understanding of political mobilisation in regions defined by ethnic violence. In turn, the book provides important insights into the dynamics of social movement mobilisation. Based on the author's extensive research in Lebanon and Northern Ireland, and drawing on numerous examples from other divided societies, this book examines a range of social movements, including nationalists, victims, sexual minorities, labour movements, feminists, environmentalists, secularists, and peace movements. Bringing together social theory and case studies in order to consider how grassroots movements intersect with political institutions, this book will be of interest to students, scholars and policymakers working in sociology and politics.

Violently divided societies present major challenges to institutions seeking to establish peace in places characterised by ethnic conflict and high levels of social segregation. Yet such societies also contain groups that refuse to be confined within separate forms of ethnic community and instead develop alternative modes of action that generate shared identities, build trust and foster consensual, peaceful politics. Advancing a unique social movement approach to the study of violently divided societies, this book highlights how various social movements function within a context of violent ethnic politics and provide new ways of imagining citizenship that complements peacebuilding. By analysing the impact of social movements on divided societies, this book contributes to debates about the complexity of belonging and identity, and constructs a nuanced understanding of political mobilisation in regions defined by ethnic violence. In turn, the book provides important insights into the dynamics of social movement mobilisation. Based on the author's extensive research in Lebanon and Northern Ireland, and drawing on numerous examples from other divided societies, this book examines a range of social movements, including nationalists, victims, sexual minorities, labour movements, feminists, environmentalists, secularists, and peace movements. Bringing together social theory and case studies in order to consider how grassroots movements intersect with political institutions, this book will be of interest to students, scholars and policymakers working in sociology and politics.

This volume seeks to move beyond structure and agency perspectives by suggesting that social movement theories are best suited to foster a perspective that entails 1) an actor-based approach to the Troubles; and 2) the contextualization of contentious politics, or how the contingent and ever-evolving political contexts/opportunities/threats shaped the trajectory of the Troubles. Recent social movement scholarship has proved to be particularly useful in situating the emergence, continuation, and demise of political violence within a larger context of multiple conflicts, in which radical contention is only one possible outcome. Social movement theories also avoid the essentialization of political groups as 'radical' or 'violent'; instead, they place all political actors participating to contention, from paramilitaries to state authorities, within their complex organizational fields, emphasizing their shifting strategies as they interact with each other and adapt to the political context.

This book offers an in-depth investigation of the emergence and spread of social mobilizations that transcend ethnicity in societies violently divided along ethno-national lines. Using Bosnia Herzegovina as a case study, the book explores episodes of mobilization which have superseded ethno-nationalist cleavages. Bosnia Herzegovina emerged from the 1992–95 war brutally impoverished and deeply ethnically divided, representing a critical and strategic case for the examination and understanding of the dynamics of mobilization in such divided societies. Despite difficult circumstances for civic-based collective action, social mobilizations in the country have grown in size, number and intensity in recent years. Marked by citizen demand for accountable governance, responsive urbanism, and access to basic human rights, these protests have been driven by economic, social and political problems which cut across religious and ethnic divides. Examining the variation in spatial and social scale of contention, the book investigates movements’ formation, their organizational structures and networking strategies and advances research on divided societies and social movements. This volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Southeastern Europe and those examining political dissent, social movements and mobilization in divided societies, as well as practitioners in civil society, grassroots groups and political activists.

This groundbreaking book provides an integrated account of ethnic, nationality and sectarian conflicts in the contemporary world including the role of collective myths, the mass media and the ethnification of identities as contributors to ethnic conflicts and wars. In addition to many examples from the last two decades, Oberschall provides a comprehensive overview of the conflict and peace processes in Bosnia, Northern Ireland and the Middle East. Oberschall analyzes: peace building through constitutional design power sharing governance disarming combatants, post-accord security and refugee return transitional justice (truth and reconciliation commissions, war crimes tribunals) economic and social reconstruction in a multiethnic society. In addition to many examples from the last two decades, Oberschall provides a comprehensive overview of the conflict and peace processes for Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and Israel-Palestinians. He argues that insurgency creates contentious issues over and above the original root causes of the conflict, that the internal divisions within the adversaries trigger conflicts that jeopardize peace processes, and that security and rebuilding a failed state are a precondition for lasting peace and a democratic polity. This book will be essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers and academics interested in the fields of peace studies, war and conflict studies, ethnic studies and political sociology.

By many measures--commonsensical or statistical--the United States has not been more divided politically or economically in the last hundred years than it is now. How have we gone from the striking bipartisan cooperation and relative economic equality of the war years and post-war period to the extreme inequality and savage partisan divisions of today? In this sweeping look at American politics from the Depression to the present, Doug McAdam and Karina Kloos argue that party politics alone is not responsible for the mess we find ourselves in. Instead, it was the ongoing interaction of social movements and parties that, over time, pushed Democrats and Republicans toward their ideological margins, undermining the post-war consensus in the process. The Civil Rights struggle and the white backlash it provoked reintroduced the centrifugal force of social movements into American politics, ushering in an especially active and sustained period of movement/party dynamism, culminating in today's tug of war between the Tea Party and Republican establishment for control of the GOP. In Deeply Divided, McAdam and Kloos depart from established explanations of the conservative turn in the United States and trace the roots of political polarization and economic inequality back to the shifting racial geography of American politics in the 1960s. Angered by Lyndon Johnson's more aggressive embrace of civil rights reform in 1964, Southern Dixiecrats abandoned the Democrats for the first time in history, setting in motion a sustained regional realignment that would, in time, serve as the electoral foundation for a resurgent and increasingly more conservative Republican Party.

This volume focusses on non-state actors and political conflicts but also attends to the broader themes of the series. The research emphases the roles and motivations of non-state actors in conflicts or post-conflict situations in the post-Cold War era; as well outlining the dynamics of social movements, conflicts, or change.