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After Wallace
The 1986 Contest for Governor and Political Change in Alabama
Patrick R. Cotter
University of Alabama Press, 2009
All Alabama elections are colorful, but the 1986 gubernatorial contest may trump them all for its sheer strangeness
 
With the retirement of an aging and ill George Wallace, both the issues and candidates contending for the office were able to set the course of Alabama politics for generations to follow. Whereas the Wallace regimes were particular to Alabama, and the gubernatorial campaign was conducted in a partial vacuum with his absence, Alabama also experienced a wave of partisan realignment. A once solidly Democratic South was undergoing a tectonic political shift as white voters in large numbers abandoned their traditional Democratic political home for the revived Republicans, a party shaped in many respects by the Wallace presidential bids of 1968 and 1972 and the Reagan revolution of the 1980s.
 
Alabama's own Democratic Party contributed to this massive shift with self-destructive campaign behavior that disgusted many of its traditional voters who wound up staying home or voting for a little-known Republican. From the gubernatorial election of 1986 came the shaky balance between the two parties that exists today.
 
After Wallace recollects and analyzes how these shifts occurred, citing extensive newspaper coverage from the time as well as personal observations and poll data collected by the authors. This volume is certain to be a valuable work for any political scientist, especially those with an interest in Alabama or southern politics.

 
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Chicanas/Chicanos at the Crossroads
Social, Economic, and Political Change
Edited by David R. Maciel and Isidro D. Ortiz
University of Arizona Press, 1996
Dubbed the "decade of the Hispanic," the 1980s was instead a period of retrenchment for Chicanas/os as they continued to confront many of the problems and issues of earlier years in the face of a more conservative political environment. Following a substantial increase in activism in the early 1990s, Chicana/o scholars are now prepared to take stock of the Chicano Movement's accomplishments and shortcomings—and the challenges it yet faces—on the eve of a new millennium.

Chicanas/Chicanos at the Crossroads is a state-of-the-art assessment of the most significant developments in the conditions, fortunes, and experiences of Chicanas/os since the late seventies, with an emphasis on the years after 1980, which have thus far received little scholarly attention. Ten essays by leading Chicana and Chicano scholars on economic, social, educational, and political trends in Chicana/o life examine such issues as the rapid population growth of Chicanas/os and other Latinos; the ascendancy of Reaganomics and the turn to the right of American politics; the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment; the launching of new initiatives by the Mexican government toward the Chicano community; and the emergence of a new generation of political activists. The authors have been drawn from a broad array of disciplines, ranging from economics to women's studies, in order to offer a multidisciplinary perspective on Chicana/o developments in the contemporary era. The inclusion of authors from different regions of the United States and from divergent backgrounds enhances the broad perspective of the volume.

The editors offer this anthology with the intent of providing timely and useful insights and stimulating reflection and scholarship on a diverse and complex population. A testament to three decades of intense social struggle, Chicanas/Chicanos at the Crossroads is ample evidence that the legacy of the Movimiento is alive and well.

Contents
Part One: Demographic and Economic Trends Among Chicanas/os
1. Demographic Trends in the Chicano Population: Policy Implications for the Twenty First Century, Susan Gonzalez-Baker
2. Mexican Immigration in the 1980s and Beyond: Implications for Chicanos/as, Leo R. Chavez and Rebecca Martinez
3. Chicanas/os in the Economy: Issues and Challenges Since 1970, Refugio Rochin and Adela de la Torre
Part Two: Chicano Politics: Trajectories and Consequences
4. The Chicano Movement: Its Legacy for Politics and Policy, John A. Garcia
5. Chicano Organizational Politics and Strategies in the Era of Retrenchment, Isidro D. Ortiz
6. Return to Aztlan: Mexican Policy Design Toward Chicanos, María Rosa Garcia-Acevedo
Part Three: Chicana/o Educational Struggles: Dimensions, Accomplishments and Challenges
7. Actors Not Victims: Chicanos in the Struggle for Educational Equality, Guadalupe San Miguel
8. Juncture in the Road: Chincano Studies Since El Plan de Santa Barbara, Ignacio Garcia
Part Four: Gender Feminism and Chicanas/os: Developments and Perspectives
9. Gender and Its Discontinuities in Male/Female Domestic Relations: Mexicans in Cross Cultural Context, Adelaida R. Del Castillo
10. With Quill and Torch: A Chicana Perspective on the American Women's Movement and Feminist Theories, Beatríz Pesquera and Denise A. Segura
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Chinese Elites and Political Change
Zheijang Province in the Early Twentieth Century
R. Keith Schoppa
Harvard University Press, 1982

With the Qing Dynasty reform efforts (1901–1911), abolition of the civil service examination (1905), and the end of the monarchy (1912), the first three decades of the twentieth century brought important changes to the elite of Zhejiang Province. This book examines the social backgrounds, public activities, careers, and decision-making of local and provincial elites—that is, nonprofessional men who had taken on public duties when the multiplying problems of government had resulted in a general breakdown of public functions.

While elites in early twentieth-century China have often been caricatured as militarists, corrupt bureaucrats, evil landlords, and ineffectual reformers, they have not been clearly understood or closely analyzed. Since the seventeenth century, elites had been assuming increasing responsibility for funding and managing public projects, and by the twentieth century had expanded their activities still further. In the first three decades of the century, they experienced substantial personal and communitarian development; it was the structures and processes developed by these elites that subsequent regimes—Guomindang, Japanese, or Communist—had to build upon and adapt.

Keith Schoppa divides the counties of Zhejiang Province into four zones according to level of political and economic development and scrupulously analyzes the complex processes of remolding society at the local and provincial levels. By delving beneath the heroic figures and large movements of Chinese political life in this century, he reveals the common factors that make China a part of the worldwide story of reconstruction, reform, and developmental change.

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Dilemmas of Political Change in Mexico
Edited by Kevin J. Middlebrook
University of London Press, 2004

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Economic Decline and Political Change
Canada, Great Britain, the United States
Harold D. Clarke
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989

In the 1970's, an “age of affluence” ended abruptly in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. Skyrocketing inflation, persistent unemployment, and sluggish growth became new, oppressive realities for government and citizens alike. This book examines the changes that occurred in economic policymaking on the governmental level and the public's response to such changes. This timely collection of essays sheds light on the political economy of three of the world's oldest democracies in an era of economic distress and uncertainty.

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Idols of the Tribe
Group Identity and Political Change
Harold Isaacs
Harvard University Press, 1989

“A pacesetter, at the forefront in recognizing the persisting importance of ‘ethnicity as a force both in building nations and in tearing them apart,’ it is also a work of literary merit, crafted by a master wordsmith.” So comments Lucian Pye in reflecting on this classic work in political science and sociology about group identities bending and shaping themselves under the pressure of political change. These transformations seem to have basic similarities, whether they take place in Little Rock or Kenya, Vietnam or Pakistan, Belgium or Biafra.

Isaacs sorts out some fundamentals in forming group identity: the body, names, language, history of origins, religion, and nationality. These are dynamic elements that are melded together but have the possibility of creating new pluralisms.

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The Insubordination of Signs
Political Change, Cultural Transformation, and Poetics of the Crisis
Nelly Richard
Duke University Press, 2004
Nelly Richard is one of the most prominent cultural theorists writing in Latin America today. As a participant in Chile’s neo-avantgarde, Richard worked to expand the possibilities for cultural debate within the constraints imposed by the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1990), and she has continued to offer incisive commentary about the country’s transition to democracy. Well known as the founder and director of the influential journal Revista de crítica cultural, based in Santiago, Richard has been central to the dissemination throughout Latin America of work by key contemporary thinkers, including Néstor García Canclini, Jacques Derrida, Fredric Jameson, and Diamela Eltit. Her own writing provides rigorous considerations of Latin American identity, postmodernism, gender, neoliberalism, and strategies of political and cultural resistance.

In The Insubordination of Signs Richard theorizes the cultural reactions—particularly within the realms of visual arts, literature, and the social sciences—to the oppression of the Chilean dictatorship. She reflects on the role of memory in the historical shadow of the military regime and on the strategies offered by marginal discourses for critiquing institutional systems of power. She considers the importance of Walter Benjamin for the theoretical self-understanding of the Latin American intellectual left, and she offers revisionary interpretations of the Chilean neo-avantgarde in terms of its relationships with the traditional left and postmodernism. Exploring the gap between Chile’s new left social sciences and its “new scene” aesthetic and critical practices, Richard discusses how, with the return of democracy, the energies that had set in motion the democratizing process seemed to exhaust themselves as cultural debate was attenuated in order to reduce any risk of a return to authoritarianism.

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Islamic Reform and Political Change in Northern Nigeria
Roman Loimeier
Northwestern University Press, 1997
The 1970s and 1980s were times of political and religious turmoil in Nigeria, characterized by governmental upheaval, and aggressive confrontations between the Sufi brotherhoods and the Izala movement. In Islamic Reform and Political Change in Northern Nigeria, Roman Loimeier explores the intermeshing of religion in the struggle for political influence and preservation of the interests of Nigerian Muslims.

Loimeier's careful scholarship combines astute readings of the work of previous scholars--both published and unpublished--with archival material and the findings of his own fieldwork in Nigeria. His work fills a substantial gap in contemporary Nigerian studies. This book provides invaluable and essential reading for serious students of Nigerian politics and of Islamic movements in Africa.
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Latino Mayors
Political Change in the Postindustrial City
Marion Orr
Temple University Press, 2018

As recently as the early 1960s, Latinos were almost totally excluded from city politics. This makes the rise of Latino mayors in the past three decades a remarkable American story—one that explains ethnic succession, changing urban demography, and political contexts. The vibrant collection Latino Mayors features case studies of eleven Latino mayors in six American cities: San Antonio, Los Angeles, Denver, Hartford, Miami, and Providence.

The editors and contributors analyze Latino mayors for their governing styles and policies. They describe how candidates shaped race, class, and economic issues—particularly in deracialized campaigns. Latino Mayors also addresses coalition politics, political incorporation, and how community groups operate, as well as the challenges these pioneers have faced in office from political tensions and governance issues that sometimes even harm Latinos. 

Ultimately, Latino Mayors charts the performances, successes, and failures of these elected officials to represent their constituents in a changing economic and urban environment.

Contributors include: Stefanie Chambers, Carlos E. Cuéllar, Emily M. Farris, Maria Ilcheva, Robert Preuhs, Heywood T. Sanders, Ellen Shiau, and the editors.

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The Nature of Hope
Grassroots Organizing, Environmental Justice, and Political Change
Char Miller
University Press of Colorado, 2018
The Nature of Hope focuses on the dynamics of environmental activism at the local level, examining the environmental and political cultures that emerge in the context of conflict. The book considers how ordinary people have coalesced to demand environmental justice and highlights the powerful role of intersectionality in shaping the on-the-ground dynamics of popular protest and social change.
 
Through lively and accessible storytelling, The Nature of Hope reveals unsung and unstinting efforts to protect the physical environment and human health in the face of continuing economic growth and development and the failure of state and federal governments to deal adequately with the resulting degradation of air, water, and soils. In an age of environmental crisis, apathy, and deep-seated cynicism, these efforts suggest the dynamic power of a “politics of hope” to offer compelling models of resistance, regeneration, and resilience. The contributors frame their chapters around the drive for greater democracy and improved human and ecological health and demonstrate that local activism is essential to the preservation of democracy and the protection of the environment. The book also brings to light new styles of leadership and new structures for activist organizations, complicating assumptions about the environmental movement in the United States that have focused on particular leaders, agencies, thematic orientations, and human perceptions of nature.
 
The critical implications that emerge from these stories about ecological activism are crucial to understanding the essential role that protecting the environment plays in sustaining the health of civil society. The Nature of Hope will be crucial reading for scholars interested in environmentalism and the mechanics of social movements and will engage historians, geographers, political scientists, grassroots activists, humanists, and social scientists alike.
 
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Party Rivalry and Political Change in Taisho Japan
Duus
Harvard University Press

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Patchwork Nation
Sectionalism and Political Change in American Politics
James G. Gimpel and Jason E. Schuknecht
University of Michigan Press, 2004
The unprecedented geographic and socioeconomic mobility of twentieth-century America was accompanied by a major reshuffling of political support in many parts of the country. Yet at the dawn of the new century these local and regional movements are still poorly understood. How can we account for persistent political regionalism and the sectional changes that have radically altered the nation's political landscape, from the Sun Belt to the Rust Belt? Patchwork Nation retrieves this lost knowledge, restoring geography to its central role in our nation's political behavior.


"A primer on the importance of regional identity in the electoral system. ... [A]nyone interested in learning more about how America's diversity drives its political systems would do well to take a spin through Patchwork Nation."
---Meg Kinnard, NationalJournal.com

"Location, location, location. What matters in politics is not just who the voters are, but where they are. Just ask Al Gore. Or read this book, a compelling demonstration that geography is often destiny."
---Bill Schneider, Senior Political Analyst, CNN

"This accessible and well-written book challenges us to reflect on the role that political context plays in shaping the vote. By tracing how regional politics evolves over time within and across states, Gimpel and Schuknecht have revived the important but often neglected field of political geography."
---Donald Green, Yale University

"In the spirit of V. O. Key, Gimpel and Schuknecht make a fundamental contribution. They demonstrate that states and regions are not simply important as units of aggregation, but rather as complex political arenas with profound consequences for processes of democratic politics both within and beyond their boundaries."
---Robert Huckfeldt, University of California, Davis
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Political Change and Underdevelopment
A Critical Introduction to Third World Politics
Vicky Randall and Robin Theobald
Duke University Press, 1998
In this completely revised second edition, Vicky Randall and Robin Theobald review the principal theoretical approaches to the postwar study of Third World politics. Instead of undergoing Western-model modernization as predicted, developing countries have seen the proliferation of one-party states, military coups, communal violence, corruption, and economic dependence. Randall and Theobald survey and analyze the varied theories born of these developments, with examples from such nations as Chile, Indonesia, Pakistan, Syria, Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania.

This second edition has been expanded to include discussions of the international debt crisis, the impact of globalization on the postcolonial world, the rise of newly industrialized countries, and the upsurge in religion-based conflict in the post–Cold War era. Describing the strengths and weaknesses of the existing interpretive approaches to these issues, the authors explore the often difficult relationship between political change and economic development. At the same time they provide a comprehensive view into the turbulent politics of the Third World and suggest how future analysis can build on present approaches to reflect political reality more fully.
An essential text for students of political science and Third World societies, this volume will also interest anyone seeking a clearer understanding of the current issues underlying the politics of these countries.

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Political Change in a West African State
A Study of the Modernization Process in Sierra Leone
Martin L. Kilson
Harvard University Press

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The Politics of Rights
Lawyers, Public Policy, and Political Change
Stuart A. Scheingold
University of Michigan Press, 2004
Stuart A. Scheingold's landmark work introduced a new understanding of the contribution of rights to progressive social movements, and thirty years later it still stands as a pioneering and provocative work, bridging political science and sociolegal studies. In the preface to this new edition, the author provides a cogent analysis of the burgeoning scholarship that has been built on the foundations laid in his original volume. A new foreword from Malcolm Feeley of Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law traces the intellectual roots of The Politics of Rights to the classic texts of social theory and sociolegal studies.

"Scheingold presents a clear, thoughtful discussion of the ways in which rights can both empower and constrain those seeking change in American society. While much of the writing on rights is abstract and obscure, The Politics of Rights stands out as an accessible and engaging discussion."
-Gerald N. Rosenberg, University of Chicago

"This book has already exerted an enormous influence on two generations of scholars. It has had an enormous influence on political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists, as well as historians and legal scholars. With this new edition, this influence is likely to continue for still more generations. The Politics of Rights has, I believe, become an American classic."
-Malcolm Feeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, from the foreword

Stuart A. Scheingold is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Washington.

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Privatization and Political Change in Mexico
Judith A. Teichman
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996
Since 1983, Mexico has undergone a rapid and thorough economic restructuring program, with privatization at the core. The government has divested itself of hundreds of public companies, increasing the role of private capital, both domestic and foreign. Supporters have argued that divestiture would have positive implications for Mexican democracy, but Judith A. Teichman concludes that political and economic power in Mexico is more concentrated and exclusionary than ever. She uses extensive field research, including interviews with top political and business leaders to describe and analyze the process by which the Mexican state has reformed its mammoth public enterprise sector.
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Professional Correctness
Literary Studies and Political Change
Stanley Fish
Harvard University Press

The discipline of literary criticism is strictly defined, and the most pressing issues of our time—racism, violence against women and homosexuals, cultural imperialism, and the like—are located outside its domain. In Professional Correctness, Stanley Fish raises a provocative challenge to those who try to turn literary studies into an instrument of political change, arguing that when literary critics try to influence society at large by addressing social and political issues, they cease to be literary critics at all.

Anyone interested in the debate over the place of cultural studies in the field of literary criticism, or the more general question of whether academics can become the "public intellectuals" many aspire to be, needs to read Fish's powerful and unconventional argument for restoring discipline to the academy.

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Right On?
Political Change and Continuity in George W. Bush's America
Edited by Iwan Morgan, Philip D. Davies
University of London Press, 2006

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The Rise of Nerd Politics
Digital Activism and Political Change
John Postill
Pluto Press, 2018
The recent irruption of WikiLeaks, Anonymous, Snowden and other tech-savvy actors onto the global political stage raises urgent questions about the impact of digital activism on political systems around the world. The Rise of Nerd Politics is an anthropological exploration of the role that such actors play in sparking new processes of political change in the digital age.
 
Drawing from long-term ethnographic research in Spain, Indonesia and Malaysia--as well as empirical examples from the United States, Iceland, Taiwan and further afield--Postill tracks the rise of technology "nerds" as a new transnational class of political brokers with growing influence. The book identifies and explores four domains of "nerd politics" that have experienced a dramatic expansion since 2010: digital rights, data activism, social protest, and institutional politics.
 
A lively and engaging intervention at the conjuncture of anthropology, media studies, and sociology, this book offers a pertinent reflection on the future of political change in the digital age.
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The Savannah River Chiefdoms
Political Change in the Late Prehistoric Southeast
David G. Anderson
University of Alabama Press, 1994

This volume explores political change in chiefdoms, specifically how complex chiefdoms emerge and collapse, and how this process—called cycling—can be examined using archaeological, ethnohistoric, paleoclimatic, paleosubsistence, and physical anthropological data. The focus for the research is the prehistoric and initial contact-era Mississippian chiefdoms of the Southeastern United States, specifically the societies occupying the Savannah River basin from ca. A.D. 1000 to 1600. This regional focus and the multidisciplinary nature of the investigation provide a solid introduction to the Southeastern Mississippian archaeological record and the study of cultural evolution in general.

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Sino-Soviet Crisis Politics
A Study of Political Change and Communication
Richard Wich
Harvard University Press, 1980

Through an analysis of political perception and communication, this study explains the structural change in the international political landscape that followed the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968. It examines the shifts in China's global policies—from dual confrontation with the United States and the Soviet Union to an intensified challenge to the Soviets and rapprochement with the United States—and analyzes the complex signaling process through which that change was accomplished.

The examination throws light upon the dynamics of the Sino-Soviet conflict. The Sino-Soviet border crisis is interpreted within a broad context of international affairs, particularly perceptions of the meaning of Czechoslovakia and the implications of American withdrawal from Vietnam. The crisis is seen as symptomatic of underlying shifts in the international landscape, shifts that were also to become evident in the transformation of Sino-American relations, Sino-Japanese reconciliation, and the emergence of China's adversary relations with its former close allies Vietnam and Albania.

This study demonstrates the application of an analytical method—called “contextual analysis” by the author—for interpreting the political communications through which the parties involved signaled their perceptions and expectations. Close analysis of these communications enlarges understanding of how the signaling process both shaped and reflected the evolution of events during a critical period of change.

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A Suffragette in America
Reflections on Prisoners, Pickets and Political Change
Sylvia Pankhurst
Pluto Press, 2019
In 1911, leading English suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst visited America. Unlike other suffragette leaders, who spent their time in America among the social elite, Pankhurst wasted no time getting right to the heart of America’s social problems. She visited striking laundry workers in New York and female prisoners in Philadelphia and Chicago, and she grappled firsthand with shocking racism in Nashville.
            This book gathers Pankhurst’s writings from the year-long visit, in which she reveals her shock at the darkness hidden in American life, and draws parallels to her experiences of imprisonment and misogyny in her own country. Never before published, these writings mark an important stage in the development of the suffragette's thought, which she brought back to Britain to inform the burgeoning suffrage campaign there.
 
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Unequal Cures
Public Health and Political Change in Bolivia, 1900–1950
Ann Zulawski
Duke University Press, 2007
Unequal Cures illuminates the connections between public health and political change in Bolivia from the beginning of the twentieth century, when the country was a political oligarchy, until the eve of the 1952 national revolution that ushered in universal suffrage, agrarian reform, and the nationalization of Bolivia’s tin mines. Ann Zulawski examines both how the period’s major ideological and social transformations changed medical thinking and how ideas of public health figured in debates about what kind of country Bolivia should become. Zulawski argues that the emerging populist politics of the 1930s and 1940s helped consolidate Bolivia’s medical profession and that improved public health was essential to the creation of a modern state. Yet she finds that at mid-century, women, indigenous Bolivians, and the poor were still considered inferior and consequently received often inadequate medical treatment and lower levels of medical care.

Drawing on hospital and cemetery records, censuses, diagnoses, newspaper accounts, and interviews, Zulawski describes the major medical problems that Bolivia faced during the first half of the twentieth century, their social and economic causes, and efforts at their amelioration. Her analysis encompasses the Rockefeller Foundation’s campaign against yellow fever, the almost total collapse of Bolivia’s health care system during the disastrous Chaco War with Paraguay (1932–35), an assessment of women’s health in light of their socioeconomic realities, and a look at Manicomio Pacheco, the national mental hospital.

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