Rebel Power

Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win

Peter Krause author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cornell University Press

Published:9th May '17

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This hardback is available in another edition too:

Rebel Power cover

Many of the world's states—from Algeria to Ireland to the United States—are the result of robust national movements that achieved independence. Many other national movements have failed in their attempts to achieve statehood, including the Basques, the Kurds, and the Palestinians. In Rebel Power, Peter Krause offers a powerful new theory to explain this variation focusing on the internal balance of power among nationalist groups, who cooperate with each other to establish a new state while simultaneously competing to lead it. The most powerful groups push to achieve states while they are in position to rule them, whereas weaker groups unlikely to gain the spoils of office are likely to become spoilers, employing risky, escalatory violence to forestall victory while they improve their position in the movement hierarchy. Hegemonic movements with one dominant group are therefore more likely to achieve statehood than internally competitive, fragmented movements due to their greater pursuit of victory and lesser use of counterproductive violence.
Krause conducted years of fieldwork in government and nationalist group archives in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, as well as more than 150 interviews with participants in the Palestinian, Zionist, Algerian, and Irish national movements. This research generated comparative longitudinal analyses of these four national movements involving 40 groups in 44 campaigns over a combined 140 years of struggle. Krause identifies new turning points in the history of these movements and provides fresh explanations for their use of violent and nonviolent strategies, as well as their numerous successes and failures. Rebel Power is essential reading for understanding not only the history of national movements but also the causes and consequences of contentious collective action today, from the Arab Spring to the civil wars and insurgencies in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond.

Empirically rich and logically rigorous, Krause's original approach will attract a lot of attention from scholars of nationalism and insurgency.

* Choice *

Brings together theoretical insights about intermovement dynamics, as well as detailed analyses of four national movements.... This work builds upon several recent contributions in the area of conflict studies.

* Perspectives on Politics *

A rare combination of elegant theorizing and rich empirical analysis, which will no doubt influence scholars' and policymakers' thinking for years to come.

* Political Science Quarter

ISBN: 9781501708558

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 25mm

Weight: 907g

264 pages