Peaceful Resistance. Advancing Human Rights and Democratic Freedoms and The New Transnational Activism

Abstract

Peaceful Resistance. Advancing Human Rights and Democratic Freedoms. By Robert M. Press. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2006. 227p. $99.50. The New Transnational Activism. By Sidney Tarrow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 258p. $55 cloth, $19.99 paper. Two new books argue that recent claims asserting the power of transnational activism have overstated the influence of those external forces. Robert Press uses the case of Kenya to show that a domestic culture of resistance, not donor pressure or transnational activism, set the nation on a path toward democratization during the late 1980s and 1990s. Sidney Tarrow takes a more subtle approach by reminding us how exceedingly difficult it is to create and maintain transnational coalitions for social change in the first place. Whereas Press pits domestic against international factors, Tarrow incorporates both, theorizing a set of transnational processes to elaborate the opportunities and challenges of organizing for social and political change across borders.