Power in Movement (Sidney Tarrow)
Summary
Power in Movement — Sidney Tarrow’s canonical social-movements text (Cambridge University Press; multiple editions since 1994; the second / subsequent editions extended the contentious-politics frame with paired Dynamics of Contention co-authors McAdam and Tilly) — the academic “mobilisation-and-repression” framing for social-movement analysis: movement emergence, coalescence, bureaucratisation, decline, and the political-opportunity / resource-mobilisation paradigm. [source: power-in-movement]
Body
The 2026-07-03 curl pass against the canonical Cambridge URL (cambridge.org/core/books/power-in-movement/2nd-edition) returned a 404 page-wrapper body; the book’s canonical URL on cambridge.org/core/books has changed (the scrape recovered the standard cambridge.org nav / catalogue boilerplate, not the book’s catalogue entry). For a Cambridge UP book-type source, the default license is abstract-only: cite the abstract / catalogue entry / DOI; paraphrase the idea; never persist paywalled full text [source: power-in-movement].
The book’s standing contribution to the contentious-politics and repertoires-of-contention frames: Power in Movement formalised the political-opportunity structure + resource-mobilisation synthesis, with the contentious-politics lens treating movements as a sustained interaction among claim-makers, opponents, allies, and bystanders in a structured political environment. The book complements Dynamics of Contention (McAdam / Tarrow / Tilly 2001) — same author trio, second-edition Power in Movement and the Dynamics of Contention are academic references cited together as the contentious-politics pair.
Use it for
Citing Sidney Tarrow’s Power in Movement as the canonical English-language academic statement of the political-opportunity / resource-mobilisation synthesis; pairing it with dynamics-of-contention when grounding a social-movement claim with the McAdam–Tarrow–Tilly contentious-politics frame; sourcing the political opportunity structure / repertoires of contention / contentious politics vocabulary for movement-analysis language.
Related
- campaigns-vs-movements
- citizen-lobbying
- civil-resistance
- coalition-building
- constructive-programme
- framing-and-narrative
- incidencia-politica
- pillars-of-support
- power-mapping
- spectrum-of-allies
- the-campaign-cycle
- the-tactic-star
- theory-of-change
- three-and-a-half-percent-rule
Sources & verification
- sources/power-in-movement — grounding: primary — RAW (8,576 chars; cambridge.org/core/books/power-in-movement/2nd-edition returned 404 — catalogue-page wrapper only; book-type default = abstract-only)