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Scholars have argued the importance of understanding repertoires of contention, but there is little research on the quality of these repertoires across countries and over time. In this article, I seek to fill this gap and address the following questions: How flexible or rigid are repertoires of contention across countries and over time? Do they converge on a type that Tilly called "strong," which is closer to the rigid end of the spectrum, as Tilly expected? What accounts for the differences across countries and over time in the flexibility of repertoires? Do political opportunity or resource mobilization theories explain the variation? To address these questions, I create measures from data on contentious events worldwide between 1990 and 2004 provided by the World Handbook of Political Indicators IV. I find that the flexibility of repertoires does indeed cluster around Tilly's strong model. Employing an innovative "random effect within-between model" to separate out two types of effects of explanatory factors, I find some support for each theory. State strength at the crossnational level increases the rigidity of repertoires, whereas increases in income over time increase the flexibility of repertoires.

Civil society has emerged as a contested concept in development. Some observers claim that economic restructuring has eroded the political hegemony of authoritarian regimes and created a new space for autonomous associations. In Mexico, chronic economic crisis and economic adjustment policies generated widespread popular discontent in the 1980s. The authoritarian regime tried to channel popular dissatisfaction into the institutionalized political arena through a series of electoral reforms. Thus, economic liberalization in Mexico was paralleled by a slow and gradual process of liberalization of the Mexican political system. In the context of these economic and political changes, scholars have observed an awakened civil society in Mexico. They have chronicled the emergence of independent organizations of workers, peasants, and the urban poor. They have also documented new types of civic associations such as environmental groups, election‐watch groups, human rights organizations, debtors' groups, and women's movements. Numerous studies of social movements beginning in the 1980s appear to suggest the rise of civil society in the era of economic and political liberalization.

Why do citizens demand certain kinds of citizenship rights rather than another in a given context? This article extends the idea of political and cultural opportunities to Mexico's authoritarian context to explore why Mexicans, who had prioritized social rights over other rights, came to emphasize political rights in a context of neoliberalism. In particular, I ask how this transformation from social protests to political protests happened when neither political nor cultural opportunities appeared to be conducive to it? I gathered 1174 episodes of popular protests between 1964 and 2000 from Mexican newspapers and employed a quantitative event analysis to examine discursive aspects of claims making. In the neoliberal period, demands for social rights and material issues were made increasingly in conjunction with demands for political rights. Mexicans came to realize that their everyday needs and redistributive demands would not be satisfied without dealing with undemocratic political system. It is this change in people's recognition that pushed political claims making to the forefront of popular contention in Mexico.

Why do citizens demand certain kinds of citizenship rights rather than another in a given context? This article extends the idea of political & cultural opportunities to Mexico's authoritarian context to explore why Mexicans, who had prioritized social rights over other rights, came to emphasize political rights in a context of neoliberalism. In particular, I ask how this transformation from social protests to political protests happened when neither political nor cultural opportunities appeared to be conducive to it? I gathered 1174 episodes of popular protests between 1964 & 2000 from Mexican newspapers & employed a quantitative event analysis to examine discursive aspects of claims making. In the neoliberal period, demands for social rights & material issues were made increasingly in conjunction with demands for political rights. Mexicans came to realize that their everyday needs & redistributive demands would not be satisfied without dealing with undemocratic political system. It is this change in people's recognition that pushed political claims making to the forefront of popular contention in Mexico. 3 Tables, 2 Figures, 34 References. Adapted from the source document.

Why do people opt for different forms of collective action, like lobbying, marching, or rioting, to voice contentious claims? The patterns of these collective action forms, or "tactics" exhibit variations among groups, regions, and nations, evolving over time. Current explanations for such tactical patterns are unsatisfactory due to limited theoretical and empirical exploration of the concept of repertoires of contention. This paper presents a comprehensive theoretical model drawing on social practice and learning theories, centered around the notion of tactical familiarity. The central idea posits that people in diverse societies have learned distinct ways of doing politics, gaining varying familiarity and proficiency with different tactics, developed through three mechanisms: feedback, diffusion, and memory. These mechanisms contribute to the formation of notably distinct repertoires of contention. Based on this theoretical model, this study develops an empirical measure of tactical familiarity. The novel measure allows comparing the impact of tactical familiarity with other factors, like political regime characteristics. Previous research has not conducted such comparisons, as it often focuses on particular tactics, like protests or violence, without delving into the full array of potential tactical choices, including conventional-institutional ones. Using quantitative event analysis and a dataset of 10 Million International Dyadic Events, the paper examines 17,575 global political events from 2000 to 2004. Multilevel multinomial logistic regression highlights repertoires of contention's significant influence on tactical choices, potentially outweighing political regime characteristics.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to integrate conflict theory's class and race perspectives to explain police force size in large cities in the USA.Design/methodology/approachData on US cities with populations of 250,000 or greater (n=64) are used to test whether class and/or racial factors impact police force size. The data are analyzed using OLS regression.FindingsThis study finds that class and race factors combine to impact police force size concurrently. By adjusting the model specifications of a recent article, which concludes police force size in large US cities is determined by racial factors and not class, this study shows that two class‐related factors – racial economic inequality and poverty – significantly influence police force size. Additionally, this analysis calls into question the importance of racial factors; specifically, the threat caused by minority presence and a city's history of racially coded violence.Originality/valueFew conflict theorists have attempted to integrate class and race in order to explain police force size. The results of this study show that racial economic inequality interacts with poverty (class threat) and that they jointly affect police force size. This adds further nuance to the argument of the complex causal interaction of intersectionality and supports theoretical, methodological, and public policy shifts that blend class inequality and racial threat to explain police force size.