Building Blocs

Cihan Tuğal is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of California, Berkeley, and author of Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism (SUP, 2009).Manali Desai is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Cambridge and author of State Formation and Radical Democracy in India, 1860–1990.Cedric de Leon is Associate Professor of Sociology at Providence College and author of Party and Society: Reconstructing a Sociology of Democratic Party Politics (2014) and Origins of the Right to Work: Anti-Labor Democracy in Nineteenth Century Chicago (forthcoming).

"This brief but important edited volume introduces a new perspective in the study of political parties . . . The innovative and refreshing approach makes this book highly recommended for students of political parties in both established and developing democracies."—H. Shambayati, CHOICE "This is the rare edited volume that presents itself as a manifesto for a new school of thought. The combination of an agenda-setting statement with empirical case studies allows the book to make an effective and forceful case for the political articulation approach."—Isaac William Martin, Professor of Sociology, University of California - San Diego "Building Blocs is a powerful counter to sociological arguments that present politics as a reflection of social ties and identities. Parties, in this analysis, actively articulate identities, cleavages, and interests that sustain and are sustained by the governments they make. Ranging across continents and centuries, addressing cases of both successful and failed articulation, the chapters underscore the importance of parties in structuring the relationships between states and civil society. With this tightly-integrated volume, de Leon, Desai and Tuğal establish a compelling agenda for political sociology."—Elisabeth S. Clemens, University of Chicago "Building Blocs breaks new ground in our understanding of political parties. The original studies assembled in this volume demonstrate that parties are not only an important part of the political landscape but are also—more provocatively—vital sources for its transformation. This is a must read for students of politics."—Howard Kimeldorf, Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan "Building Blocs offers a thought-provoking and creative sociological rethinking of the role of political parties not just in politics but in society. The volume will be a useful addition for scholars of parties, identity, and mobilization and is appropriate for upper-level undergraduate or graduate courses on these issues. Moreover, the framework presented will help to spur and structure a continuing neo-Gramscian agenda in the social sciences, of exploring the nature of hegemony and the interplay of civil and political society in a comparative perspective."—Meredith L. Weiss, American Journal of Sociology

• Contents and AbstractsIntroduction: Political Articulation: The Structured Creativity of Parties chapter abstractThis chapter outlines the theory of political articulation upon which it builds a new theory of parties. It begins by providing a systematic review of the existing literature on parties and social movements, arguing that existing theoretical frameworks do not sufficiently account for the process of creating both social change and social order. It argues that attention to political articulation is crucial in providing such an account. Building on the work of several theorists, including Gramsci, Laclau, and Althusser, the chapter discusses how parties draw together different constituencies and create common ground, while at the same time constructing boundaries of 'us' vs 'them'. This fundamentally political process is central to the formation of the major cleavages in society, while the integration process is fundamental to social order. The chapter outlines the means of articulation employed by different parties, and outlines the reasons why some parties are more successful than others.1The Political Origins of Working Class Formation in the United States: chapter abstractThe scholarly debate on the origins of working class formation correspond to what Pierre Bourdieu (1989) once called the "objectivist" and "subjectivist" moments of class. Objectivists claim that class formation results from the structural location of workers and their employers in the system of production. Subjectivists by contrast insist that workers come to identify as a class in the course of labor disputes with their employers. Yet the erratic trajectory of workers' political identity in Civil War era Chicago does not fit either of these frameworks neatly. Chicago workers came to recognize themselves as a class organically, in their own way and time, as subjectivists would expect, but they did so in contexts beyond workplace struggles, namely, in the political arena, where parties compete to articulate coalitions or blocs by naturalizing and denaturalizing social divisions such as race and class.2Continuity or change? Rethinking Left Party Formation in Canada chapter abstractScholars usually take for granted that an independent left party would take root in Canada. But despite favorable political terrain, no left party achieved long-term success prior to the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in the 1930s. Why did the CCF succeed where previous parties failed? Using an "articulation" model of politics, focused on parties' role in assembling and naturalizing political coalitions, I show that the CCF succeeded because ruling parties' repressive and neglectful response to Depression-era labor and agrarian protest left these constituencies politically excluded. This allowed the CCF to articulate an independent farmer-labor alliance that eluded its predecessors. The CCF was ideologically and organizationally coherent enough to avoid co-optation, while being flexible enough to unite previously fragmented constituencies. Repressive ruling party policies created a "common foe" that broke farmer and labor groups away from previous allegiances, while CCF ideology and practice forged a new independent coalition.3Religious Politics, Hegemony, and the Market Economy: Parties in the Making of Turkey's Liberal-Conservative Bloc and Egypt's Diffuse Islamization chapter abstractThis chapter on Islamist parties in Egypt and Turkey demonstrates the autonomous role of politics in crystallizing certain cleavages and rebuilding society around them. It first focuses on Turkey to demonstrate this claim. Divisions between Kurds and Turks, secular and pious sectors, upper and lower classes, and ultimately the ruling elite and the people have impacted the political scene for decades. These divisions found their expression in the opposition of the center-left and the center-right until the late 1980s, but after that point, Islamist leaders worked to revise these divisions. By redefining the normal citizen as a wronged yet entrepreneurial Muslim, they attacked the secular elite and thereby rendered free market identity "popular." As evidence of this claim, the chapter discusses how the lack of a professionalized Islamic party has restricted the process of Islamic neoliberalization in Egypt.4Democratic Disarticulation and its Dangers: Cleavage Formation and Promiscuous Powersharing in Indonesian Party Politics chapter abstractEven the most strongly felt cultural and ideological identifications do not necessarily find enduring expression in national politics. When Indonesia democratized in the late 1990s, it appeared that party competition would be characterized by two primary cleavages that had been incubated under Suharto's "New Order": a regime cleavage pitting reformist opponents of the recently fallen dictatorship against its holdovers, and a religious cleavage distinguishing parties by their views on the proper political role for Islam. Yet some fifteen years later, neither a reformist nor a religious bloc exists in Indonesian politics. This chapter seeks to explain how this surprising outcome came to pass. In so doing, it aims to highlight the dangers that democratic disarticulation poses not only in Indonesia, but in young democracies around the world.5Weak Party Articulation and Development in India, 1991-2014 chapter abstractThis chapter discusses the case of weak articulations in India between 1999-2014, arguing that the two major parties, BJP and Congress, have failed to create stable articulations that would enable a developmental transformation. Although India has undertaken a market path to development, it is characterized by high levels of poverty, as well as weakly coordinated capitalist growth. The two key questions are: why has a growing consensus for market-based development not translated into a momentum for developmentalism, and second, why, has growing democratization not led to a greater redistributive developmental thrust from below? The root cause of these problems, this chapter shows, lies not simply in the absence of state autonomy or in excessive democracy, but in the nature of the political articulations led by the two parties.6Coda: Hegemony, Class and Democracy in Gramsci's Prison Notebooks chapter abstractThis chapter compares Gramsci's concept of hegemony with the notion of articulation as presented in the book. It argues that the two issues of social class and democracy were central to Gramsci's notion of hegemony, and that a focus on these phenomena will aid the research program of articulation going forward.