Tilly, Charles. Stories, Identities, and Political Change.

• Author: Menard, Orville D.
• Position: Book Review

Tilly, Charles. Stories, Identities, and Political Change. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002. 255 pp. Cloth, $79; paper, $29.95.

Tilly's search for understanding political processes and changes involves several basic yet complex and interrelated questions. What is the role of stories in answering who are you, who are we, who are they? Stories are the bearers of the responses and fuel movements that inspire political activism. Accordingly, answers to these questions may help us to better understand political mobilization, identities, and change.

This compilation of a dozen essays by Tilly is dedicated to stories and how they spurred people to collective action. Designed to make some sense of what happened, the essays cover a variety of stories and tales. Despite being written for different audiences, the essays are united by their common ambition and the whole is indeed the sum of its parts. Each can stand alone, but together are collectively coherent.

The analyses take the reader into a variety of settings and bear witness to Tilly's years of pondering the nature of social science. Interesting chapters cover social-movement stories that wrought change, such as early nationalism, anti-slavery advocates, and various twentieth century protest groups. The rise and predicted fall of the nation-state system are examined, as are individual rights and issues of democratization.

Particularly salient to the United States as an exporter of democracy are Tilly's remarks regarding the processes of democratization. What conditions are most likely to foster the establishment of a democratic system? Certain circumstances promote democratization, he suggests, including revolution and conquest that result in an uprooting of old stories and opportunity to create anew. Political science has long held to the notion of political culture, the patterns of beliefs and values of a society (its story). The accompanying concept of an authoritarian cultural lag holds that changing from an authoritarian to a...