Ben Manski
George Mason University, Sociology, Faculty Member
- University of California, Santa Barbara, Earth Research Institute, Department MemberUniversity of California, Santa Barbara, Sociology, Graduate StudentUniversity of California, Santa Barbara, Sociology, Broom Center for Demography, Department Memberadd
- Sociology, Social Movements, Law and Society, Sociology of Law, American Studies, Abolition of Slavery, and 138 moreSocial movements and revolution, American Revolution, Social Theory, Social History, Historical Sociology, Constitutionalism, Constitutional Reforms, History of Abolitionism (U.S.), American Revolutionary ideology, Abolitionism, Corporate Personhood, Democratization, Democratic Education, New Models Of Participatory And Direct Democracy, Participatory Democracy, Economic Democracy, Green Politics, Political Sociology, Green Economics, Political Economy, Political Ecology, Environmental Sociology, Radical Democracy, Anarchism, Anarchist Economics, Radical Political Economy, Anti Capitalist Social Movements, Social Anthropology, Development anthropology, Food Sovereignty, Human Rights, Commons, Commons Governance, History of commons, commoning, communal property, The Commons, The Rights of Nature, Revolutions, Revolutionary Theory, Revolutionary War, Revolutionary Movements, Revolutionary Syndicalism, Revolutionary Ecology, Participatory Decision Making, Participatory Budgeting, • Democratisation and participatory forms of governance, Home rule, Local Democracy, Localization, American Federalism, Land Ethic, Climate Change (Agro Sociology), Sociology of Climate Change, Industrial Unionism, Anarcho-communism, African-American Internationalism, Black Internationalism, Internationalism, Pan-Americanism, Americanism, Bolivarian Revolution, Bolivarianism, Marxism, Thomas Paine, Frederick Douglass, Salmon Chase, Robert M La Follette, James Larkin, James Connolly, Latin American social movements, Democracy Movement USA, Legal History, American Legal and Constitutional History, Wisconsin Uprising, Critical Realism, Critical Theory, Epistemology, Ontology, Social Movement Theory, Twentieth-century U.S. social movements, Extractive industries (Economic Anthropology), Modern Latin American History, Labor History and Studies, Latin American History, Gramsci, Global Civil Society, Social Ecology, Climate Justice, Climate Movement, Neoliberalism, Protest, Socio-legal studies, Critical Legal Theory, Labor History (U.S. history), Global Justice Movement, Labor Movements, Black radicalism, Independent Black Politics, WTO protests, Black radical tradition, Movement Building, Electoral Strategy, Community Media, Media and Democracy, Indymedia, Corporatization, Anti-systemic Movements, Democracy and Social Movements, Environmental Pollution, Industrial Pollution, Disproportionality, Toxic Release Inventory, World Systems Analysis, Climate Change, Transnational Social Movements, Globalization and Governance, Environmental Justice, Socialism, Multinational Corporations, Dual Power, World-Systems Analysis, Community Power, Water Rights, Corporate power, New Constitutionalism, Social Sciences, Sovereignty, Commonwealth, Capitalism, State sovereignty, Sharing Economy, Blockchains, Collective Action, Occupy Movement, Austerity, Anti-Capitalism, Science and Technology Studies, Constitutional Theory, and Information Communication Technologyedit
- Ben Manski studies the participation of ordinary people in the deliberate constitution of their societies. His work t... moreBen Manski studies the participation of ordinary people in the deliberate constitution of their societies. His work takes in social movements, law, politics, and ecology, focusing on democracy, democratization, and constitutionalism, and he has published widely on these themes. In the past, Manski practiced public interest law for eight years and managed national non-profit organizations, direct action campaigns, and political campaigns and parties for over twenty years. He is currently a PhD candidate in Sociology at UC Santa Barbara, a Liberty Tree Foundation Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies Associate Fellow, Next System Project Research Fellow, Earth Research Institute Research Assistant, and a Critical Realism Network Associated Fellow. See: www.BenManski.comedit
- Dr. Richard Flacks (co-chair), Dr. John Foran, Dr. Simone Pulver, Dr. Verta Taylor (co-chair), Dr. Howard Winantedit
Twenty years ago a movement of movements came together in the streets of the largest city of the U.S. Pacific Northwest and defeated the World Trade Organization (WTO), the central state building project of global capitalism. The “Battle... more
Twenty years ago a movement of movements came together in the
streets of the largest city of the U.S. Pacific Northwest and defeated
the World Trade Organization (WTO), the central state building
project of global capitalism. The “Battle in Seattle” was an exclamation
punctuating a larger period of struggle. What is the relevance of that
last period to the current one? What produced it, and what in turn
have the movements of that period left for us today?
We argue that in the 1990s popular movements in the United States
made a series of cultural turns that, by the turn of the millennium,
made possible not only the Seattle WTO uprising but also the
promise of another world to come. These “movement turns” – anarchist, democratic, and global – were closely linked reorientations of
popular movements around paradigms of autonomy, participation,
and globality. Together, they produced movements with significantly
different goals, practices, and trajectories than the movements of the
preceding period. Activism, organizing, and struggle in the first millennial years felt and looked different: Confident, assertive, and
visionary.
With this study we analyze the period of struggle of 1994–2014 in
the U.S. The Seattle WTO uprising was a transformative event in this
period. We briefly address what happened in Seattle, where the
Seattle moment came from, and how what happened in Seattle
related to the movements of the period. We answer these questions
not only to document a vital recent history but also to systematically
bring knowledge about the last period into engagement with the movements of today. We also address what is different about the current
period: a socialist turn on the U.S. left contending with a nationalist
turn on the U.S. right.
streets of the largest city of the U.S. Pacific Northwest and defeated
the World Trade Organization (WTO), the central state building
project of global capitalism. The “Battle in Seattle” was an exclamation
punctuating a larger period of struggle. What is the relevance of that
last period to the current one? What produced it, and what in turn
have the movements of that period left for us today?
We argue that in the 1990s popular movements in the United States
made a series of cultural turns that, by the turn of the millennium,
made possible not only the Seattle WTO uprising but also the
promise of another world to come. These “movement turns” – anarchist, democratic, and global – were closely linked reorientations of
popular movements around paradigms of autonomy, participation,
and globality. Together, they produced movements with significantly
different goals, practices, and trajectories than the movements of the
preceding period. Activism, organizing, and struggle in the first millennial years felt and looked different: Confident, assertive, and
visionary.
With this study we analyze the period of struggle of 1994–2014 in
the U.S. The Seattle WTO uprising was a transformative event in this
period. We briefly address what happened in Seattle, where the
Seattle moment came from, and how what happened in Seattle
related to the movements of the period. We answer these questions
not only to document a vital recent history but also to systematically
bring knowledge about the last period into engagement with the movements of today. We also address what is different about the current
period: a socialist turn on the U.S. left contending with a nationalist
turn on the U.S. right.
Research Interests: Social Movements, Globalization, Anarchism, Democratization, Global Justice, and 15 moreHistory of Anarchism, Democracy, Participatory Democracy, Socialism, Global Justice Movement, Anti-corporate activism, Social Movement Theory, WTO protests, Direct Action, Corporatization, Movement Building, Democracy Activists, Democracy and Social Movements, Cultural Turns, and Cultural and Political Activism of the 1990s and 2000s
In this interview, leading labor intellectual and organizer Bill Fletcher notes that not all movements of the time had the same relationship or close connection to Seattle. In speaking with Manski, Fletcher emphasizes the centrality of... more
In this interview, leading labor intellectual and organizer Bill Fletcher notes that not all movements of the time had the same relationship or
close connection to Seattle. In speaking with Manski, Fletcher emphasizes the centrality of the union reform movement to what happened in Seattle. “What’s important to understand about Seattle and the years leading up to it,” he comments, “was an increasing awareness
of globalization, which was starting to affect more and more of the
Left and progressive forces.” That awareness was present not only in
the buildup to Seattle, but also in the construction of the type of
inside-outside electoral politics Fletcher practiced and in his efforts to
build the Black left through the Black Radical Congress and related
projects.
Bill Fletcher Jr has been an activist since his teen years; after college went to work as a welder in a shipyard, thereby entering the labor movement. He has worked for labor unions in addition to serving as a senior staffperson in the national AFL-CIO and a former president of TransAfrica Forum. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice; the author of They’re Bankrupting Us’ – And Twenty other myths about unions; and the author of the mystery novel, The Man Who Fell From the Sky. www.billfletcherjr.com
close connection to Seattle. In speaking with Manski, Fletcher emphasizes the centrality of the union reform movement to what happened in Seattle. “What’s important to understand about Seattle and the years leading up to it,” he comments, “was an increasing awareness
of globalization, which was starting to affect more and more of the
Left and progressive forces.” That awareness was present not only in
the buildup to Seattle, but also in the construction of the type of
inside-outside electoral politics Fletcher practiced and in his efforts to
build the Black left through the Black Radical Congress and related
projects.
Bill Fletcher Jr has been an activist since his teen years; after college went to work as a welder in a shipyard, thereby entering the labor movement. He has worked for labor unions in addition to serving as a senior staffperson in the national AFL-CIO and a former president of TransAfrica Forum. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice; the author of They’re Bankrupting Us’ – And Twenty other myths about unions; and the author of the mystery novel, The Man Who Fell From the Sky. www.billfletcherjr.com
Research Interests:
In this extended interview of Norman Stockwell, the veteran media democracy organizer and journalist analyzes the construction of a media democracy movement in the 1990s and 2000s and discusses his own role in that process. Norman... more
In this extended interview of Norman Stockwell, the veteran media democracy organizer and journalist analyzes the construction of a media democracy movement in the 1990s and 2000s and discusses his own role in that process.
Norman Stockwell is publisher of The Progressive. Previously, for over 20 years, he served as WORT Community Radio’s Operations Coordinator in Madison, Wisconsin. He also coordinated the IraqJournal website in 2002-2003. In 2011, he regularly reported on protests in Madison for Iran’s PressTV and other outlets. His reports and interviews have appeared on Free Speech Radio News, DemocracyNow!, and AirAmerica, and in print in Z Magazine, the Capital Times, AlterNet, Toward Freedom, the Tico Times, the Feminist Connection, and elsewhere. He is co-editor of the book REBEL REPORTING: John Ross Speaks to Independent Journalists.
Norman Stockwell is publisher of The Progressive. Previously, for over 20 years, he served as WORT Community Radio’s Operations Coordinator in Madison, Wisconsin. He also coordinated the IraqJournal website in 2002-2003. In 2011, he regularly reported on protests in Madison for Iran’s PressTV and other outlets. His reports and interviews have appeared on Free Speech Radio News, DemocracyNow!, and AirAmerica, and in print in Z Magazine, the Capital Times, AlterNet, Toward Freedom, the Tico Times, the Feminist Connection, and elsewhere. He is co-editor of the book REBEL REPORTING: John Ross Speaks to Independent Journalists.
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The relationship between economic activity and environmental pollution is a topic of extensive research. Although a proportional relationship between the two is often the default assumption, emerging scholarship suggests that polluting... more
The relationship between economic activity and environmental pollution is a topic of extensive research. Although a proportional relationship between the two is often the default assumption, emerging scholarship suggests that polluting releases are disproportionally distributed across units of production. This paper examines if proportionality or disproportionality best characterizes the production of toxic pollution in US manufacturing from 1998 to 2012. Examining US Environmental Protection Agency Toxics Release Inventory data from over 25 000 facilities in 322 industries, we find consistently high levels of disproportionality across facility-level toxic releases within industries, even when controlling for facility size. Moreover, high levels of within industry disproportionality are remarkably stable over the fifteen-year study period. In other words, year by year a small handful of egregiously polluting facilities account for the vast majority of toxic releases within a given industry. Our findings suggest that disproportionality should be understood as the default pattern of pollution generation rather than an exceptional case and that policymakers should seek to reduce pollution via carefully considered targeting strategies rather than broad-stroke decision making.
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Particular to the struggles of today is a renewed and increasingly networked politics of local democracy in opposition to global corporate power. With the five urgent essays in this symposium we bring these politics into a world-systems... more
Particular to the struggles of today is a renewed and increasingly networked politics of local democracy in opposition to global corporate power. With the five urgent essays in this symposium we bring these politics into a world-systems space, considering specific community conflicts with corporations over water and petro-carbon as part of larger translocal struggles, and taking up broader strategies for asserting democratic control over economic life. The included essays feature two of four terrains of struggle —the translocalization of local resistance and contests over sovereignty – that we see as significant in the contemporary dynamics of local democracy and corporate power. We identify additional examples of contests on each these terrains of struggle, as well as those terrains involving contestation of the corporation itself and of alternative global constitutionalisms, in mapping the dimensions of the developing period of community-corporate struggle. Our purpose is to set in motion further collaborations between academic and community-based scholars, with the goal of equipping communities with knowledge useful in expanding and deepening democracy.
Research Interests: Climate Change, World Systems Analysis, Democratization, Transnational Social Movements, Globalization and Governance, and 14 moreEnvironmental Justice, Socialism, Multinational Corporations, Dual Power, Climate Justice, World-Systems Analysis, Community Power, Water Rights, Local Democracy, Movement Building, Corporate power, New Constitutionalism, Popular Constitutionalism, and Democracy and Social Movements
The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the contemporary sovereign order. Some go further to claim that as a powerful decentering technology, blockchain contests the continued functioning of world capitalism. Are... more
The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the contemporary sovereign order. Some go further to claim that as a powerful decentering technology, blockchain contests the continued functioning of world capitalism. Are such claims merited? In this paper we consider sovereignty and blockchain technology theoretically, posing possible futures for sovereignty in a blockchain world. These possibilities include various forms of individual, popular, technological, corporate , and techno-totalitarian state sovereignty. We identify seven structural tendencies of blockchain technology and give examples as to how these have manifested in the construction of new forms of sovereignty. We conclude that the future of sovereignty in a blockchain world will be articulated in the conjuncture of social struggle and technological agency and we call for a stronger alliance between technologists and democrats.
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The rise and fall of Wisconsin’s remarkable 2011 uprising holds lessons for a post-Janus world. Today there are those who argue that Janus will eventually bring about the conditions for a renovated unionism. Similar things have been said... more
The rise and fall of Wisconsin’s remarkable 2011 uprising holds lessons for a post-Janus world. Today there are those who argue that Janus will eventually bring about the conditions for a renovated unionism. Similar things have been said about Wisconsin. And perhaps, in the long run, they may be right. But in the immediate term, if the national experience comes to resemble to what Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and other labor heritage states have been through of late, we can expect major losses for union power and great harm to working and poor people. Replicating the great successes and avoiding the failures of 2011 require attention to the same central lessons: First, the real leadership for the coming struggle is to be found in a broad rather than narrow conception of the labor and popular movements that have been built over the past several decades; and second, it is vital that the national equivalents of the unions and popular organizations that produced the Wisconsin Uprising take on a nearly messianic sense of mission, a dynamic critical politics, and an active mutual solidarity against demobilization from above.
Research Interests: Social Movements, Collective Action, Labor History and Studies, Labor unions, Labor Movements, and 11 moreAnti-Capitalism, Austerity, Occupy Movement, Right to Work, Anti-systemic Movements, Movement Building, Wisconsin Uprising, Popular Uprising, Anti Capitalist Social Movements, Janus v. AFSCME, and Janus decision
Critical Mass Bulletin, Volume 41(2), Fall 2016. See page 6. "During the 2016 ASA meetings, four dozen socially engaged scholars and movement theorists met at Seattle’s Labor Temple. The topic? How movement relevant research might support... more
Critical Mass Bulletin, Volume 41(2), Fall 2016. See page 6. "During the 2016 ASA meetings, four dozen socially engaged scholars and movement theorists met at Seattle’s Labor Temple. The topic? How movement relevant research might support current social movements and enrich social movement studies."
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"The democracy movement that formed in the United States in the 1990s and whose maturing influence we witness today is politically significant as a uniter of the divided political tradition of the U.S. Left and a challenger to corporate... more
"The democracy movement that formed in the United States in the 1990s and whose maturing influence we witness today is politically significant as a uniter of the divided political tradition of the U.S. Left and a challenger to corporate capitalism. This movement is also significant as an object and an instrument of study through which researchers may learn new things about social change. Democracy movement studies, and the study of the U.S. democracy movement in particular, may offer opportunities for collective action that otherwise we would miss."
Research Interests: Social Movements, Globalization, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democratization, Cold War, and 35 moreCollective Action, Neoliberalism, Post Cold War Era, Transnational Social Movements, Social movements and revolution, Democracy, Direct Democracy, New Models Of Democracy, New Models Of Participatory And Direct Democracy, Cooperative movements, Participatory Democracy, New Left, Anti-Capitalism, Democratic Socialism, Economic Democracy, Anti-corporate activism, WTO, Corporate Personhood, Indignados, WTO protests, Occupy Wall Street, Constitutional Reform, Occupy Movement, Anti Capitalist and Anti Globalisation Movements, Wisconsin Uprising, Popular Constitutionalism, Politics of Austerity, Antiglobalization Social Movements, Legal Change, Anti Capitalist Social Movements, Neoliberalism and community organizing, Seattle 1999, Democracy Movement USA, Democracy and Social Movements, and Democracy Movements
We live in an era in which it is increasingly normal for individuals not only to reject the power of corporations over their lives, but for some to even occupy public space and defy police and established authorities. Ben Manski discusses... more
We live in an era in which it is increasingly normal for individuals not only to reject the power of corporations over their lives, but for some to even occupy public space and defy police and established authorities. Ben Manski discusses how this era was inaugurated on November 30th, 1999 in the streets of Seattle.
Research Interests: Social Movements, Globalization, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democratic Theory, Collective Action, and 16 moreDemocracy, Direct Democracy, New Models Of Participatory And Direct Democracy, Participatory Democracy, Collective Action Theory, Anti-corporate activism, WTO, Democracia, Direct Action, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Movement, Anti Capitalist and Anti Globalisation Movements, Spanish Indignados (Occupy), Wisconsin Uprising, Politics of Austerity, and Anti Capitalist Social Movements
Research Interests: American Legal and Constitutional History, Federalism, Abolition of Slavery, Abolitionism, Wisconsin History, and 10 moreLegal History of Slavery and its Abolition, History of Abolitionism (U.S.), Comity, Slavery and Abolition, Liberty Party, Fugitive Slaves, Nullification Crisis, The Fugitive Slave Act, Democracy Movement USA, and Radical Constitutionalism
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Popular uprisings, revolutions and other major movement waves are often explained as mechanistic or even spontaneous responses to new political openings or perceived threats. Yet while such explanations may account for when movements rise... more
Popular uprisings, revolutions and other major movement waves are often explained as mechanistic or even spontaneous responses to new political openings or perceived threats. Yet while such explanations may account for when movements rise up, they are less useful for explaining why and how they rise up, and furthermore, what will occur in the course of a rising wave. To arrive at such explanations, I argue, social movement scholars must attend to those who do the work of movement building. We need research methods that understand activists as conscious producers both of movements and of knowledge about the movements they produce. Building from recent publications that argue for a scholarship of movements that at once assumes social complexity and valorizes agency, I show how bringing familiar approaches to social movement studies into constructive engagement with a longstanding scholarship of revolutions and praxis allows us to better explain where movement waves come from and what they produce. To do this, I specify movement elements, movement waves, periods and terrains of struggle; theorize movement building across dimensions of struggle; and articulate how these concepts may be used to analyze movement building as a process that produces history. As a demonstration of this method, I share findings from a study of the movement building process that produced the Wisconsin Uprising of 2011. I conclude with the observation that different sets of operative assumptions make various aspects of movements more or less visible, and that the advance of activist-centered scholarship is helpful in making movement building and other processes available for empirical research. I propose a series of methods made practicable by the epistemological approach advocated here and argue for a wider engagement by social movement scholars with an ontology of praxis.
Research Interests: Social Movements, Philosophy of Science, Social Research Methods and Methodology, Critical Realism, Praxis, and 14 moreRosa Luxemburg, Transnational Social Movements, Social movements and revolution, Antonio Gramsci, Collective Identity, Anti-Capitalism, Contentious Politics, Social Movement Theory, Occupy Wall Street, Marxism and critical realism, Anti-systemic Movements, Revolutionary Movements, Wisconsin Uprising, and Anti Capitalist Social Movements
Chapter in Welcome to the Revolution: Universalizing Resistance for Social Justice and Democracy in Perilous Times, edited by Charles Derber, publisher: Routledge. Excerpt: "Capitalism is a system that empowers those who own capital and... more
Chapter in Welcome to the Revolution: Universalizing Resistance for Social Justice and Democracy in Perilous Times, edited by Charles Derber, publisher: Routledge.
Excerpt: "Capitalism is a system that empowers those who own capital and that constrains the possibilities for those who don’t own capital to govern themselves . . . How should we evaluate social change campaigns that demand justice for all— something that the current system cannot provide—and yet accept the continuation of that system? Some social change efforts do just that, ignoring the fact that in the end, one cannot universalize justice without also universalizing power. Yet others seek to universalize both justice and power. . . . Such movements to universalize and equalize power are more commonly known as democracy movements."
Excerpt: "Capitalism is a system that empowers those who own capital and that constrains the possibilities for those who don’t own capital to govern themselves . . . How should we evaluate social change campaigns that demand justice for all— something that the current system cannot provide—and yet accept the continuation of that system? Some social change efforts do just that, ignoring the fact that in the end, one cannot universalize justice without also universalizing power. Yet others seek to universalize both justice and power. . . . Such movements to universalize and equalize power are more commonly known as democracy movements."
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This is the pre-editorial version of my contribution of chapter 3 of the book "Human Rights Of, By, and For the People: How to Critique and Change the U.S. Constitution," edited by Keri E. Iyall Smith, Louis Edgar Esparza, and Judith R.... more
This is the pre-editorial version of my contribution of chapter 3 of the book "Human Rights Of, By, and For the People: How to Critique and Change the U.S. Constitution," edited by Keri E. Iyall Smith, Louis Edgar Esparza, and Judith R. Blau and published by Routledge on February 15th, 2017. The chapter that appears in the book is significantly shorter (though still worth a read!). The book features excellent contributions from the editors as well Rodney Coates, Susan Pearce, Kathleen Basile, Steven Panageotou, Steven Foy, Mark Frezzo, Davita Silfen Glasberg, Zachary Elkins, Tom Ginsberg and James Melton.
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Advocates of democratization sometimes argue that on balance, constitutional reform tends to be a good thing. Because constitutional amendments, conventions, assemblies, and consultations usually involve large sectors of a society’s... more
Advocates of democratization sometimes argue that on balance, constitutional reform tends to be a good thing. Because constitutional amendments, conventions, assemblies, and consultations usually involve large sectors of a society’s population, constitutional processes compel deliberation and participation, thereby changing culture and instituting new social arrangements and structures. Others counter that too much constitutional change can pose unacceptable risks to established democratic rights. In this study, data from 243 countries over 66 years (1946-2012) are used to consider the relationship between constitutional reform and democratization. Multiple regression analysis of the data finds that constitutional amendments tend to be associated with greater democratization over time. Other preliminary findings show some perhaps surprising positive correlations between constitutional instability and democratization, and raise questions about the importance of what the author identifies as the processual, as opposed to substantive, aspects of constitutionalization.
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From the introduction: “Two fears commonly coincide in this time of constitutional crises: First, that the established constitutional order will prove itself incapable of resolving the problems before it; second, that efforts by popular... more
From the introduction:
“Two fears commonly coincide in this time of constitutional crises: First, that the established constitutional order will prove itself incapable of resolving the problems before it; second, that efforts by popular movements to alter or replace the existing constitutional order risk a societal regression to something substantially worse. This duality of constitutional fears is manifest in much of the contemporary world – from European debates over the future of the EU, its members, and subnations, to American arguments over proposals for amendments and constitutional conventions in the USA, to the constitutional upheavals throughout South America and Africa. What then must democrats do?
Proponents of the democratic rule of law should seek broad popular participation in constitutional reform. This is the answer implicit in the findings of Todd Eisenstadt, Carl LeVan, and Tofigh Maboudi in Constituents before Assembly: Participation, Deliberation, and Representation in the Crafting of New Constitutions, a new cornerstone in a rising scholarship addressing when and how constitutional change produces democratization – as well as when it doesn’t.”
“Two fears commonly coincide in this time of constitutional crises: First, that the established constitutional order will prove itself incapable of resolving the problems before it; second, that efforts by popular movements to alter or replace the existing constitutional order risk a societal regression to something substantially worse. This duality of constitutional fears is manifest in much of the contemporary world – from European debates over the future of the EU, its members, and subnations, to American arguments over proposals for amendments and constitutional conventions in the USA, to the constitutional upheavals throughout South America and Africa. What then must democrats do?
Proponents of the democratic rule of law should seek broad popular participation in constitutional reform. This is the answer implicit in the findings of Todd Eisenstadt, Carl LeVan, and Tofigh Maboudi in Constituents before Assembly: Participation, Deliberation, and Representation in the Crafting of New Constitutions, a new cornerstone in a rising scholarship addressing when and how constitutional change produces democratization – as well as when it doesn’t.”
Research Interests: Political Sociology, Social Movements, Law and Society, Democratization, Deliberative Democracy, and 8 moreSocial Movements (Political Science), Social movements and revolution, Democracy, Participatory Democracy, Constitutionalism, Comparative Constitutionalism, Legal Mobilization, and Constitutional Change
Twenty years after the so-called “Battle in Seattle” and the millennial turn, we seek papers that help explain the 1990s-2010s period of struggle in the United States. In particular we are interested in accounts and analyses of the... more
Twenty years after the so-called “Battle in Seattle” and the millennial turn, we seek papers that help explain the 1990s-2010s period of struggle in the United States. In particular we are interested in accounts and analyses of the popular movements of this period and the different frameworks informing these mobilizations. Socialism and Democracy is a peer reviewed academic and practice-based journal that brings together the worlds of scholarship and activism, theory and practice, to examine in depth the core issues and popular movements of our time. Abstracts for this issue are due March 15th and full manuscripts are due May 1st of 2019; please see “How to Submit,” below, for details.
Research Interests: Social Movements, Marxism, Immigration, Anarchism, Global Justice, and 15 moreCommunism, Feminism, Transnational Social Movements, Participatory Democracy, Socialism, Radical Democracy, Intersectionality, Environmental movements, Black radicalism, World Social Forums, Global Capitalism, Social Movement Theory, WTO protests, Occupy Wall Street, and Wisconsin Uprising
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Author(s): Manski, Ben | Advisor(s): Flacks, Richard | Abstract: The Wisconsin Uprising not only was the early riser of the U.S. protest wave of 2011, it was highly militant and the largest and most broadly based of those mobilizations.... more
Author(s): Manski, Ben | Advisor(s): Flacks, Richard | Abstract: The Wisconsin Uprising not only was the early riser of the U.S. protest wave of 2011, it was highly militant and the largest and most broadly based of those mobilizations. Nonetheless, the full meaning of Wisconsin continues to be lost to scholars and activists alike. The Wisconsin Uprising provides a classic case for studying the process and consequences of movement building, and stands for the proposition that the conscious movement building activities of activists matter. I draw on interviews and archival research as well as my personal history as a protagonist in the popular movements of Wisconsin over 25 years. I show how key elements of the Wisconsin Uprising were constructed in the greater period of struggle that began in the early 1990s, arguing that the wave of 2011 was a product of purposive actions in the course of that struggle. In so doing, I introduce a theoretical framework for explaining the trajectorie...
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Under what circumstances do new constitutions improve a nation's level of democracy? Between 1974 and 2014, democracy increased in seventy-seven countries following the adoption of a new constitution, but it decreased or stayed the... more
Under what circumstances do new constitutions improve a nation's level of democracy? Between 1974 and 2014, democracy increased in seventy-seven countries following the adoption of a new constitution, but it decreased or stayed the same in forty-seven others. This book demonstrates that increased participation in the forming of constitutions positively impacts levels of democracy. It is discovered that the degree of citizen participation at the 'convening stage' of constitution-making has a strong effect on levels of democracy. This finding defies the common theory that levels of democracy result from the content of constitutions, and instead lends support to 'deliberative' theories of democracy. Patterns of constitutions are then compared, differentiating imposed and popular constitution-making processes, using case studies from Chile, Nigeria, Gambia, and Venezuela to illustrate the dynamics specific to imposed constitution-making, and case studies from Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, and Tunisia to illustrate the specific dynamics of popular constitution-making.
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This work brings constitutional studies and social movement studies together in an empirical and theoretical analysis of the relationship between constitutional change and democratization. I ask how these fields can help us explain what... more
This work brings constitutional studies and social movement studies together in an empirical and theoretical analysis of the relationship between constitutional change and democratization. I ask how these fields can help us explain what can be done, what democrats can do, and what democrats should do to constitutionalize democracy and democratize constitutions. I present my findings from a crossnational analysis of constitutional change and democracy (1946-2012), showing that higher rates of amendment produce greater democratization. I draw lessons from U.S. history about how human rights and democratization can be secured through movements for constitutional reform. And I examine the current trajectories of democrats in the United States, looking back to the Seattle Uprising of 1999 and three contemporaneous “movement turns” – anarchist, democratic, and global – as well as more recent developments relevant to evaluating possibilities for constitutional democratization in the U.S.A....
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Ben Manski: Before getting into the rise of media democracy in the 1990s, and your roles in those projects, let's begin by talking about your political origins. What's your story? What brought you ...
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Research Interests: Sociology, Social Movements, Philosophy of Science, Social Research Methods and Methodology, Critical Realism, and 15 morePraxis, Rosa Luxemburg, Transnational Social Movements, Social movements and revolution, Antonio Gramsci, Collective Identity, Anti-Capitalism, Contentious Politics, Social Movement Theory, Occupy Wall Street, Marxism and critical realism, Anti-systemic Movements, Revolutionary Movements, Wisconsin Uprising, and Anti Capitalist Social Movements
Ben Manski: You’ve been at the center of two movement building projects critical to the struggles of the 1990s–2010s – the renewal and reconstruction of labor, and the deepening and and then transi...
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ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csad20 The Millennial Turns and the New Period: An Introduction Ben Manski , Hillary Lazar & Suren Moodliar To cite this article: Ben Manski , Hillary Lazar & Suren... more
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csad20 The Millennial Turns and the New Period: An Introduction Ben Manski , Hillary Lazar & Suren Moodliar To cite this article: Ben Manski , Hillary Lazar & Suren Moodliar (2020) The Millennial Turns and the New Period: An Introduction, Socialism and Democracy, 34:1, 1-50, DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2019.1841711 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2019.1841711
Research Interests: Social Movements, Globalization, Anarchism, Democratization, Global Justice, and 14 moreHistory of Anarchism, Democracy, Participatory Democracy, Socialism, Global Justice Movement, Social Movement Theory, WTO protests, Direct Action, Corporatization, Movement Building, Routledge, Democracy Activists, Democracy and Social Movements, and Cultural Turns
The relationship between economic activity and environmental pollution is a topic of extensive research. Although a proportional relationship between the two is often the default assumption, emerging scholarship suggests that polluting... more
The relationship between economic activity and environmental pollution is a topic of extensive research. Although a proportional relationship between the two is often the default assumption, emerging scholarship suggests that polluting releases are disproportionally distributed across units of production. This paper examines if proportionality or disproportionality best characterizes the production of toxic pollution in US manufacturing from 1998 to 2012. Examining US Environmental Protection Agency Toxics Release Inventory data from over 25 000 facilities in 322 industries, we find consistently high levels of disproportionality across facility-level toxic releases within industries, even when controlling for facility size. Moreover, high levels of within industry disproportionality are remarkably stable over the fifteen-year study period. In other words, year by year a small handful of egregiously polluting facilities account for the vast majority of toxic releases within a given i...
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Introduction to Symposium on Corporate Power and Local Democracy.
Research Interests: Climate Change, Political Science, Democratization, Transnational Social Movements, Globalization and Governance, and 15 moreEnvironmental Justice, Socialism, Multidisciplinary, Multinational Corporations, Dual Power, Climate Justice, World Systems, Community Power, Water Rights, Local Democracy, Movement Building, Corporate power, New Constitutionalism, Popular Constitutionalism, and Democracy and Social Movements
The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the contemporary sovereign order. Some go further to claim that as a powerful decentering technology, blockchain contests the continued functioning of world capitalism. Are... more
The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the contemporary sovereign order. Some go further to claim that as a powerful decentering technology, blockchain contests the continued functioning of world capitalism. Are such claims merited? In this paper we consider sovereignty and blockchain technology theoretically, posing possible futures for sovereignty in a blockchain world. These possibilities include various forms of individual, popular, technological, corporate, and techno-totalitarian state sovereignty. We identify seven structural tendencies of blockchain technology and give examples as to how these have manifested in the construction of new forms of sovereignty. We conclude that the future of sovereignty in a blockchain world will be articulated in the conjuncture of social struggle and technological agency and we call for a stronger alliance between technologists and democrats.
Research Interests: Social Change, Social Movements, Law, Technology, Social Sciences, and 13 moreCritical Realism, Sovereignty, Critical Legal Theory, Commonwealth, Information Communication Technology, Capitalism, Transnational Social Movements, Constitutional Theory, State sovereignty, Sharing Economy, Blockchains, Critique of Law, and Science and Technology Studies
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ABSTRACT
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Research Interests: Social Movements, Globalization, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democratic Theory, Collective Action, and 15 moreDemocracy, Direct Democracy, New Models Of Participatory And Direct Democracy, Participatory Democracy, Collective Action Theory, WTO, Democracia, Direct Action, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Movement, Anti Capitalist and Anti Globalisation Movements, Spanish Indignados (Occupy), Wisconsin Uprising, Politics of Austerity, and Anti Capitalist Social Movements
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This call for a global climate strike initiated a series of international conversations through the Global Climate Convergence and other networks, including a series of Earth Day to May Day mobilizations. This call was republished and... more
This call for a global climate strike initiated a series of international conversations through the Global Climate Convergence and other networks, including a series of Earth Day to May Day mobilizations. This call was republished and circulated widely, and is likely to have been the first generally discussed conceptualization of the #ClimateStrike as a means of achieving a Green New Deal.
EXCERPT: "A global climate strike is a next step in the international uprising that insists that another world is possible. That uprising has taken to the streets in the tens of millions. It has even occupied capitol buildings and the halls of capital. Yet the street demonstrations have yet to work because most global elites are not listening and will not listen. And while the occupations and blockades have succeeded here and there, the bulldozers of profit keep moving everywhere else. It is time to shock the system with a global climate strike."
EXCERPT: "A global climate strike is a next step in the international uprising that insists that another world is possible. That uprising has taken to the streets in the tens of millions. It has even occupied capitol buildings and the halls of capital. Yet the street demonstrations have yet to work because most global elites are not listening and will not listen. And while the occupations and blockades have succeeded here and there, the bulldozers of profit keep moving everywhere else. It is time to shock the system with a global climate strike."
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In this interview, David Cobb asks longtime democracy activist Ben Manski to reflect on the history, and possible futures, of a Green New Deal.