In the twenty-first century, movements are becoming transnational, and globalization and internationalization are moving war beyond conflict between states. The radically new phenomenon is not that movements make war against states but that states make war against movements. Tarrow finds this an especially troublesome development in recent U.S. history. He argues that that the United States is in danger of abandoning the devotion to rights it had expanded through two centuries of struggle and that Americans are now institutionalizing as a "new normal" the abuse of rights in the name of national security. He expands this hypothesis to the global level through what he calls "the international state of emergency."
Sidney Tarrow is Maxwell Upson Emeritus Professor of Government and Visiting Professor of Law at Cornell University. He is the author of many books, including most recently The Language of Contention: Revolutions in Words, 1688–2012 and Strangers at the Gates: Movements and States in Contentious Politics.