Charles Tilly

Charles Tilly was an American sociologist and historian who helped found the field of contentious politics, the comparative study of strikes, riots, revolutions, and social movements as related forms of collective claim-making rather than separate phenomena. In works such as From Mobilization to Revolution (1978) and Coercion, Capital, and European States (1990) he analyzed the long-term historical relationship between war-making, taxation, and the formation of the modern state in Europe, arguing that the pressures of preparing for and financing war drove rulers to build the bureaucratic and coercive apparatus of the state. Tilly also developed the concept of repertoires of contention, the historically and culturally specific sets of protest tactics available to a population at a given time, and his prolific, methodologically rigorous body of work made him one of the most influential historical sociologists of his generation.