Tilly, Charles

Charles Tilly (b. 1929) is a U.S. social historian who revolutionized the way that social scientists think about revolutions, social movements, and social change. Educated at Harvard, Oxford, and Angers (France), Tilly provides the metatheoretical and historical framework for resource mobilization and political process theories of collective action, social movements, and social change in his analyses of state making, revolution, and enduring inequality. Tilly incorporates elements of utilitarianism (John Stuart Mill), Max Weber, and Karl Marx in a scathing critique of Émile Durkheim's approach to social change and offers a synthetic theory of collective action based on Marxian interests, Millian opportunities, and Weberian organization. Tilly applies this model in historical analyses of state making and capital accumulation as these affect and are affected by changing forms (repertoires) of political protest, particularly in England and France, circa 1500 to 1900. Much of this research was focused on the organization of, and opportunities for, political protest, but his recent work includes a return to the topic of interests, their base in exploitation and opportunity hoarding and their reproduction and institutionalization through processes of emulation and accommodation. Thus, Tilly completes the synthesis of Marx and Weber, leaving unresolved the Millian (utilitarian or rational choice) concerns with rationality and game theory and the relationship between individual and organizational processes. Tilly remains an organizational theorist who uses Mill and Weber to specify the organizational processes through which state making and capitalism have transformed and been transformed by political challenges (based on interests, opportunities, and organizations).

Tilly's dissertation (Harvard 1958), expanded and published as The Vendee in 1964, offered French historians a sociological perspective on how urbanization affected the interests and organization of various local actors who mobilized in opposition to the Revolution of 1789. By 1978, in From Mobilization to Revolution, Tilly had developed both theory and method to guide the work of social historians and students of social movements and social change. He began with Marx's materialist, relational model of interests rooted in exploitation and added Weberian concepts of political organization to construct a mobilization model in which interest, organization, and opportunities predict collective action. Interests predict organization, and both interests and organization predict the mobilization of resources in preparation for collective action. Interests also affect political opportunity (or threat) for gains (or losses) from collective action and the likelihood and extent of repression (or toleration or facilitation) by governments or other polity members (this, in turn affects power, which, together with mobilization, also predicts opportunity or threat).

Based on this model, Tilly predicts collective action based on mobilization, opportunity or threat, and power. Thus, Tilly challenged the prevailing wisdom of the 1970s by arguing that collective action was rational and purposive rather than affective and expressive. Tilly maintained that collective action was rational at the organizational level (but not necessarily at the individual level) and generally sided with Mill and the utilitarians in opposition to Durkheim and the functionalists, but he insisted that interests were rooted in social relations rather than in personal predispositions. This was particularly evident in his tribute to George Homans (his former teacher) and his scathing review of Durkheim, in As Sociology Meets History (1981). Thus, Tilly anticipated the concerns of rational choice while offering a base in classical theory for resource mobilization and political process theories, which became the dominant perspective on social movements and social change in the 1980s.

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