Explore the vast range of titles available.

The dominance of neoliberalism in the past three decades suggests the capacity of capitalism to adapt and restructure itself in periods of crisis and to curb progressive movements that threaten its hegemony. Yet social movements that challenge neoliberalism continue to emerge, sending hopeful signs of its potential demise by ushering in progressive governments that often appear to fall short of expectations. Building off the growing body of research that utilizes Gramscian theory to categorize neoliberalism as a passive revolution, I examine the concept of anti-passive revolution with empirical data to propose a theory of resistance against neoliberalism. The empirical data comes from two movements against neoliberalism: the coalition that challenged the privatization of water in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2000; and, the movement that challenged the results of the Mexican presidential election in 2006. By examining the trajectories of these movements over a timespan of several years, I identify the empirical conditions for a theory of anti-passive revolution, and the potential for such processes to challenge the hegemony of the passive revolution represented by neoliberalism

This article examines and further develops the relationship between the theory of uneven and combined development (UCD), recently taken up by International Relations (IR) scholars to furnish a social theory of ‘the international’, and the Gramscian concept of ‘passive revolution’, which refers to a molecular process of top-down revolution and state formation that preserves ruling-class power by transforming its social base. To this end, the paper: (1) advances a productive distinction between ‘societal’ and ‘(geo)political’ multiplicity, increasing the transdisciplinary potential of UCD and challenging dominant state-centric approaches to IR; (2) demonstrates that UCD is central to creating the conditions for passive revolution; and, (3) argues that UCD illuminates the distinct spatial dimensions of passive revolution, for which the succession of ‘classes’ in time requires the expansion of capitalist social relations in space. To illustrate these claims, the article demonstrates how the American Civil War is best understood as an inter-societal conflict, exacerbated by the coexistence of two social formations within a single state, leading to war. It then shows how, upon victory, the North’s abolition of enslaved labour and the subsequent attempt to re-subsume the South within a single sovereign polity constituted a radical instance of passive revolution.

In this article, I argue that Antonio Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution makes a foundational contribution to International Relations (IR), yet has been relatively under appreciated by the broader discipline. Within the Historical Sociology of International Relations, uneven and combined development has recently been postulated as a key trans-historical law that provides a social theory of the ‘international’. Drawing from, but moving beyond these debates, I will argue that passive revolution is a key conditioning factor of capitalist modernity. I will demonstrate how the concept of passive revolution is the element that explains the connection between the universal process of uneven development and the manner in which specific combinations occur within the capitalist era as geopolitical pressures, in tandem with domestic social forces become internalised into geographically specific state forms. It therefore offers a corrective to the frequently aspatial view that is found in much of the literature in IR regarding uneven and combined development. Additionally, passive revolution provides a more politicised understanding of the present as well as an important theoretical lesson in relation to what needs to be done to affect alternative trajectories of development.

Exploration of the political roles firms play in society is a flourishing stream within corporate social responsibility (CSR) research. However, few empirical studies have examined multiple levels of political CSR at the same time from a critical perspective. We explore both how the motivations of managers and internal organizational practices affect a company's choice between competing CSR approaches, and how the different CSR programs of corporate and civil society actors compete with each other. We present a qualitative interpretative case study of how a French children's clothing retailer develops CSR practices in response to accusations of poor working conditions and child labor in its supply chain. The company's CSR approach consists of superficial practices, such as supplier audits by a cooperative business-organized nongovernmental organization (NGO) and philanthropic activities, which enable managers to silence more radical alternative models defended by other NGOs, activists, and trade unions. By this approach, the core business model based on exploitative low-cost country sourcing remains intact through self-regulated CSR. Through the case study, we develop a framework of dynamism in competing CSR programs. We discuss the implications of our study for CSR researchers, company managers, and policy makers.

While the government of Evo Morales rules in the name of indigenous workers and peasants, in fact the country's political economy has since 2006 witnessed the on-going subjugation of these classes. If the logic of large capital persists, it is legitimated in and through petty indigenous capitalists. This article argues that Antonio Gramsci's conceptualisation of passive revolution offers a superior analytical point of departure for understanding contemporary Bolivian politics than does Álvaro García Linera's more widely accepted theory of creative tensions. However, the dominant manner in which passive revolution has been employed in contemporary Latin American debates has treated the socio-political and the ideological as relatively autonomous from the process of capital accumulation. What is necessary, instead, is a sharper appreciation of the base/superstructure metaphor as expressing a dialectical unity of internal relations between 'the economic' and 'the political', thus avoiding one determinism or another. Through a reading of Gramsci that emphasises such unity, this article interrogates the dynamics of 'extractive distribution', class contradictions of the 'plural economy', and transformations in the urban labour market which have characterised Bolivia's passive revolution under Evo Morales between 2006 and 2015.

South African scholarship has engaged with Antonio Gramsci’s category of passive revolution as a historical analytical framework for analysing the transformation of post-apartheid society. Many of these interpretations characterise passive revolution as a top-down process of state formation, capital restructuring and governance mechanisms. This article engages with various interpretations of passive revolution by investigating this concept in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and exploring three key debates: the scope of passive revolution, its relation to hegemony, and its dialectic nature. The paper emphases the concept’s dialectic nature and reclaims its value for strategic debates for movements and organisations, utilising the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and the FeesMustFall movement as vantage points from which to demonstrate its utility. It argues that passive revolution, framed within Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis, offers a framework for reflecting on movements’ tactics and strategies in specific conjunctures, placing the possibilities for transformations and alternative societies at the centre of analysis.

The concept of passive revolution is one of the most important in Gramscian theory. It is an abstraction that explains historical processes of popular mobilisation that end in the predominance of stability over change. This paper analyses the use of this concept over three different historical periods and reflects on its usefulness in analysing current political phenomena. Through an empirical exercise of analysis of 31 in-depth interviews with leaders of associations that participated in the Chilean social revolt, the conclusion is that the so-called social outburst of 18 October is heading towards a closure in the form of a passive revolution. This, through a gradual institutionalisation that shows a resolution “from above” and without popular protagonism. Also, social organisations’ critical participation confronting the fear of “winning nothing” after months of continuous mobilisation and attrition El concepto de revolución pasiva es uno de los más importantes en la teoría gramscina. Se trata de una abstracción que explica procesos históricos de movilización popular que terminan en el predominio de la estabilidad frente al cambio. Este trabajo analiza el uso de este concepto a lo largo de tres periodos históricos diferentes y reflexiona sobre su utilidad a la hora de analizar fenómenos políticos actuales. A través de un ejercicio empírico de análisis de 31 entrevistas en profundidad a dirigentes de asociaciones que participaron en la revuelta social chilena, se llega a la conclusión de que el llamado estallido social del 18 de octubre se encamina a un cierre en forma de revolución pasiva. Esto, a través de una institucionalización paulatina que evidencia una resolución “por arriba” y sin protagonismo de las clases subalternas. De participación crítica de las organizaciones sociales ante el miedo a “no ganar nada” tras meses de movilización continuada y desgaste.

In recent decades, scholars have turned to Antonio Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution to explain the reproduction and development of capitalism. Most accounts focus on elite maneuvers from above. With specific attention to the case of South Africa, I examine the relationship between passive revolution, secured by elites through the negotiated democratic transition of the early 1990s, and mobilization from below in the post-apartheid period. South Africa’s passive revolution featured formal racial inclusion, the preservation of extreme inequality and economic insecurity, the demobilization of popular forces, and narrow elite struggles for state resources. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with activists and residents in the impoverished townships and informal settlements around Johannesburg, I show how passive revolution produced fractured militancy: the simultaneous proliferation and fragmentation of popular resistance. I demonstrate this process by examining the policy, organizational, and leadership dimensions of the relationship between passive revolution and popular mobilization. The analysis has implications for the study of both capitalism and social movements.

Recent protest movements in sub-Saharan Africa have generally failed to effect progressive transformations. Efforts to achieve social change have been frustrated by governing elites that continue to utilise their vacillating and unequal relationships with the external environment to sustain power. Although the leading figures may change, the dominant African class can re-establish leadership through new alliances with domestic and international networks of capital. To understand such 'change-without-change', this paper contributes to the growing body of literature on Antonio Gramsci's development of 'passive revolution'. The comparative character of Gramscian analysis enables his philosophy of praxis to be translated into very different historical and geographical settings. With this in mind we draw together recent engagements with passive revolution from Geography, Politics and African Studies. In particular we develop Jean-François Bayart's notion of extraversion, while considering it in relation to more recent philological engagements with Gramsci. Our empirical focus is the politics of transition in Malawi. In his second term in office, the autocratic and unpopular president, Bingu wa Mutharika, implemented economic policies that ran against neoliberal orthodoxy and suppressed protest during a period of crisis. Mutharika was replaced, following his death in 2012, by Joyce Banda, a previously marginalised vice-president, who nurtured a re-engagement with transnational capital. Working through the state, Banda led a transformation from on high and moved to impose new economically liberal policies, including a major currency devaluation, which reduced living standards for many. We draw our empirical material from Chancellor College, a major site of protest against Mutharika in 2011. Evidence from interviews with staff and students demonstrates how two episodes of revolution/restoration in Malawi, a country distant from the western historical experience, can be interpreted through Gramsci's socially differentiated understanding of politics.

In recent years Brazil has deployed a military takeover of dozens of favelas. Presenting data collected from 2012 to 2014 in one of the favelas, I argue that the process of 'pacification' is an attempt at passive revolution, which depends more on manufacturing spatial hegemony through non-military strategies than on the war of manoeuvre that is currently being undertaken. This is developed through an articulation of Gramsci's theoretical framework with Lefebvre's perspective of the production of space, which exposes the failure to overcome the fragile presence of state in the territory through everyday state formation.