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The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media and International Activism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2006

Stephen M. Saideman
Affiliation:
McGill University

Extract

The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media and International Activism. By Clifford Bob. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 237p. $70.00 cloth, $24.99 paper.

Clifford Bob seeks to understand why some rebels receive more attention and support from the international community than others. Rather than arguing that some groups are inherently more deserving, Bob takes a novel and very insightful perspective on the international relations of contention by applying the dynamics of marketing. “Despite its promise, today's ‘global civil society’ is for many a Darwinian arena in which the successful prosper but the weak wither” (p. 8). His answer focuses on how well groups market themselves in a competitive realm where large numbers of movements are seeking support from nongovernmental organizations with limited resources. He focuses on this key inequality—that the rebels around the world need help from the NGOs far more than any NGO needs to support any one group of dissidents—insisting that it is a buyer's market.

Type
BOOK REVIEWS: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Copyright
© 2006 American Political Science Association

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