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This chapter presents the distinctive approach to relationalism developed in Charles Tilly's later work. It is an approach that assigns the chief explanatory role in social inquiry to accounts of changes in social relations, thus an approach serving substantive theory rather than general theory. In Tilly's accounts, alterations of social relations typically configure into mechanisms and processes that explain central socio-political phenomena, especially at the macro and meso levels. Tilly developed explanations most particularly of democratization, social inequality, and contentious politics. The latter term, devised by Tilly, refers to political contention outside formal political institutions, in which actors raise claims that involve the government and affect others' interests. This broad conceptualization—subsuming more common concepts such as social movements, revolutions, labor strikes, and so on—is characteristic of Tilly's effort towards broad and innovative comparisons.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-66005-9_15

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