Media Bias, Perspective, and State Repression

Christian Davenport is a Professor of Peace Studies & Political Science in the Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame as well as Director of the Radical Information Project (RIP) and Stop Our States (SOS). He is the author of State Repression and the Promise of Democratic Peace (Cambridge, 2007) and the editor of Repression and Mobilization (with Carol Mueller and Hank Johnston, 2004), and Paths to State Repression: Human Rights Violations and Contentious Politics (2000). His articles have appeared in journals including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Political Research Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, and the Monthly Review .

• Introduction; Part I. Conceptualization: 1. Objectivity and subjectivity in event catalogs; 2. The Rashomon effect, observation and data generation; 3. Understanding state repressive behavior; Part II. Cases: 4. The Black Panther Party vs. the United States, 1967-73: background; 5. An event catalog of dissent and repression: the BPP in the Bay Area; 6. A mosaic of coercion: five cases of anti-Panther repressive behavior; Part III. Conclusion: 7. Conclusion: conflict, events and catalogs; Appendix 1: The Black Panther-U.S. Government event catalogs.

'Scholars with an interest in social movements, repression, and/or the Black Panthers have been eagerly awaiting this book for the better part of a decade. It was worth the wait. The methodological implications of the work – as encoded in Davenport's already well known Rashomon Effect – are reason enough to already regard the book as a classic. In addition, however, the work also represents a thoughtful, systematic study of the Black Panthers. Anyone who knows this troubled corner of the literature is sure to appreciate what a rare and welcome achievement this is.' Doug McAdam, Stanford University