Wise quacks

In agreement with many other students of social movements and related pheno mena, the Goodwin-Jasper critique of political process theorizing about con tentious politics rightly calls attention to the incomplete, provisional, a nd sometimes contradictory state of explanations in the field. However, it wrongly indicates that major analysts are unaware of these difficulties, it adopts a flawed model of explanation, and it proposes remedies that will a ctually hinder explanation of contentious political processes.