Examines forms of 'creative political participation', political actions which use innovative and creative methods, rather than traditional ones.

Political participation takes many forms, from Tea Party protests to terrorism.This book looks at individuals who lack established political institutions throughwhich to exercise public action and thus choose to cooperate in an innovativemanner to achieve their goals. This is what Andrew S. McFarland calls creativepolitical participation, and here he explores it in the context of environmental, political, consumer, and transnational protest issues. McFarland 's examples andreach are prescient in light of the 2011 peoples movements throughout the MiddleEast and the American Middle West.

"Andrew McFarlamd's book is one part political theory and another part American government, with a dash of international relations and social movements scholarship?a window into an intriguing set of topics?Fore readers, particularly undergraduates, less familiar with some of these historical episodes or the wider literature on collective action and civic mobilization, this book does serve a useful introduction and summarizes findings in the field." -Perspectives on Politics "In the wake of recent scholarship from such luminaries as Putnam and Skocpol, the received wisdom seems to be that civic participation is seriously on the wane in the contemporary U.S. In his fresh and engaging new book, Andrew McFarland suggests the jury is still very much out on the question. By profiling four little-studied forms of 'creative participation,' the author invites us to reconsider the received wisdom, even as he highlights the seemingly endless capacity for grassroots democratic innovation." -Doug McAdam, Stanford University