Research on Social Movements and Political Violence

Journal of Intelligence, Conflict, and Warfare, 2019

This paper takes the perspective that violent transnational social movements (VTSMs) have profoundly impacted contemporary conflict scenarios. Social movements, underpinned by ideology, create partisan, transnational echo chambers, and communities, which are in the process of 'changing the weather' in contemporary social interactions. Transnational advocacy networks work in tandem to 'create the message' and perpetuate narratives. Where extremist dialogue crosses over into violence, we argue that a new form of conflict emerges. Such conflict does not have the preservation of the state as a territorially important factor or reference point, but rather, the preservation and promotion of a cultural identity. Where 'other' identities also co-exist, as in multicultural societies, these extremist views, and the crossover to violence from extremist rhetoric, arguably create a new type of warfare which we label fifth generation.

Terrorism in America, 2018

Loadenthal, Michael. “Leftist Political Violence: From Terrorism to Social Protest.” In Terrorism in America, edited by Kevin Borgeson and Robin Valeri, 36–74. New York, NY: Routledge, 2018. --------------------- • Terrorism is a difficult to define label, and its application controlled by state authorities (e.g. Executive, courts, legislature, police, military). It is typically used to denote forms of political contestation that challenge the government in symbolic, rhetoric, and practical terms. Because of this patterned application, terrorism fails to adequately describe acts, and instead is a means of defaming a particular tactic, strategy, organization, ideology or individual. • The labeling of leftist violence and rightist violence is done irregularly with leftists frequently labeled and prosecuted as terrorists and rightists typically described and framed through other discourses such as extremism. • The first wave of global terrorism is often associated with the rise of individual anarchists targeting heads of state in the 19th century, and while this era saw kings and presidents slain by leftists, it promotion of propaganda of the deed declined by World War II. • The 1960s saw a landmark rise in networks and organizations of Marxist-Leninist and other leftists adopting violent means (e.g. bombing, armed robbery)—frequently labeled as terrorism—in their opposition to the War in Vietnam, national liberation (e.g. Puerto Rico), and the larger socio-political environment framed as US-led imperialism. • In the 1980s, when the Marxist-Leninist vanguards declined, they was replaced by a rising tide of clandestine animal liberation networks, and by the 1990s, the addition of environmental campaigns of sabotage, vandalism and arson—labeled by the government as “eco-terrorism.” Though these networks did not employ lethal means, due to the frequency of their attacks and their large financial cost, they were quickly cast as domestic terrorists and a premier target for further criminalization through the rhetoric of terrorism. • Around the millennium, the left engaged in a series of large-scale counter-summit street protests. Following the attacks of 9/11, these leftist tactics were further criminalized through a rhetorical association with terrorism, and thus a movement on the rise was quickly curtailed. • Following the discursive shift equating civil disobedience and disruptive protestors as “terrorists” occurring after 9/11, in the early months of 2017, legislative and policing practices have demonstrated a renewed desire to recast demonstrators as an existential danger to the state and national security—this time by framing “demonstrators” as “rioters” if property destruction occurs within the demonstration.

“Terrorism,” a word rife with definitional dispute, is embedded within a process which labels some acts of political violence as "extremism," “insurgency,” or legitimate defense within the national interest. For the purpose of academic discussion, terrorism is a collection of strategic and tactical means, a ‘weapons system,’ utilizing diverse forms of violence understood to be legitimate or illegitimate depending on the positionality of the labeling entity. In order to untangle this definitional puzzle, the course will explore a number of modern political campaigns, which collectively examined constitute a range of political violence. Throughout this interdisciplinary examination, special attention will be paid to issues of gender roles, positionality, movement structure, “continuums of involvement,” online networking and outreach, communiqués and other forms of propaganda, and the connections between radical ideology and counter/anti-Statist praxis. Through a combination of traditional lectures, experimental group activities, and in-class discussion, students will scrutinize terrorism as a discourse and tactical “tool set” utilized by States, quasi-States and non-State actors (NSAs) challenging State authority. These questions will be addressed through an exploration of the case histories, ideologies, and strategies of NSAs including the Palestinians armed and non-violent movements, and in the US, the Animal/Earth Liberation Front, as well as neo-Nazi/white supremacist and anti-abortion movements.

Typologies are ubiquitous in terrorism studies, illustrating their continued appeal as a tool to further our understanding of this form of political violence. Despite this, to date, the promise of an empirically derived typology has largely been neglected. In addressing this gap, this article sets out a typology developed from Social Movement Theory. Using a novel statistical technique to derive a three-dimensional framework for categorising militant groups, the typology incorporates both organisational characteristics and the wider political context. The result is a typology defined by three conceptual constructs: political capacity, war-making capacity, and network capacity. Alongside these organisational features, imposing measures of the wider political opportunity structure reveals eight types of militant organisation. To explore the utility of the framework, a preliminary analysis interprets the typology in light of the presence of wider conflict. That a robust relationship is found between the various types and whether groups were operating in peacetime, civil war, or low-intensity conflict, goes some way to demonstrating its utility as an analytical tool. Conclusions draw attention to the importance of contextualising militant groups in their socio-political setting, and the benefits of combining theory alongside empirical analysis to develop robust characterisations of violent organisations.

Qualitative Sociology, 2008

The cover photo for this special issue on political violence depicts a peaceful street demonstration, perhaps the most studied tactic in the modern "repertoire of contention" (Tilly 1978, 1986, 1995a, b). The scene is non-violent, but as Julie Stewart explains in her article in this issue "A Measure of Justice: The Rabinal Human Rights Movement in Postwar Guatemala," the demonstration was staged in response to a 30-year-long campaign of state-sponsored political violence that took the lives of more than a thousand members of the Rabinal Mayan community in the 1980s. This peaceful demonstration is thus embedded in a complex, decades-long cycle of political violence. Political violence is a broad term for deeply contested actions, events, and situations that have political aims and involve some degree of physical force. The same events may be called by many other names: terrorism, insurgency, guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency, self-defense, retribution, security policing, national defense, national liberation, statesponsored terrorism, or even genocide, depending on the circumstances and who is doing the naming. Using the neutral term "political violence" allows us to take a sociological approach that focuses on the socio-political sequences of action and contexts in which violence is embedded, and makes the naming of acts and the interpretation of their meaning an essential part of the analysis. The methodological tools of qualitative sociology are particularly well-suited to study of the unfolding of dynamic social processes and interactive meaning-making that occurs in messy, contested real-world contexts. The five articles we have selected for this special issue reflect the breadth of research that this approach invites. We begin with an essay by Donatella della Porta, "Research on Social Movements and Terrorism: Some Reflections" that provides an overview of the study of political violence by social scientists since the 1960s and helps to locate the other four articles in relation to

2021

On November 25, 2020, Candyce Kelshall presented on the topic of Soft Violence, Social Radicalisation, and Violent Transnational Social Movements (VTSMs), at the 2020 CASIS West Coast Security Conference. Primary discussion topics included the distinction between terrorists and violent extremists, weapons used by violent extremists, social radicalisation and self actualisation (SRSA), the production of lone actors, and the intersectionality of violent extremist actors. This presentation was followed by a group panel for questions and answers, whereby conference attendees were provided with an opportunity to engage in discussion with Professor Kelshall and the other presenters.

TraCe Working Paper, 2022

This paper outlines a research program on the development of political violence. Political violence in its many formsfrom riotous protests to war between states-remains ever-present and has immense moral and political implications. However, the overall development of political violence remains poorly understood. Examining existing research, we identify three general positions: political violence has either declined, escalated, or taken different forms. However, due to diverging definitions and specifications as well as partially ambiguous evidence, no clear assessment has as yet been made. Hence, the paper provides a basic framework to better group existing approaches, examine available findings, and to enable the design of further research to better understand the development of political violence. Surveying the conceptual literature, we find narrower and broader definitions of political violence which, respectively, allow for more focused and for more wholistic investigations. We also distinguish three crucial aspects of political violence: its forms and patterns, the role of political institutions, and its social construction and justification. Surveying the literature on the state and transnational groups, we also propose a basic typology on the direction, basic entities, and forms of political violence. Jointly, these definitions, aspects and basic concepts form a general framework with which to break new ground on the development of political violence by affording connection and communication between various strands of research from diverse disciplinary perspectives.

Most studies on politico-ideological violence (PIV) recognize the importance of socio-political and economic grievances, but they rarely analyse them in depth. I argue that this is symptomatic of a tendency of depoliticization in radicalization research in the post 9/11 context and suggest that the study of PIV may benefit from putting greater emphasis on the element of grievance. A grievance-based analysis allows for critical and reflexive consideration of structural and systemic factors pertinent for engagement in PIV and may thereby contribute to demystifying and re-politicizing the current debate on PIV. I propose three ‘ideal types’ of grievances (racial, ethnic and religious; socio-economic; political), which may be locally or globally oriented or inspired, and suggest that a combination of those is likely to be present in most forms of PIV. I conclude with a few methodological reflections and potential implications for policymaking.

Accidental Power: How Non-State Actors Hijacked Legitimacy and Re-Shaped the International System, 2018

This paper takes the perspective that violent transnational social movements (VTSMs) have profoundly unpacked contemporary conflict scenarios. Social movements, underpinned by ideology, create partisan transnational echo chambers and communities. Transnational advocacy networks create the message and perpetuate narratives and dialogues. Where the partisanship crosses into extremist dialogue and violence, we argue a new form of conflict emerges. A form of conflict which does not have the preservation of the state as a motivation of territorially defined factor; important as a reference point, but rather, the preservation and promotion of a cultural identity. States where ‘other’ identities also co-exist as in multicultural societies, these extremist views and the crossover to violence arguably create a new type of warfare which we label fifth generation. Fifth generation warfare (5GW) is a complex idea. It is at best ill-defined and mis-understood. It is often confused or conflated with evolving methods of warfare. (Layton (2017), Alderman (2015) Reed (2008).

This paper reviews the recent literature on processes of violent mobilisation. It highlights the need to distinguish between conflict and violence, arguing that violence deserves specific attention, separate from an analysis of the macro-cleavages which lead to social conflict. It goes on to detail those circumstances which result in political violence. Political violence is generally initiated by ‘specialists’, people with the specific skills and desire to trigger such conflict, and we analyse what makes non-specialists follow them. We question the validity of a dichotomy between greed and grievances as drivers of violent engagement. Instead we show that participation in violence could be seen, from an individual perspective, as a constantly changing process of ‘navigation’. However, this makes establishing motivations for violence difficult, both analytically and empirically. We therefore suggest an alternative way of studying the causes of the worst forms of collective violence, shifting attention from the individual to armed organisations. Indeed, these armed organisations are where the external constraints on insurgency (logistical, political, military) and the internal imperatives of military cohesion and efficiency are dealt with. The forms of collective violence (of high intensity or not, targeted or indiscriminate etc.) stem from how such organisational puzzles are solved. We detail some of the causal mechanisms that could be significant in shaping the histories and routes taken by such armed organisations. The last section discusses the policy implications of these findings.

Perspectives on Terrorism, 2012

Political parties and terrorist groups are seldom viewed as comparable organizations. While both have political ambitions and an interest in mobilizing popular support, the former are associated with the use of legitimate formal-legal tactics to obtain political goals and the latter, in contrast, are typically associated with the use of violence. However, these characteristics are not always compatible with the empirical evidence. In fact, some political parties have employed violence in order to promote their goals, while many terrorist groups have adopted nonviolent tactics in order to achieve theirs. In order to account for similarities and differences between these organizations, we conceptualize political parties and terrorist organizations as political groups that use different tactics under different conditions. We examine the relative attractiveness of choices between violent and nonviolent tactics in an effort to uncover the factors shaping the strategic decisions of diverse political groups. Subsequently, we present and test a theoretical framework, which serves as a foundation for the analysis of the shifts in tactics undertaken by different political groups.

Despite the development of the political violence and terrorism literature, which has moved strongly forward in the past decade, scientific works on the consequences of armed groups are still rare. This article encourages cross-fertilization between the sparse studies of the consequences of political violence and the growing body of research on how social movements matter. First, we show the variety of potential outcomes of armed groups' violent repertoires. We then review works on the consequences of social movements and highlight lessons for the study of armed groups. Specifically, we urge scholars to look for the interplay of internal and external factors in studying the impact of armed groups. We call for a comparative focus that dwells less on conditions and more on the processes and mechanisms affecting the impact of political violence. At the same time, we acknowledge that the literature on political violence and terrorism can inform social movement scholarship. In particular, students of social movements should pay more attention to the potential economic consequences of protest activities, the international factors constraining their impact, and the life-course patterns of movements' targets.

Government and Opposition, 2014

Oppositional violence and repression are closely related. In fact, repression often produces an escalation of violence rather than controlling it. Bridging social movement studies and research on violence, the article uses a small-N, most-different research design to analyse the working of a specific mechanism at the onset of different types of political violence: escalating policing. In particular, it indicates specific causal mechanisms, related to interactions between social movements and the state, which create the conditions for some splinter groups to move underground. In order to compare left-wing, right-wing, ethno-national and religious violence, the article presents empirical references to the author's own empirical research on Italy and the Basque Country as well as a secondary analysis of the conflicts that preceded the rise of al-Qaeda.

Civil Wars, 2014

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