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Progress and Pitfalls in the Study of Political Violence

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 24; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09546553.2012.700608

1556-1836

Michael J. Boyle,

Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

Abstract The study of political violence has undergone dramatic changes in its orientation, scope, and empirical approach over the last twenty years. The increasing availability of micro-level data and the growing methodological sophistication of researchers have led to a proliferation of high quality studies on different types of political violence, such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, inter-state war, insurgency, civil war, and repression. However, the cost of this increased sophistication has been fragmentation of the field into highly specialized studies of types of political violence, themselves often divided by theoretical assumptions and methodological approaches. As a way of encouraging the cross-pollination of ideas across the study of political violence, this special edition has asked leading scholars in the field to produce "state of the field" survey pieces on each type of political violence and to identify directions for future research. This introduction lays out the rationale for this special edition, highlights some of the key themes and findings in the included articles, and identifies several insights from this literature that will also be applicable to the study of terrorism. Keywords: political violenceresearchterrorism Acknowledgments I am grateful to Richard Jackson, Emma Leonard, Jeffrey Stevenson Murer, and Alex P. Schmid for their comments on this article. I would also like to thank all of the contributors to this special edition, the anonymous reviewers for each piece, and the editors of Terrorism and Political Violence. Notes For examples of classic studies of political violence which tended to focus on more aggregate indicators of revolutionary and/or violent behavior, see Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970) and Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968). An emblematic summary of this kind of work is available in Hugh Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (New York: Signet, 1969). For an early critique of this approach, see Charles Tilly, "Does Modernization Breed Revolution," Comparative Politics 5, no. 3 (April 1973): 433. For examples of early studies investigating the causal logic behind "political violence" broadly defined, see Edward N. Muller, "A Test of a Partial Theory of Potential for Political Violence," American Political Science Review 66, no. 3 (September 1972): 928–959 and James C. Davies, "Towards a Theory of Revolution," American Sociological Review 27, no. 1 (February 1962): 5–19. The precise boundaries of "political violence" have never been clear, as authors sometimes mean very different things when describing an act as "political.". Among the new data sources available to scholars are the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MIDS) dataset, the Uppsala Conflict program datasets, the World Bank datasets collected by Paul Collier and his collaborators, as well as datasets collected by James D. Fearon and David Laitin, Bethany Lacina, and Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis. See particularly Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance in Civil Wars (Washington DC: World Bank, 2001); James D. Fearon and David Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War," American Political Science Review 93, no. 1 (February 2003): 75–90 and Bethany Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch, "Monitoring Trends in Global Combat: A New Dataset of Battle Deaths," European Journal of Population 21, nos. 2/3 (2005): 145–166; Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, "International Peacekeeping: A Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis," American Political Science Review 94, no. 4 (December 2000): 779–801. Some good examples of multilevel work that use data at the micro- and meso-levels, include Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Jeremy Weinstein, Inside Rebellion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Laia Balcells, "Rivalry and Revenge: Violence Against Civilians in Conventional Civil Wars," International Studies Quarterly 54, no. 2 (June 2010): 291–313; Macartan Humpfreys and Jeremy Weinstein, "Who Fights?: The Determinants of Participation in Civil Wars," American Journal of Political Science 52, no. 2 (April 2008): 436–455; Jason Lyall, "Does Indiscriminate Violence Incite Insurgent Attacks? Evidence from Chechnya," Journal of Conflict Resolution 53, no. 3 (June 2009): 331–262. There is a vast number of studies which could be cited here, but as an example of some high quality recent work on these topics see Stephen John Stedman, Donald Rothschild, and Elizabeth M. Cousens, Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 2002); Caroline Hartzell, Matthew Hoddie, and Donald Rothschild, "Stabilizing the Peace After Civil Wars: An Investigation of New Variables," International Organization 55, no. 1 (2000): 183–208; Barbara Walter, "The Critical Barrier to Peace Settlement," International Organization 51, no. 3 (1997): 335–364; Virginia Page Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Work? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Timothy D. Sisk, International Mediation in Civil Wars: Bargaining with Bullets (London: Routledge, 2009); and Monica Duffy Toft, Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). An exception here is Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011). Traditionally, terrorism studies was confined to the margins of political science and related disciplines and only came to receive wider publication attention and interest after the September 11th attacks. For a good critical overview of the field, see Alex P. Schmid (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research (London: Routledge, 2011); Andrew Silke, Research on Terrorism: Trends, Achievements, and Failures (New York: Frank Cass, 2004); and Magnus Ranstorp, Mapping Terrorism Research: State of the Art, Gaps and Future Directions (London: Routledge, 2007). See particularly Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Exceptions include Stathis Kalyvas, "The Paradox of Terrorism in Civil Wars," Journal of Ethics 8 (2004): 97–138 and unpublished papers by Michael Findley and Joseph K. Young and Virginia Page Fortna. For exceptions, see Lawrence C. Hamilton and James D. Hamilton, "Dynamics of Terrorism," International Studies Quarterly 27, no. 1 (March 1983): 39–54; Abdelaziz Testas, "Determinants of Terrorism in the Muslim World: An Empirical Cross-Section Analysis," Terrorism and Political Violence 16, no. 2 (June 2004): 253–273; James Piazza, "Rooted in Poverty? Terrorism, Poor Economic Development and Social Cleavages," Terrorism and Political Violence 18 (2006): 159–177; and Ethan B. Mesquita and Eric S. Dickson, "The Propaganda of the Deed: Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Mobilization," American Journal of Political Science 51, no. 2 (April 2007): 364–381. On this point, see particularly Benjamin Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocides in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). The classic statement of scapegoating is from Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred (London: Continuum, 2005), 1–39. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). Nicholas Sambanis, "Do Ethnic and Nonethnic Civil Wars Have the Same Causes?," Journal of Conflict Resolution 45, no. 3 (2001): 259–282. Bethany Lacina, "On Explaining the Severity of Civil Wars," Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 2 (April 2006): 276–289. This work is based on Bethany Lacina and Nils P. Gleditsch, "Monitoring Trends in Global Combat: A New Dataset of Battle Deaths," European Journal of Population 2, no. 3 (2005): 145–166. Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). The seminal statement of the democratic peace is Michael W. Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," American Political Science Review 80, no. 4 (December 1986): 1151–1169. For a good collection of articles for and against the democratic peace, see Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller (eds.), Debating the Democratic Peace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996). For a critique of the mechanisms, see Sebastian Rosato, "The Flawed Logic of the Democratic Peace Theory," American Political Science Review 94, no. 4 (November 2003): 585–602 and the response by Michael W. Doyle in his "Three Pillars of the Liberal Peace," American Political Science Review 99, no. 3 (August 2005): 463–466. On the autocratic peace, see Mark Peceny, Caroline C. Beer, and Shannon Sanchez-Terry, "Dictatorial Peace?," American Political Science Review 96, no. 1 (March 2002): 15–26. See the discussion of mid-level theories in Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005). Some notable exceptions might include Robert Taber, The War of the Flea: The Classic Study of Guerrilla Warfare (Washington, DC: Brassey's, 2002) and Nathan C. Leites and Charles Wolf Jr., Rebellion and Authority: An Analytic Essay on Insurgent Conflicts (Washington, DC: RAND, 1970). See particularly Andrew Mack, "Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict," World Politics 27, no. 2 (January 1975): 175–200. This is what Biddle calls "the modern system." See Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) and the U.S. Army-Marine Corps, Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). In other words, the danger is that this field may not be progressive in the sense that Imre Lakatos meant. See Imre Lakatos, "Falsification and Methodology in Scientific Research Programmes," in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 91–196. Gonzalo Vargas, "Urban Irregular Warfare and Violence against Civilians: Evidence from a Colombian City," Terrorism and Political Violence 21 (January 2009): 110–132. See Ravi Bhavani, Dan Miodownik, and Hyun Jin Choi, "Violence and Control in Civil Conflict: Israel, the West Bank and Gaza," Comparative Politics 44, no. 1 (2011): 61–80; and Rex W. Douglass, "Hearts, Minds and Bodies: The Strategy of Selective Violence in Civil War," Unpublished paper, 2012. See Laia Balcells, "Rivalry and Revenge: Violence against Civilians in Conventional Civil Wars," International Studies Quarterly 54, no. 2 (2009): 291–313, and Nils B. Weidmann, "Violence 'from above' or 'from below'?: The role of ethnicity in Bosnia's Civil War," Journal of Politics 73, no. 4 (2011): 1178–1190. See particularly Schmid (2011) (see note 7 above), and Silke (2004) (see note 7 above). The latter point is particularly problematic, as it is not clear that one can infer individual level motivations or intentions on the basis of group characteristics or behavior. In general, political scientists tend to be less rigorous in the application of identity measures to terrorist groups than psychologists, who often note that there are multiple (sometimes conflicting) levels of identity and performative practices which must be taken into account when judging behavior. A model for such measures is those that are included in the Minorities at Risk (MAR) data collection project, both in the quantitative and qualitative measures and their specific organizational indices in the MAROB dataset. Andrew Silke, "Cheshire-Cat Logic: The Recurring Theme of Terrorist Abnormality in Psychological Research," Psychology, Crime and Law 4 (1998): 51–69. See also John Horgan, "The Search for the Terrorist Personality," in Andrew Silke (ed.), Terrorists, Victims and Society: Psychological Perspectives on Terrorism and its Consequences (Chichester: Wiley, 2003), 3–28. This literature is vast, but for some good overviews employing insights from social and group psychology see Martha Crenshaw, "The Psychology of Terrorism: An Agenda for the 21st Century," Political Psychology 21, no. 2 (June 2000): 405–410 and Rex A. Hudson, The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why? (Washington, DC: Federal Research Service, Library of Congress, 1999). For a more recent application applying insights from individual and group psychology, see Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko, "Mechanisms towards Political Radicalization: Pathways Towards Terrorism," Terrorism and Political Violence 20, no. 3 (July 2008): 415–433. See John Horgan, The Psychology of Terrorism (London: Routledge, 2005). Some representative studies which point to mechanisms facilitating involvement in terrorist organizations include Roger D. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Elizabeth Jean Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), Kalyvas (2006) (see note 4 above), Weinstein (2007) (see note 4 above), and Macarten Humphreys and Jeremy Weinstein, "Who Fights? The Determinants of Participation in Civil War," American Journal of Political Science 52, no. 2 (April 2008): 436–455. See Kalyvas (2006) (note 4 above). On the structural approach to ethnic conflict, see Chaim Kaufmann, "Rational Choice and Progress in the Study of Ethnic Conflict: A Review Essay," Security Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 178–207. A comprehensive list of different types of political violence, many of which share group selective characteristics, is available in Schmid, Handbook of Terrorism Research (2011), 5–7 (see note 7 above). As a general point, this is one of the problems with broad definitions of terrorism that suggest only that terrorism is a type of violence used indiscriminately against civilians for a political purpose. These definitions do not distinguish terrorism from other types of political violence that are directed indiscriminately against civilians, such as indiscriminate insurgent attacks and ethnic cleansing. Such definitions tend to overlook that a key aspect of the definition of terrorism is the projection of fear to an audience beyond the immediate target. It is this psychological projection of fear to an unlimited audience that makes terrorism different from other types of more discriminate violent acts which also send a message, such as reprisals. This is why Alex P. Schmid has aptly described terrorism as a form of psychological warfare. See his "Terrorism as Psychological Warfare," Democracy and Security 1 (2005): 137–146. See, for instance, James Piazza, "Rooted in Poverty: Terrorism, Poor Economic Development and Social Cleavages," Terrorism and Political Violence 18 (2006): 159–177; Quan Li and Drew Schaub, "Economic Globalization and Transnational Terrorism: A Pooled Time Series Analysis," Journal of Conflict Resolution 48, no. 2 (April 2004): 230–258; Alberto Abadie, "Poverty, Political Freedom and the Roots of Terrorism," Working Paper 10859, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2004; Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova, "Education, Poverty And Terrorism: Is There A Causal Connection?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 119–144. On minority economic discrimination, see James A. Piazza, "Poverty, Minority Economic Discrimination and Terrorism," Journal of Peace Research 48, no. 3 (2011): 339–353 and on education as a potential causal factor see Krueger and Maleckova (2003). Dale C. Copeland, "Economic Interdependence and War: A Theory of Trade Expectations," International Security 20, no. 4 (1996): 5–41. For a discussion of the need for careful counterterrorism responses that do not generate backlash effects, see Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want (London: John Wiley, 2007). See, respectively, Mack (1975) (note 20 above); Ivan Arreguin Toft, "How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict," International Security 26, no. 1 (2001): 93–128; and Jason Lyall and Isaiah Wilson III, "Rage against the Machine: Explaining Counterinsurgency Outcomes" International Organization 63, no. 1 (2009): 67–106. See the discussion in Max Abrahms, "Why Terrorism Does Not Work," International Security 31, no. 2 (Fall 2006): 42–78 and subsequent correspondence. For accounts suggesting it is effective under some conditions, see Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005); Andrew H. Kydd and Barbara F. Walter, "The Strategies of Terrorism," International Security 31, no. 1 (Summer 2006): 49–79; and Eric D. Gould and Esteban F. Klor, Does Terrorism Work? (London: Centre for Economic Policy Research, December 2009). For an argument that terrorism is ineffective, see Abrahms (2006) (note 42 above). See Kalyvas, "Paradox of Terrorism in Civil War" (note 9 above). Additional informationNotes on contributorsMichael J. Boyle Michael J. Boyle is an assistant professor of political science at La Salle University in Philadelphia, PA.