POLSCI 329S Chapter Notes - Chapter All: Political Opportunity, Collective Identity, Group Dynamics
11 May 2018
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Politics of Violence
9.27.16 Reading Notes – Donatella della Porta: Social Movements, Political violence, and the State
Chapter 1: Comparative research on political violence
Political violence: repertoires of collective action that involve physical force and cause damage to
an adversary to impose political aims
Book about political violence emerging from
left-libertarian social movement
Social movement: an organized and sustained effort of a collectivity of interrelated individuals,
groups, and organizations to promote or to resist social change with the use of public protest
activities
Political movements change the power structure
Left-libertarian movement family: set of movements that emerged during the cycle of protest that
started at the end of the 60s and participated in protest campaigns in the 70s and 80s
Types of political violence
Unspecialized violence
: low-level, unorganized violence
o Low-level: not directed towards people
Semimilitary violence
: low-level, but more organized
Autonomous violence
: used by loosely organized groups that emphasized a spontaneous
recourse to high-level violence
Clandestine violence
: extreme violence of groups that organized underground for the explicit
purpose of engaging in more radical forms of collective action
Two traditions of studying political violence – terrorism studies and social movement studies
o Terrorism studies normally focus on normal and deviant political behavior
▪ Usually attributed to imbalances in different subsystems such as economic,
political, social, or cultural
o Social movement studies considered protests to be the product of conflicts structurally
inherent in society (not temporary strains)
▪ Rational collective actors with interaction of motivation and selective incentives
▪ Political violence explained as the interaction between social movements and their
opponents
Her theory takes into account environmental conditions, group dynamics, and individual
motivations
Macro-level factors: POS (Political opportunity structure)
o POS: set of environmental opportunities and constraints available to social movements
o Policing of protest – activists perceptions of an accurate indicator of state attitudes
Meso-level factors: organizational dynamics
o Radical SMOs act as violence entrepreneurs – consume and produce resources for violence
in their environment
o Three main organizational tasks: mobilization of resources, integration of resources, and
allocation of resources for external aims
o Strategies – search for a niche to face competition
o Spirals of encapsulation – reduce organizational contact with the external world
Micro-level factors – activists motivations
o Social network
o Collective identity
o Collection action frames – justify protest action
o Incentives – motivate individual commitment
o Social movements without much material have to focus on nonmaterial incentives
Over research tries to bridge macro- and micro-level conditions
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Chapter 2: Political violence in Italy and Germany
Leftist activists were hesitant in admitting that they had any connection to the radicals
Principal premise – political violence cannot be understood as an isolated criminal phenomenon
and must be interpreted in the context of other forms of protest
Left-libertarian – new left, new social movements
Minority of groups/people were violent
Dominant attitudes/behavior = related to internal, cultural resources
Protest and violence in Italy (1960-90)
60s – large wave of strikes in factories
PHASE 1: STUDENT MOVEMENT
Student protest against government proposal to reorganize the university system
Later evolved to include non-academic topics
Anti-authoritarian discourse
o Sought full autonomy and freedom
o Conflicted with the traditional wing of the movement, who framed discourse into class-
conflict
Class-conflict discourse
Began with traditional ways of protesting (institutional pressure and sit-ins)
o After interacting with opposition and supportive groups, ideology gradually changed
o Self-defense violence developed
Anti-authoritarian group lost momentum – New Left emerged and allied with the Old Left –
student movement radicalized initial demands for reform
PHASE 2: THE REVOLUTIONARY FRONT
Decline of mobilizations within universities
Growth of protest beyond the academic world – such as urban problems and gender
discrimination
Dominance of New Left in left-libertarian movements
Student protest leaders sought a successful alliance with the working class
Consolidation of diverse groups into the New Left
Protest strategies borrowed from American student protests and Old Left
o Conventional tactics such as petitions + new forms of civil disobedience
Increase in political violence
Chapter 3: Violence and the political system: the policing of protest
Relationship between social movements and the state
POS – political opportunity structure
Policing of protest directly impacts social movements
o Perceived as an expression of how open or closed the state is
Institutional features define constraints and opportunities for protest policing
o Police organization, the nature of the judiciary, law codes, and constitutional rights
o Political culture – conceptions of citizens and state rights
Policing styles also dependent on the shifting results of the interactions of different actors
o Actors such as the protestors themselves, who try to uphold civil rights in the face of police
brutality
o Political parties, interest groups, trade unions
Actual protest policing depends on the interactions between protestors and the police
MT – doesnt protest policing usually escalate because of one small event (one policemen who
shoots out of self-defense, etc.)
Classifications for protest policing
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
9. 27. 16 reading notes donatella della porta: social movements, political violence, and the state. Political violence: repertoires of collective action that involve physical force and cause damage to an adversary to impose political aims. Book about political violence emerging from left-libertarian social movement. Social movement: an organized and sustained effort of a collectivity of interrelated individuals, groups, and organizations to promote or to resist social change with the use of public protest activities. Left-libertarian movement family: set of movements that emerged during the cycle of protest that started at the end of the 60s and participated in protest campaigns in the 70s and 80s. Unspecialized violence: low-level, unorganized violence recourse to high-level violence: low-level: not directed towards people. Clandestine violence: extreme violence of groups that organized underground for the explicit. Autonomous violence: used by loosely organized groups that emphasized a (cid:498)spontaneous(cid:499)
