Rioting and Insurrectionary Collective Action in Comparative Perspective: Conceptual and Theoretical Concerns

Abstract

Distinctive among all other forms of contentious politics, violent protest or —in derogatory terms— rioting evokes contradictory responses. Apparently easy to initiate (as it bears comparatively little logistic and organisational cost), violence is simultaneously the most visible and sensational variety of collective action as well as the most difficult to sustain. This is hardly a paradox. The literature detects a macro-historical trend towards declining violent forms pari passu with the aggrandisement of state coercive capacity and the emergence of ‘negotiated’ alternatives. Collective violence, however, persists and as of lately proliferates: the French banlieue outburst of 2005, the Greek youth rebellion of December 2008 being the more recent cases in point. What is their political significance, how do we conceptualise the varieties of this underspecified phenomenon, and how are we to appraise their outcomes as protest repertoires challenging existing forms of democracy? Why and how people used to living with their categorical boundaries shift rapidly into insurrectionary action and then (sometimes just as rapidly) shift back into relatively peaceful relations? Is violent protest perhaps the way contentious politics is changing in times of crisis? Starting off from the observation that our overall thinking and analytical tools —though useful— are ultimately insufficient to provide satisfactory answers, this panel approaches rioting and insurrectionary collective action from a comparative-theoretical perspective. The topic is, of course, normatively and politically charged. Most accounts continue to perceive violent action through ideological lenses, approvingly idealising it or, more often, castigating it as notorious psychopathological dysfunction. Yet the most perspicacious research to date indicates that it is best understood as a function of the interaction between contenders and their institutional environment involving both rational negotiation and strategic creativity. Aspiring to understand the recent violent upsurge in its historical specificity and cross-national distinctiveness, we aim at comparing and synthesising results from protest event analysis in different social, cultural, and political settings whilst also furthering conceptual and theoretical debate —assessing, verifying or refuting extant approaches. Topics we are particularly interested in exploring in this context include: structural (economic and socio-political) crisis and violent protest; varieties in the social and cultural makeup of violent challengers; framing and types of violent repertoires; organisational forms and prerequisites; transnational diffusion processes.

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