Political Violence and Legitimacy: Concepts and Methodologies

Abstract

Political violence is an umbrella term, covering phenomena variously thought of as rebellions, insurgencies, terrorism, civil war, and so on. Legitimacy is likewise a broad term, variously connoting acceptance, acquiescence, endorsement, approval, and so on. This panel seeks to explore the issue of the legitimacy of political violence from a conceptual and methodological perspective. It therefore seeks to explore (1) how to conceptualize political violence and legitimacy in general terms and (2) how to research the legitimacy of political violence. The first aim takes for granted that a unified set of connotations fits the term political violence, just as legitimacy is considered a term with its own coherent connotations. What is, therefore, the common denominator among the concepts rebellion, insurgency, civil war, etc? Is it something that relates to the targets of violence, the aims of violence, the repertoires of violence, or the organization and mobilization behind violence? And what is the genus to legitimacy? Is it collective psychology, social structure, some form of process, or something else? The second aim builds on the first aim, moving from connotation to denotation. It therefore considers the phenomena denoted when we think of the legitimacy of political violence, as well as the ways we can design research on them. Is studying these phenomena a matter of aggregating traces of micro-behavior, finding the signifiers of structure, locating emergent modalities, or something else?