Explaining Political Violence: Lessons on Radicalisation and Escalation

The vast majority of armed civil conflicts have been within countries rather than between them; this is particularly true for the last thirty years. Regionally, Asia had the largest amount of violent conflicts. Many of these conflicts are characterized by a long conflict history, in which parts of the population – mostly a minority - is discriminated against or excluded from state, economy and society. Initially, violence is occurring creepingly with local and temporal confined riots. Later on, violence is spreading: local assaults become nationwide pogroms, periodical riots become a permanent civil war. There is a heated theoretical and empirical debate on the origins, reasons and classification of political violence, no at least for the prognosis and prevention of mass violence. The paper is focusing on the history of radicalization and conflict escalation, the form and extent of violence, the social order of violence and the function of violence within each stage of the conflict. To explain and to classify violence I will use a four phase-context-scheme ranging from the first phase of co-existence, to a second phase of discrimination over a third phase of repression to the last phase of final solution. Interesting enough one finding is that in the course of the use of violence, plans are continually adapted to the success of it and eventually, the destruction of the victim group is accepted and finally consciously followed by the state. Moreover, a limited international interest in the fate of the victim group is interpreted as a carte blanche to continue with the destructive violence. As an example the civil war in Sri Lanka is presented, which has produced hundreds of thousands death and displaced people.