Forms of Political Violence

Have forms of political violence changed in contemporary socio-political conflicts? Does the socio-political context effect the forms of political violence? How are different forms of political violence legitimized? Do forms of political violence change and/or coexist during the same episode? Do we need different analytical approaches to study different forms of political violence? Are periods of economic crises conducive to particular forms of political violence? Are some forms of political violence more effective than others? Why are some groups more used to adopt particular forms of political violence? Do forms of political violence change across geographical areas, type of conflicts or historical periods? These questions, which form the core puzzle of this section, are in our view fundamental for furthering the debate on political violence, which so far has largely been segmented into specific fields which focus on particular forms of political violence. Political violence broadly defined, including guerrilla warfare, insurgency, terrorism, rebellion, revolution, rioting and civil war, can be distinguished in several ways, by the nature of the objectives; by the targets of attacks; by the organizational structure of groups and by the repertoire of actions. We will pay particular attention to tactical repertoires, how these are selected, how they depend on the repertoires' historical evolution and on the socio-poilitical context, their consequences, across different times and settings. This section, then, will develop comparisons across different forms of political violence, underlining similarities and identifying differences. For these reasons we welcome papers that address three main issues: (1) conceptual and theoretical thinking about forms of political violence, including refining existing definitions and typologies; (2) methodological reflections about how to deal with the subject matter and how to avoid the obstacles that have hindered previous research, from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective; (3) empirical analyses of different forms of political violence, in particular comparative studies encompassing different types of conflicts and/or countries. We welcome submissions that deal with actor groups such as social and protest movements, terrorist groups, insurgencies and other non-state armed formations. The section will have 8 panels that will be selected from amongst the panel proposals received. Selection criteria are: 1) panel proposal consistency with the general theme of the section; 2) relevance and novelty of the panel proposal topic; 2) university balance (meaning that the section will not have more than two panels organized by a chair belonging to the same university); 3) gender balance (meaning that we will try to have a section with an equal number of women and men acting as chair and co-chairs). The section will bring together distinguished scholars and younger scientists not only from political science, but from related disciplines, including economics, sociology, geography, anthropology, psychology, historical science, international relations, and area studies. In organising this section we seek to further the development of research on political violence in Europe and globally, to contribute to establishing an international network of scholars working in this field and to promote the publication of outputs such co-edited books or special issues of international journals. The section is supported by the Standing Group on Participation and Mobilization. Panel 4 is also part of the section on Citizens’ Resilience in Times of Crisis, supported by the Standing Group Participation and Mobilization. Lorenzo Bosi is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Social Movement Studies (COSMOS) at the European University Institute. He received his Ph.D. in politics from Queen’s University, Belfast, in 2005 and is the past recipient of the ECRC (University of Kent), Jean Monnet and Marie Curie (EUI) post-doctoral fellowships. His research interests include social movements and political violence. He has published in several journals, including Mobilization, Qualitative Sociology, Research in Social Movement, Conflict and Change, Historical Sociology, The Sixties, Social Science History, and Critique International. He is co-editor of Dynamics of Radicalization (Ashgate, forthcoming) with Stefan Malthaner and Chares Demetriou; and co-author of Relational Dynamics and Processes of Radicalization (Oxford University Press) with Eitan Alimi and Chares Demetriou. Among the large-scale academic events he organized or co-organized were the conferences “Radicalization and De-Radicalization” (2011, ZiF, Bielefeld), “Social Movements Outcomes”. (2011, WZB, Berlin), “Silences in the Study of Social Movement Outcomes”. (2012, Uppsala University); “Typologies of Political Violence” (2013, EUI); and the section “Political Violence in Time and Space” at the last ECPR conference in 2013, which was an oustanding success. Stefan Malthaner is currently Marie Curie Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. Prior to that, he spent a year as Max Weber Fellow at the EUI, worked as a researcher at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence (IKG) at University of Bielefeld, Germany, and was a member of the Research-Group Micropolitics of Armed Groups at Humboldt University, Berlin. His research focuses on political violence and social (especially Islamist) movements, from a comparative perspective. He is author of “Mobilizing the Faithful. Militant Islamist Groups and their Constitutencies” (Campus, 2011), and co-editor of “Control of Violence” (Springer U.S., 2011), “Radikale Milieus” (Campus, 2012), and “Dynamics of Political Violence” (Ashgate 2014). Among the large-scale academic events he organized or co-organized were the conferences “Radicalization and De-Radicalization” (2011, ZiF, Bielefeld), “Radical Milieus” (2011, University of Bielefeld), and “Micropolitics of Armed Groups” (2007, Humboldt University, Berlin).