Political violence

Political violence is a broad term used to describe violence perpetrated by either persons or governments to achieve political goals. Many groups and individuals believe that their political systems will never respond to their demands. As a result, they believe that violence is not only justified but also necessary in order to achieve their political objectives. Similarly, many governments around the world believe they need to use violence in order to intimidate their populace into acquiescence. At other times, governments use force in order to defend their country from outside invasion or other threats of force and to coerce other governments or conquer territory.[1] Political violence can take a number of forms including but not limited to those listed below. Non-action on the part of the government can also be characterized as a form of political violence.


Types

State-Based

Genocide

Main article: Genocide

One form of political violence is genocide. Genocide is commonly defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group",[2] although what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars.[3] Genocide is typically carried out with either the overt or covert support of the governments of those countries where genocidal activities take place. The Holocaust is the most cited historical example of genocide

Rioting

Main article: Riot

A Riot can be described as a violent disturbance by a group of individuals formed to protest perceived wrongs and/or injustice. These can range from poverty and inequality to unemployment and government oppression. They can manifest themselves in a number of ways but most commonly in the form of property damage. riot are characterized by their lack of predictability and the anonymity of their participants. Both make it difficult for authorities to identify those participating.[4]

Riots have been analyzed in a number of ways but most recently in the context of the frustration-aggression model theory, expressing that the aggression seen in most riots is a direct result of a groups frustration with a particular aspect of their lives.Widespread and prolonged rioting can lead to and/or produce rebellion or revolution. There are also a number of different types of riots including but not limited to police riots, race riot, prison riots, and sport riot.

War

Main article: War

War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties[5][6] typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality.[5] War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political communities, and therefore is defined as a form of political violence.[7] Three of the ten most costly wars, in terms of loss of life, have been waged in the last century: the death toll of World War II, estimated at more than 60 million, surpasses all other war death tolls by a factor of two. It is estimated that 378,000 people died due to war each year between 1985 and 1994.[8]

Revolution

Main article: Revolution

Civil War

Main article: Civil war

Terrorism

Main article: Terrorism

Terrorism as a form of political violence is usually perpetrated by the weaker side of a conflict. While there lacks a concrete definition of terrorism, the United States Department of Defense however defines terrorism as, " the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological."[9] What is and is not considered terrorism is hot topic for debate however the symbolism of terrorism creates a climate of fear.[10]

Counter-insurgency

Main article: Counter-insurgency

Counter-insurgency, another form of political violence, describes a spectrum of actions taken by the recognized government of a state to contain or quell an insurgency taken up against it.[11] There are a many different doctrines, theories, and tactics espoused regarding counter-insurgency that aim to protect the authority of the government and to reduce or eliminate the supplanting authority of the insurgents. Because it may be difficult or impossible to distinguish between an insurgent, a supporter of an insurgency who is a non-combatant, and entirely uninvolved members of the population, counter-insurgency operations have often rested on a confused, relativistic, or otherwise situational distinction between insurgents and non-combatants. Counter-insurgency operations are common during war, occupation and armed rebellions.

Gender-based Violence

Gender-based violence is often used interchangeably with Violence against Women. Although classified as a human right violation it can be viewed not only as a consequence of political violence but as a form of it as well.[12]

Torture

Main article: Torture

Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain (whether physical or psychological) as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Torture is prohibited under international law and the domestic laws of most countries in the 21st century. It is considered a human rights violation and is declared unacceptable by Article 5 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Signatories of the Third Geneva Convention and Fourth Geneva Convention have officially agreed not to torture prisoners in armed conflicts. National and international legal prohibitions on torture derive from a consensus that torture and similar ill-treatment are immoral, as well as impractical.[13] Despite international conventions, torture cases continue to arise such as the 2004 Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal committed by military police personnel of the United States Army. Organizations such as Amnesty International and the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims monitor abuses of human rights and reports widespread violations of human torture in by states in many regions of the world.[14] Amnesty International estimates that at least 81 world governments currently practice torture, some of them openly.[15]

Capital punishment

Main article: Capital punishment

Capital punishment is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offense. This does not include extrajudicial killing, which is the killing of a person by governmental authorities without the sanction of any judicial proceeding or legal process. The use of capital punishment by country varies, but according to Amnesty International 58 countries still actively use the death penalty, and in 2010, 23 countries carried out executions and 67 imposed death sentences. Methods of execution in 2010 included beheading, electrocution, hanging, lethal injection and shooting.[16] In 2007 the United Nations General Assembly passed the UN moratorium on the death penalty which called for worldwide abolition of the death penalty.[17]

Police brutality

Main article: Police brutality

Police brutality is another form of political violence. It is most commonly described in juxtaposition with the term excessive force. Police brutality can be defined as "a civil rights violation that occurs when a police officer acts with excessive force by using an amount of force with regards to a civilian that is more than necessary."[18] Police brutality and the use of excessive force are present throughout the world and in the United States alone, 4,861 incidences of police misconduct were reported during 2010 (see also Police brutality (United States)).[19] Of these, there were 6,826 victims involved and 247 fatalities.

Famine

Main article: Famine

Famine can be initiated or prolonged in order to deny resources, compel obedience, or to depopulate a region with a recalcitrant or untrusted populace.[20][21][22]

Trends

Current measures of political violence focus on country-level data, like the number of deaths per country per year; therefore, trends are observed at the macro-level. Recent work, like The Better Of Our Angels, suggests that violence has declined. After the Cold War ended, the number of violent conflicts around the world has declined. Between 1992 and 2005, violent conflict around the world dropped by 40 percent.[23]

violent interstate conflict and civil wars are now more rare because

However, there

"macro-level measures of violent conflict such as the number of battle deaths per country per year".

In Patterns of Political Violence in Comparative Historical Perspective

New wars debate

Uppsala Conflict Data Program

Theories

One way to organize theories of political violence is by their level of analysis: macro or micro. Macro theories explain why political violence occurs at the regional, state, national, international, and societal levels, while micro theories examine political violence at the individual and group levels.

List of theories that explain why violence occurs:

Ethnic Violence

Primordialism

Instrumentalist

Constructivist

Environmental Degradation

Literature that links Environmental degradation and violent conflict. Environmental change, population growth, and unequal distribution of resources due to environmental scarcity are the cause of many conflicts in developing countries. Thomas Homer-Dixon argues that environmental scarcity causes decreased agricultural production, economic decline, population displacement, and erodes institutions.

Micro

Rational choice theory

Rational choice theory explains the individual's motivation for participation in political violence. Individuals evaluate that cost and benefits of participating in political violence.

Consequences of Political Violence

Category that lists different pages that talk about aftermath of war, like PTSD, regime change, and death.

Macro

There is a body of social science literature that examines how political violence affects the region, state, nation, and society.

State-Building

Charles Tilly argues that "war making", eliminating rivals outside a territory, "state making", eliminating rivals within a territory, "protection", protecting subjects within a territory, and "extraction", extracting resources to "[carry] out the first three activities" are what defines a state. All four actives depend on the state's ability to use and monopolize violence. In other words, politically and non-politically motivated violence is necessary in state-building and building fiscal capacity.

Economic

Micro

There is a growing body of social science literature that examines how political violence affects individuals and households. However, what happens at the individual and household level can affect what happens at the macro level. For example, political violence effects an individual's income, health, and education attainment, but these individual consequences can effect a state or nation's economic growth.[24] In other words, the macro and micro consequences of political violence do not occur in a vacuum.

Political Impacts

There are empirical studies that link violence with increases in political participation. One natural experiment examines the effect of being abducted by Joseph Kony's LRA on political participation. An abducted male Ugandan youth, or in other words a former child soldier, had a greater probability of voting for Uganda's 2005 referendum and being a community mobilizer/leader than a male Ugandan youth who wasn't abducted.[25] However, this effect is not just contained to Uganda. Another natural experiment on the effects of the Sierra Leone civil war found that victimized households, household whose members were killed, injured, maimed, captured, or made refugees, are more likely to register to vote, attend community meetings, and participative in local political and community groups than households that did not experience violence.[26]

Economic Impacts

A study on the effects of the Sierra Leone civil war found that victimized households, household whose members were killed, injured, maimed, captured, or displaced, did not have long-term impacts on owning assets (stove, radio, and tin roof), child nutrition, consumption expenditures and earnings.[26]

Physical Capital

Human Capital

Human rights violations

Human rights violations occur when basic human rights (including civil, political, cultural, social, and economic rights) are abused, ignored or denied. Furthermore, violations of human rights can occur when any state or non-state actor breaches any part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights treaty or other international human rights or humanitarian law. In regard to human rights violations of United Nations laws, Article 39 of the United Nations Charter designates the UN Security Council (or an appointed authority) as the only tribunal that may determine UN human rights violations.

Human rights abuses are monitored by United Nations committees, national institutions and governments and by many independent non-governmental organizations, such as Amnesty International, International Federation of Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, World Organisation Against Torture, Freedom House, International Freedom of Expression Exchange and Anti-Slavery International. These organizations collect evidence and documentation of alleged human rights abuses and apply pressure to enforce human rights laws.

Wars of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide, are breaches of International humanitarian law and represent the most serious of human rights violations. In efforts to eliminate violations of human rights, building awareness and protesting inhumane treatment has often led to calls for action and sometimes improved conditions. The UN Security Council has interceded with peacekeeping forces and other states have intervened in situations ostensibly to protect human rights.[27]

Datasets

Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED)

The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) is a project that collates data on political violence and protestin developing states, from 1997 to the present. As of early 2016, ACLED has recorded over 100,000 individual events, with ongoing data collection focused on Africa and ten countries in South and Southeast Asia. The data can be used for medium- and long-term analysis and mapping of political violence across developing countries through use of historical data from 1997, as well as informing humanitarian and development work in crisis and conflict-affected contexts through real time data updates and reports.[28]

Based on the ACLED political violence is, "understood as the use of force by a group with a political purpose or motivation." The database uses this definition to catalog a number of what it refers to as political events across Africa and South East Asia. Political events are described as "a single altercation where often force is used by one or more groups for a political end. The data project catalogs nine different types of events, 3 of them battles and 3 non-violent events. They are as follows:[29]

Battles

Battles are, "a violent interaction between two politically organized armed groups at a particular time and location."[30]

Non-Violent Events

Remote Violence


Notes and references

  1. ↑ Nelson Education, Political Violence, http://polisci.nelson.com/violence.html
  2. ↑ See generally Funk, T. Marcus (2010). Victims' Rights and Advocacy at the International Criminal Court. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. . ISBN 0-19-973747-9.
  3. ↑ What is Genocide? McGill Faculty of Law (McGill University)
  4. ↑ Wada, George, and James C. Davies. "Riots and Rioters". The Western Political Quarterly 10.4 (1957): 864–874. Web...
  5. 1 2 "American Heritage Dictionary: War". Thefreedictionary.com. Retrieved 2011-01-24.
  6. ↑ "Merriam Webster's Dictionary: War". Merriam-webster.com. 2010-08-13. Retrieved 2011-01-24.
  7. ↑ "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy".
  8. ↑ Obermeyer Z, Murray CJ, Gakidou E (June 2008). "Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: analysis of data from the world health survey programme". BMJ 336 (7659): 1482–6. doi:10.1136/bmj.a137. PMC 2440905. PMID 18566045.
  9. ↑ http://www.terrorism-research.com/
  10. ↑ Political Terrorism: A New Guide To Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Bases, Theories, And Literature by Albert J. Jongman
  11. ↑ An insurgency is a rebellion against a constituted authority (for example an authority recognized as such by the United Nations) when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents (Oxford English Dictionary second edition 1989 "insurgent B. n. One who rises in revolt against constituted authority; a rebel who is not recognized as a belligerent.")
  12. ↑ http://eige.europa.eu/gender-based-violence/what-is-gender-based-violence
  13. ↑ "Torture and Ill-Treatment in the 'War on Terror'". Amnesty International. 2005-11-01. Retrieved 2008-10-22.
  14. ↑ Amnesty International Report 2005 Report 2006
  15. ↑ "Report 08: At a Glance". Amnesty International. 2008. Archived from the original on July 8, 2008. Retrieved 2008-10-22.
  16. ↑ "The Death Penalty in 2010". Amnesty International. Retrieved 22 November 2011.
  17. ↑ "Death Penalty in International Law". Amnesty International. Retrieved 22 November 2011.
  18. ↑ "Police Brutality Law & Legal Definitions". uslegal.com. Retrieved 2011-11-20.
  19. ↑ http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/?p=4053
  20. ↑ "Famine Is Being Used as a Weapon of War in Syria". VICE. Retrieved 20 April 2016.
  21. ↑ Peter Beaumont. "Famine becomes Mugabe weapon". the Guardian. Retrieved 20 April 2016.
  22. ↑ "War and Famine in Ireland, 1580-1700". The Irish Story. Retrieved 20 April 2016.
  23. ↑ Mack, A., 2007, 'Global Political Violence: Explaining the Post-Cold War Decline', Coping with Crisis Working Paper Series, International Peace Academy, New York
  24. ↑ Blattman, Christopher; Miguel, Edward (2010-03-01). "Civil War". Journal of Economic Literature 48 (1): 3–57. doi:10.1257/jel.48.1.3. ISSN 0022-0515.
  25. ↑ Blattman, Christopher (2009-05-01). "From Violence to Voting: War and Political Participation in Uganda". American Political Science Review 103 (02): 231–247. doi:10.1017/S0003055409090212. ISSN 1537-5943.
  26. 1 2 Bellows, John; Miguel, Edward (2009-12-01). "War and local collective action in Sierra Leone". Journal of Public Economics 93 (11–12): 1144–1157. doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2009.07.012.
  27. ↑ Nickel, James. "Human Rights". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 20 October 2011.
  28. ↑ http://www.acleddata.com/
  29. ↑ http://www.acleddata.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/ACLED_Codebook_2016.pdf
  30. ↑ http://www.acleddata.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/ACLED_Codebook_2016.pdf

Bibliography

Further reading

Genocide

War

Police brutality

Torture

Capital punishment

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