Chapter 11: Political Violence
Terms
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- Nihilism
- A belief that all institutions and values are essentially meaningless and that the only redeeming value is violence
- Terrorism
- The use of violence by nonstate actors against civilians in order to achieve a political goal.
- Relative Deprivation Model
- Revolutions are less a function of specific conditions than the gap between actual conditions and public expectations.
- Illiberal/Transitional
- Weak state capacity, instability, and limited democratic institutions may generate both opportunities and motivations for terrorism.
- Individual Explanation
- Psychological or strategic factors may lead people to carry out violence.
- Guerilla War
- A conflict whereby nonstate combatants who largely abide by the rules of war target the state.
- Ideational Explanation
- Ideas may justify or promote the use of violence.
- Democratic Terrorism
- participatory institutions and civil liberties are likely to undercut public support for terrorism.
- Institutional Explanation
- Existing institutions may encourage violence or constrain human action, creating a violent backlash.
- Revolution
- Defined as a public seizure of the state in order to overturn the existing government and regime.
- Authoritarian Terrorism
- Authoritarianism may foster terrorism, but the state can repress domestic terrorists; the state is unhindered by civil liberties
- Manichean
- Referring to a view of the world that divides it into stark terms of good and evil.
- Political Violence
- Violence outside of state control that is politically motivated.
- State-Sponsored Terrorism
- Terrorism supported directly by a state as an instrument of foreign policy.