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This article addresses the discrepancy between the explanation and the prediction of political violence through the development of different models that approximate the decision-making on war and peace. Borrowing from the crisis bargaining literature, the prediction models particularly consider the situational attributes through which players can challenge the status quo. We distinguish between direct and indirect proxies of a weakening of the status quo and show that adding decision-making data can improve the accuracy of cross-sectional forecasting models. The study, which demonstrates the increased conflict risk due to the COVID-19 pandemic and thus another development upsetting the status quo, discusses the usefulness of decision-making forecasts through various case study illustrations. published

This paper reviews a body of recent literature that interrogates the development and deployment of the contemporary regime of political violence. This literature includes Samuel Moyn's account of t...

This paper presents a conceptual critique of “remote warfare.” It argues that “remote warfare” is more of a trendy term than a robust concept. In support of this assessment, this paper makes two arguments. First, that there is a lack of clarity in the debate over what “remote warfare” is: namely, the literature is yet to explain what it entails. Second, that because of this lack of definitional specificity, we also lack an account of its analytical value: what intellectual leverage does it hold over existing terms making similar claims? The article discusses these points by expanding on the notion of “semantic field,” which it uses to assess how “remote warfare” contributes and is shaped by the broader conceptual confusion in the study of contemporary war and warfare.

Many members of minority groups clash violently with state agents. The case of the Israeli West-Bank Settlers’ Right-Wing Activists is particularly paradoxical. Unlike disempowered groups whose abi...

The Kaqchikel are an indigenous population who experienced political violence during the civil war and postwar conflict in Guatemala because their political ideology was in opposition to the milita...

OBJECTIVE. The current paper uses the Conservation of Resources Theory to frame an examination of the impact of exposure to political violence on posttraumatic stress symptomology among three groups within Israeli society: (1) Native Born Jews; (2) Foreign Born Jews; and (3) Palestinian Citizens of Israel. METHODS. The study population was a large nationally representative sample of 1613 respondents collected during The Second Intifada. The sample consists of approximately 40% Jews born in Israel (n =652), 30% (n=484) were Jews who immigrated to Israel, and close to 30% (n=477) were Palestinian Citizens of Israel. Mediation analyses explored the role of resource loss in the relationship between social status and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity. RESULTS. Compared to native born Jews, foreign born Jews and Palestinian Citizens of Israel reported greater PTSD symptom severity at wave III. These relationships were not mediated by psychosocial resource loss or economic resource loss. CONCLUSIONS. We discuss the importance of tailored interventions with minority groups in the context of ongoing political violence.

This article examines the impact of coup-proofing on political violence while a leader is in power and during regime transition. This study focuses on the case of Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s rule ...

In the context of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, and the National Register of Citizens in Assam, this paper interrogates the xenophobic dimensions of Meitei nationalism that translated into...

In the study of terrorism, assassinations and suicide bombings have most commonly been considered as distinct phenomena. In practice, however, Al-Shabaab has shown a proclivity to use suicide bombi...

Contemporary conflict in North and West Africa is characterized by a high degree of social and political complexity. Hundreds of rebel groups and extremist organizations are involved in a shifting ...

This article will introduce the ‘perpetual peacebuilding’ paradigm. Academics and policy-makers have accepted that the linearity of the liberal peace neither reflects, nor should it drive, the tumu...

Political violence research explores why and how human rights abuses occur and how interveners can mitigate violations. Images can be useful data for these projects because they are telling reflect...

The present study examined the individual differences of radical anti-fascist sympathizers who were federally charged for crimes committed in Portland, Oregon, between May and October of 2020. Anti...

The security debate concerning the recent wave of migrants into Europe has been contentious. This article examines the impact of recent migration flows into Europe and assesses the veracity of poli...

We thank Marc Sageman for his interest in our article and are grateful to Terrorism and Political Violence for the opportunity to respond. Our study was part of a three-year grant-funded project en...

Atomwaffen Division (AWD) was an American neo-nazi extremist organization active between 2015 and 2020. Even after its disbanding, AWD’s influence can be felt in the symbols and media produced by o...

In 2013, Aleppo province was engulfed in violence. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and affiliated Shi'a militias executed a campaign of massacres in the rural areas located on the eastern fringes of the province. The violence caused an exodus from this region, eventually dissipating local rural communities entirely. What can explain such extreme and brutal political violence perpetrated at a local level in the east Aleppo countryside throughout 2013? To find an answer, I analyse the personal accounts of those who witnessed the violence and YouTube videos. Taken together, these sources provide a visceral description of the massacres-in particular the summary executions in the village of Rasm al-Nafl, as a case study of extreme violence in one of the poorest rural areas of Syria. Problematizing mono-causal sectarian explanations, I argue that a deeper non-sectarian complex of rurality and a process of subaltern othering in combination with opportunism, governmental retribution, and strategic military concern for territorial control in order to secure alternative supply routes to Aleppo, ultimately led to the eradication of life and cultural genocide in these rural areas.

The current study aims to assess the emotional processes that foster support for political violence. A survey of 1202 respondents was used to identify the association between emotional traits, supp...

Recent political killings in the Kwazulu-Natal (KZN) province of South Africa have necessitated the interrogation of the root causes of political violence in the country. While, arguably, power str...

The territory once administered by the KwaZulu homeland, roughly 30 per cent of the current province of KwaZulu-Natal, belongs to the Ingonyama Trust. After South Africa’s first democratic election...

The present work tests mediators of the link between adverse environmental factors and political violence support. Specifically, we investigated if depression and legal cynicism can mediate the ass...

During the 1970s, Turkey’s radical nationalist youth were ideologically and culturally shaped by their involvement in the idealist (ulkucu) movement. The idealists also played a significant role on...

Virginia Held is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy (Emerita) at the City University of New York. Among her books are How Terrorism is Wrong: Morality and Political Violence (Oxford University...

This paper develops an account of the relationship between language endangerment and conflict violence by combining insights from the fields of political science and linguistics. We develop a theor...

Why have ethnic groups in Nigeria’s Niger Delta employed different courses of action in expressing their grievances over oil investments? Zainab Mai-Bornu presents a comparative study of the Ogoni ...

Terrorism is one of the most highly publicised forms of political violence, and at the same time, it is one of the least-understood political problems in recent years. I claim terrorism is, ironica...

This article examines the political structure of political violence in Turkey in the 1970s, focusing on the internal structures of the Nationalist Movement. The paper argues that the Movement was a...

In research on terrorism and political violence, “fieldwork” now means many things. Scholars conduct interviews online, meet former extremists in urban centers, and travel across the globe to inter...

The Good Friday Agreement (1997) brought political violence in Northern Ireland to an end and provided the basis for shared government. A consociational political structure was adopted which institutionalised community differences while encouraging coalition government. The goal was that a requirement for consensus decisions would encourage cooperation between political leaders and promote effective decision-making. This paper examines the period of devolved government in Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2017 through the lens of education policy to explore leadership on these issues. The paper will examine three policy issues: a review of the effects of academic selection in post primary education; a proposal to rationalise the administrative arrangements in education; and an initiative to promote collaborative networks between separate denominational schools through ‘shared education’. The paper will conclude that, far from providing a superordinate goal around which the different political parties could coalesce, there was a lack of systemic leadership on educational debates. Inability in most cases to establish consensus resulted in policy paralysis. The one area where this did not occur was the adoption of ‘shared education’ which may have been because this initiative was a bottom-up process based on the empowerment of teachers.

What explains recurrent fluctuations in violence within militant groups? Temporal swings in the number of attacks perpetrated are common, but lack a general explanation. I provide evidence of cycle...

During the Northern Ireland conflict (1968–1998), paramilitary groups were supported and sustained by a sociocultural apparatus that helped legitimise their position within the community and disseminate their political message. From the use of flags and murals, to loyalist and republican parades, working-class vernacular culture revealed who was in control of various districts within the Province. For many working-class Protestants, loyalist songs were a key component of this culture, connecting the past and the present. Unlike the better-known marching band scene, which is a huge public spectacle, the loyalist song scene is much more private. Performed in a closed setting, within local bars and clubs, loyalist songs are reproduced for internal consumption rather than outward expression. Yet, in addition to celebrating a particular loyalist culture, such songs also serve an important function in authenticating and legitimising paramilitary groups, connecting them to older organisations, whose legacy they draw upon. This paper focuses on one such song, exploring how ‘The Ballad of Billy McFadzean’ is used to connect the Ulster Volunteer Force of the 1960s onwards, with the 1913 organisation of the same name. In so doing, the paper attempts to illustrate the political utility of song and how songs can be used to launder and legitimise conflict, as well as those engaged in political violence.

The purpose of this study is to examine the economic consequences of political violence on hotels operating in Hawassa city and assess their response strategies to deal with the crisis. A qualitati...

Women’s roles in political violence and terrorism have largely been examined through the agent/victim dichotomy. We suggest that women’s social inequality contributes to both roles of women as vict...

Although research on the consequences of war exposure on children’s mental health has made significant progress in the past decades, a lack of valid measures for quantifying the incidence, severity...

This article addresses the question of how the history of political violence targeting individuals on the basis of their race, religion, or ethnicity is memorialized in democracies. To what extent ...

Two different understandings of the symbolic repertoire of Islam for young British gang members have been used in this article. Islam was used to justify participation in gang life, a function of r...

Both Heaney and McGuckian employ imagery of the female body in pain as a site of political violence in their works. The violence which led to over 3,600 deaths, haunts both poet’s collections. The ...

Moral injury has recently gained much attention in the field of military psychiatry. However, it has not yet been applied to actors of non-state political violence. Investigating the incidence of m...

When assessing political violence and terrorism in recent Western European history, the case of Italy stands out. The 1970s—the anni di piombo or “lead years”—saw an incredible level of political v...

This article takes advantage of the timing in the implementation of the European Social Survey (ESS) in Israel to assess the impact of political violence on individual attitudes towards trust, inst...

This article focuses on the ways in which women engaged in acts of political violence in Northern Ireland during the Troubles were depicted by the print media. Media is often used to reinforce a pa...

This article explores the irreverent and supposedly irrational actions of two protagonists, Prahlad and Shanta, characters that the authors encountered during the course of their extended fieldwork...

While Kenyan youth comprise the majority of the Kenyan electorate, they are typically either stereotyped as criminals or marginalized, rather than taken seriously as politically important actors. T...

Narrations on fragility and resilience in the Sahel paint a picture about the region’s inherent ungovernability that lead to consider an endless state- and peace-building process as the most feasible governance solution. Everyday practices of violent entrepreneurship, coalescing with inter-community and land-tenure conflicts, now inform social relations and are transforming moral economies around Lake Chad. While competition over territory suitable for farming, grazing and fishing has intensified, dispute-settlement practices organised by community-level authorities have proven ineffective and lacking the necessary means to respond to the encroachment of a wide range of interests claimed by increasingly powerful actors. Meanwhile, communities organised in self-defence militias are undergoing a process of progressive militarisation that tends to normalise violence and legitimise extra-judicial vigilante justice, further empowering capitalendowed arms suppliers gravitating in the jihadi galaxy, such as the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). The Dangers of Disconnection: Oscillations in Political Violence on Lake Chad

This article explores the impact of the reintroduction of multiparty politics at the University of Nairobi in the late-1990s. It argues that the reinstatement of Nairobi’s student union (SONU) in 1...

This article examines political violence enacted by youth during the presidential run-off election in Zimbabwe in 2008. After the presidential election in March 2008, no clear winner emerged, leadi...

In this ambitious study, Peter Lehr—lecturer in terrorism studies at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews—sets out to explore the motivation...

Although political violence has characterized the Zimbabwe body politic from colonial times, state-sponsored political violence escalated from the time of the violent land reform in the early 2000s...