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Instances of decolonisation can be considered processes featuring complicated interactions that are both path-dependent and open-ended. This perspective contrasts with reductionist epistemologies, particularly economistic ones. Viewing the decolonisation of Cyprus in processual terms, this article argues that the process at hand was crucially shaped by the colonial strategy of divide-and-rule and that the process's complicated flow of interactions obscured the British government's ability to assess the unfolding predicament clearly, failing most particularly to rank its options optimally by misreading the option of granting independence to Cyprus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writings on the fringe Jewish settler grassroots network known as the Hilltop Youth have proliferated in recent years, following the increase in violent activism associated with the network. But knowledge on this violent activism, called Price Tag, has remained conflicting and problematic. Central questions persist: What is the meaning of Price Tag violence? What explains the increase in the rate and salience of Price Tag violence? What are the social-political implications of Price Tag violence? This article argues that Price Tag violence represents a new strategy of contention taking shape in the context of a fundamental reconfiguration of relations within Israel’s institutional and non-institutional radical Right, and that it represents a highly consequential social and political phenomenon with destabilizing and destructive effects nationally and regionally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The connection between political radicalization and political violence is often thought to follow "organic stages." That is, radicalization is considered to be a progression leading to violence, after which time radicalization and violence evolve together dialectically. This ideal-typical process does correspond to historical evidence, and this article presents such evidence from the political contention in Palestine during the Mandate period. However, other historical evidence points to deviations from this ideal type. Evidence from political contention in pre-1921 Ireland and in pre-1960 Cyprus suggests two forms of such deviations. Irish history suggests that violence may be effectively introduced by political forces that at an earlier stage had not been part of the process of political contention at large; Cypriot history suggests that violence may be introduced through forces that were autonomous from the ongoing process of political contention even though organizationally part of it. The historical comparison at hand, furthermore, points to the increased role of historical contingency in the instances where the relation between political radicalization and political violence deviates from the ideal- typical form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charles Tilly’s work on process analysis offers a methodological approach to comparative-historical sociology that can be considered paradigmatic. Yet the approach has been widely criticized for lack of rigor. This paper maintains that the problem lies in insufficient clarification of the approach’s central concept: mechanism. Once scrutinized, the concept reveals a tension between its connotation and its denotation. This can be addressed in two ways: either by maintaining what the concept connotes according to Tilly but limiting what it denotes (thus limiting the paradigm’s scope conditions) or by limiting what it connotes and maintaining what it was intended by Tilly to denote (thus maintaining wide scope conditions). Elucidating the possibilities of processual comparison is particularly important for comparative-historical sociology because the subfield rests upon processual presuppositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mechanism-realist paradigm in the philosophy of science, championed by Mario Bunge and Roy Bhaskar, sets certain expectations for the substantive social-scientific application of the paradigm. To evaluate the application of the paradigm in accomplished substantive research, as well as the potential for future research, I examine the work of Charles Tilly, the exemplary substantive work in the mechanism-realist tradition. Based on this examination, I argue for the usefulness of explanatory mechanisms, provided that they are couched in terms of a heuristic. Such a position is the most reasonable one to adopt given the expectations set by the paradigm in relation to complexity stemming from mechanism interaction and to a notion of causality that is deeper than that acknowledged by empiricism and positivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guerrilla warfare often becomes popular despite the fact that many aspects of it are morally objectionable. Guerrilla groups too, instead of being considered terrorists, often become legitimate political actors. How does this happen? How does the process of legitimation of political violence work? I argue that this process is social and cognitive at the same time, and that a framework for its explanation must be able to account for this dualism. I build such an analytical framework on McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly’s approach to social movement studies and on the general sociology of Pierre Boudieu. I use it to analyze the legitimation process of the guerilla anti-colonial campaign in Cyprus. In the legitimation process of Cyprus, two social mechanisms proposed by McAdam et al. played a critical role at an early stage—the mechanisms of certification and of boundary-drawing. Later, a social mechanism that I term “valorization” was central as well. To appreciate the effectiveness of these mechanisms, however, I argue that the dispositional facet of the legitimation process must be accounted for as well. I do this through field analysis, focusing in particular on positions of social and symbolic power. The analysis of the legitimation process in Cyprus offers lessons for the study of other similar processes. By showing how the three mechanisms worked effectively, and also showing the limits of their effectiveness, this analysis offers readily comparable causal analogies [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]