Robert W. White

Social Movements, Political Violence, and The State: A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany

Foreword Sidney Tarrow List of abbreviations Preface 1. Comparative research on political violence 2. Political violence in Italy and Germany: a periodization 3. Violence and the political system: the policing of protest 4. Organizational processes and violence in social movements 5. The logic of underground organizations 6. Patterns of radicalization in political activism 7. Individual commitment in the underground 8. Social movements, political violence and the state a conclusion Notes Bibliography Index.

Repression and the Liberal State The Case of Northern Ireland, 1969-1972

There is a tendency for research on state repression to focus on nondemocratic and non-Western states. The authors assume that all states are repressive and focus on state repression in Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom. They also distinguish between the repressive activities of state authorities and the repressive activities of individual state agents. In general, they uncover important differences in state repression as perpetrated by state authorities versus state repression as perpetrated by individual state agents. The authors also find that the ethnic minority population in this Western democracy was more likely to suffer from state repression than was the ethnic majority population, and they find that state repression was strongly influenced by economic conditions.

The Irish republican army: An assessment of sectarianism

Although the Irish Republican Army (IRA) has been active for more than 25 years, interpretations of the motivation of the IRA are varied. For some, it is a sectarian organization engaged in a tit‐for‐tat campaign with Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. For others, it is a guerrilla army waging a military campaign against the British presence in Northern Ireland. This article assesses the degree to which the IRA was or was not engaged in sectarian activity between July 1969 and December 1993. Although the Irish Republican Army killed more than 340 Protestant civilians in this time period, this examination suggests that the IRA, in general, was not a sectarian organization.

Issues in the study of political violence: Understanding the motives of participants in small group political violence

Research on the motives of those who engage in small group political violence typically takes a qualitative or quantitative form. I argue that researchers should seek to understand why people engage in small group political violence, and that the best way to achieve such understanding is to employ both. The advantages of this approach are discussed in this paper, as is the importance of recognizing that the activities of all actors in any given violent location, including state actors, should be accounted for in research.

Revolution in the city: On the resources of urban guerrillas

Authors who address the topic of rural guerrilla warfare argue that the ability to engage in political violence is predicated upon support from the local population and the capabilities of guerrilla organizations. We examine the applicability of these arguments for modern urban guerrilla warfare. We find that the Provisional Irish Republican Army draws on individual, organizational and environmental resources, and that the impact of these resources on the IRA has changed over time. Of these resources, the most important appear to be a combination of individual and organizational resources. Organizing into a cell structure in 1977 made the IRA dependent on only the passive support of the Northern Irish Nationalist population, and a high level of political awareness among IRA guerrillas guarantees that the IRA maintains this passive support.

Don't confuse me with the facts: More on the Irish republican army and sectarianism

In an article published in Terrorism and Political Violence 9/1 (Spring 1997), I carefully assessed the words and deeds of the Irish Republican Army. The assessment suggested that the motives of IRA members are political and not sectarian. The article prompted a comment by Steve Bruce in the same issue and my response to Bruce (TPV 9/2 (Summer 1997)). The current article is a response to James Dingleys comments on the initial article and my exchange with Steve Bruce. Dingley disputes the claims of the initial article and argues that, among other things, I have focused too much on a quantitative assessment of who the IRA kills. My response notes several errors and misstatements by Dingley, and shows that he has failed to seriously question my initial assessment.

Provisional IRA Attacks on the UDR in Fermanagh and South Tyrone: Implications for the Study of Political Violence and Terrorism

This article continues a discussion begun in the 1990s on the degree to which Provisional Irish Republican Army activities were sectarian. Henry Pattersons recent contribution raises issues that concern not only interpretations of the Irish conflict but also have implications for the more general study of the causes and consequences of political violence and terrorism. After addressing some of these issues, Pattersons contribution is placed more firmly into the framework of the previous discussion. Then follows a careful examination of Irish Republican Army attacks on the locally recruited security forces in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, from the 1950s to today.

A Review of: “A. R. Oppenheimer. IRA: The Bombs and the Bullets, A History of Deadly Ingenuity.”

moderately couched pro-Hamas writings in British liberal newspapers like the Guardian belie his appearances at public meetings backing radical Islam, he is talking out of both sides of his mouth in this book. He does not set out to say that Hamas is calculating and untrustworthy, and that what it claims as principles challenge the norms of civilised society, making it impossible for the rest of the world to deal with it at face value. Yet the thoughtful independent reader may well take that message from this book. Hamas is as much an issue for the Muslim world as for the West, and a detailed understanding of its real views and development is badly needed. There’s simply too much partisanship and message tailoring for tender Western sensibilities, but not enough candour in this book for it to meet that objective. It will therefore only be of interest to experts on the subject and should be avoided by the general reader and students.

Identity Work in Social Movements

Anarchy as Order is the third in a series of related books by Mohammed Bamyeh. Framed most broadly, Anarchy as Order explores that myriad of issues and contestations associated with moving from a society based on ‘‘an imposed order’’ to a society premised on ‘‘an unimposed order.’’ Substantively, this is an elaboration of the theoretical scaffolding Bamyeh began building in these earlier works. This is an essential consideration for the reader at times, because rather than a sustained, conventional engagement with the contemporary anarchist literature, Bamyeh elects in this book to expand further upon notions that were either introduced or at least hinted at in his previous works. (For instance, there are only three or four references to anarchist works published since 1993, while eight of the author’s works are cited.) This can be a fruitful approach that deepens one’s analysis and understanding of the author’s interpretation of anarchy as an unimposed order, but it also places certain obligations on the reader to consider a range of concepts in the broader context of debates that Bamyeh has explored more fully elsewhere. The principle merits of this work concern the author’s serious and considered effort to engage the profoundly difficult task of imagining a society based on unimposed order, while we remain necessarily locked within the analytical and conceptual limitations that reflect our everyday experiences with a society based on imposed order. In this regard, Bamyeh’s challenge is two-fold. First he must develop a language to describe such a society and second he must provide a plausible explanation of possible transitions to such a society. He takes on both of these to varying degrees of success. Where he falters, however, this is primarily a consequence of the inherent conceptual difficulty of presenting and analyzing any vision of a society that remains yet-in-formation. To describe a society based on unimposed order, Bamyeh deploys two basic strategies. First, by way of illustration, he cites cases of anarchy that arise historically (and spontaneously) within the fabric of a society based on imposed order. In the selection and description of cases there is a strong existentialist influence that shapes Bamyeh’s account. Somewhat problematically, however, this existentialist framework is never explicitly detailed and, thus, must be understood as having been earlier introduced in Of Death and Dominion. In fact, the existentialist premises of Bamyeh’s work are essential to understanding his notion of self-development that drives an individual’s pursuit and realization of freedom through the occasional and ongoing creation of anarchist spaces and the continual reorganization of social institutions that follows from this. For Bamyeh, this notion of self-development appears to be an almost exclusively organic process that follows from what it means to be an individual in mass society—regardless of the specific details of that mass society. The second strategy of Bamyeh is to describe a society based on unimposed order by providing a type of counter description of such a society via a series of contrasts with societies based on imposed order. Recognizing the inherent difficulties of presenting a transparent vision of a society whose premises for being remain in a yet-to-be realized set of social conditions and conceptual categories, Bamyeh leads the reader through a detailed account of various conceptual categories of social organization derived from a society based on imposed order and provides an alternative understanding of these same categories as they might be experienced in a society based on unimposed order. These conceptual categories include civil society, the common good, self-will, commitment, and freedom. As a general strategy this strikes me as a plausible and