Roger Petersen

Anger, Violence, and Political Science

Violence is one of the major topics of political science. Yet, due to its general failure to study the role of emotions, the discipline is not fully equipped to address key issues central to violence. For the study of political violence, anger holds special significance. Anger has a clear connection with motivations to commit or support violence. This chapter summarizes findings and methods in the study of anger in psychology and other fields and discusses how insights from these fields can be borrowed or modified to improve the study of violence in political science. The chapter’s last section illustrates the usefulness of these hybrid concepts by applying them to an important concrete case – Colombia’s current drive to demobilize combatants and reconcile its society in the face of a continuing civil war.

Countering Fear in War: The Strategic Use of Emotion

Abstract In the course of war, fear and terror are often used as weapons to distort the opponents decision-making or break the opponents will. Military and political leaders need to respond to this tactic. They have several options including the appeal to reason or the creation of emotions to counter fear. This article examines these options in two ways. First, it theoretically specifies five alternative strategies. Second, the article examines which of these strategies appears to be most prevalent in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. In the classical Greece of Thucydides, leaders generally chose to employ a combination of hope and reason as counter to fear rather than shame, anger, or spite. As discussed in the conclusion, this finding provides several insights about the strategic use of emotion.

A Discussion of Katherine J. Cramer's The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker

The policies of Republican Governor Scott Walker have come to symbolize a resurgent assault on the public sector, and on public employee unions in particular, by the Republican Party. The fact that this is happening in Wisconsin, the state that in the last century was considered the “laboratory of Progressivism,” makes the politics surrounding these policies all the more compelling. In The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker , Katherine J. Cramer analyzes the “politics of resentment” surrounding these developments. Employing an ethnographic “method of listening,” Cramer furnishes thick description of the political language employed by rural Wisconsinites, and proceeds to develop an interpretive theory of “political resentment” that illuminates the reasons why lower-class citizens so strongly oppose public policies seeking to offset social and economic inequality. The book is important methodologically and politically. We have thus invited a range of social and political scientists to comment on the book as a work of political science and as a diagnosis of the current political moment.

A response to Josip Glaurdić and Leonas Tolvaišis’s Comments on Western Intervention in the Balkans: The Strategic use of Emotion in Conflict

Part I. Background and Theory: 1. Western intervention in the Balkans: the strategic use of emotion in conflict 2. Emotions as resources 3. The strategic use of emotions I: theory 4. Western intervention games 5. The strategic use of emotions II: developing strategies, examples from non-Balkan cases 6. The strategic use of emotions III: hypotheses Part II. Cases and Tests: 7. Background to Western intervention in the Balkans 8. The case of the Roma 9. Background on Kosovo 10. Kosovo: waiting for the West 11. Kosovo: intervention games I 12. Kosovo: intervention games II 13. Kosovo conclusions 14. South Serbia 15. Macedonia 16. Bosnia 17. Montenegro 18. Conclusion.

The social psychology of political radicalization

post-WWII pacifism and embark on reforms to extend the role of Japan’s military in support for American military operations abroad. In this chapter, Leheny argues that, while still characterized by restraint, these reforms constituted a dramatic shift in Japanese defense policy. For those in Japan favoring a return to greater prominence of Japan’s military beyond its strictly defensive role close to home, the framing of 9/11 as a declaration of war provided an opportunity to push for a military revival of Japan that otherwise would have been controversial and harder to achieve. Overall, this volume provides little reassurance that governments of the day are heeding the hard lessons learned prior to 9/11 about what does and does not work to reduce terrorist threats. Many of the strategies that continue to be employed have proven to be ineffective, and often provide little more than symbolic value by reflecting a commitment by states to protect the public. Moreover, the full extent of the collateral damage to countless individuals temporarily stripped of their civil liberties and legal protections is yet to be revealed.