Political violence Archives - Systems Thinking: Integrated Knowledge in Research, Learning, and Practice

Title

Foreign policies or culture: What shapes Muslim...

Author

Lars Berger

Institution

University of Leeds

Discipline/Approach...

Journal article, Political Science, Quantitative

Abstract

This analysis uses survey data representing three of the world’s most populous Muslim majority countries to challenge conventional wisdom on what shapes Muslim public opinion on political violence against the United States. It improves previous analysis by clearly distinguishing support for violence against civilians from support for violence against military targets and by featuring independent variables that clearly separate views on US foreign policies from views on US culture. Logistic regression shows that, among Egyptian, Pakistani and Indonesian Muslims, perceptions of controversial US policies toward Israel, Middle Eastern oil, or the perceived attempt to weaken and divide the Muslim world are not related to support for attacks on civilians in the United States, but only to support for attacks on US military targets. Approval of attacks on US civilians is shaped, instead, by negative views of US freedom of expression, culture, and people, disapproval of the domestic political status quo and the notion of general US hostility toward democracy in the Middle East. This last finding has important implications for US and Western policies toward the post-Arab Spring Middle East in particular and the broader relationship with the Muslim World in general.

Title

Effective abandonment: The neoliberal economy o...

Author

François-Xavier Plasse-Couture

Institution

University of Hawaii

Discipline/Approach...

Analytical, Interdisciplinary, Journal article

Abstract

Towards the end of 2012, a group of Israeli settlers and right-wing activists attacked an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) base on the West Bank. IDF soldiers and members of the Israeli Knesset had provided information to the attackers, who adopted a ‘bring it on’ tone that commentators described as echoing ‘civil war’. As the occupation blurs the categories of inside/outside, what we are witnessing is a challenge to the traditional distinction between politics and war. Accordingly, we are moved to think in terms of the distribution and variable intensities of violence, rather than to accept simple debates about either the absence or presence of war or the monopoly of violence. This article seeks to examine the evolving relationship between the state and society in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring through an investigation of the relationship between neoliberalism and sovereign violence. It argues that ‘price tag’ actions perpetrated in the Occupied Territories and Israel are the effect of a neoliberal organization of power characterized by a form of governing by non-intervention, where the abandonment of certain parts of society produces the desired containment of elements considered undesirable to the body politic. This article challenges Weber’s theory of state sovereignty as the monopoly of legitimate state violence, arguing instead that state apparatuses may in fact ‘outsource’ violence. We can understand this shift in the mode of operation of sovereignty by theorizing ‘society’ as the effect of warlike relations whereby particular tactics and strategies are employed as a way of organizing and policing forms of life necessary for the continuation of a particular body politic.

Title

Civil-Military Relations in the Arab-Majority W...

Author

Omar Ashour

Institution

University of Exeter

Discipline/Approach...

Analytical, Journal article, Political Science

Abstract

How did unbalanced civil-military relations affect democratization and political violence trends in the Middle East and North Africa? This article analyses why the “Arab Spring” failed to develop democratic control of armed state institutions. It outlines the strategic repercussions of such failure on the rising trends of political violence in the region, committed by both state and non-state actors. The article draws lessons from empirical, comparative and historical experiences and concludes with policy implications.

Title

United States Support for Global Social Justice...

Author

Victoria E. Collins, Dawn L. Rothe

Institution

Eastern Kentucky University, Old Dominion University

Discipline/Approach...

Analytical, Interdisciplinary, Journal article

Abstract

On rare occasions, and under certain conditions, segments of the population respond to the repressive and violent conditions imposed on them by a state’s leader by seeking social justice in a variety of ways—from broad social movements to revolutions. The “Arab Spring” that began in December 2010 is an example of such uprisings. The authors suggest that political factors, in particular the need of states to maintain legitimacy and pursue their interests, affect the framing, labeling, and repression of those involved in ending state violence. In this context, the reaction of foreign states to social unrest is more often than not predicated on their geopolitical interests than on their stated support for social justice, democracy, humanitarian concerns, or human rights. By drawing on theories of power, discourse, and legitimacy, the authors analyze the contradictory responses of the United States to the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt.

Title

Militant Islam: A Sociology of Characteristics,...

Author

Corri Zoli

Institution

Syracuse University

Discipline/Approach...

Interdisciplinary, Other

Abstract

Ultimately, Militant Islam: A Sociology of Characteristics, Causes, and Consequences identifies and underscores how far two areas of academic inquiry still remain from one another and the pressing need for their synthesis: our ability to understand the making of geopolitically-informed (and not just Western) discourses of political violence, change, and resistance, on the one hand, and the actual, often local sociological processes, structures, and contexts that help explain extremist organizations and the nature of their responses, on the other. Insofar as Militant Islam attempts to bring these research areas together, it has set the research agenda in this area for academics into the current decade – one that will, at its best, help us to understand new formations of political resistance showcased in the ‘Arab Spring’ and emerging paradigms for political stability.

Title

The Social Media and the Arab Spring: Politics ...

Author

Gadi Wolfsfeld, et al.

Institution

Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliyah, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Discipline/Approach...

Computational Sciences, Journal article, Other

Abstract

The goal of this article is to place the role of the social media in collective action within a more general theoretical structure using the events of the Arab Spring as a case study. Three theoretical principles are put forth all of which center around the idea that one cannot understand the role of any media in a political conflict without first considering the political context in which they are operating. The first principle states that: “Political variables are likely to be more important in explaining the extensiveness of a popular uprising than the overall penetration of the social media in a particular country”. The second principle is referred to as the “principle of cumulative inequality”. It states that: “Citizens who most need the media are the ones who find it the most difficult to exploit them.” The third and final theoretical principle states that: “A significant increase in the use of the new media is much more likely to follow a significant amount of protest activity than to precede it.” The three principles are examined using political, media, and protest data from 22 ArabCountries. The findings provide strong support for the validity of the claims.