The Organization that Does(n't) Bark: Organizations and the Decision for Political Violence
Abstract
Our proposed research program develops a theoretical framework for understanding the use of violence by non-state organizations and organizational decisions to escalate, de-escalate, or vacillate in their use of violence (Gurr, 1970; Rasler 1996). We focus on how organizational decisions are influenced both by interorganizational dynamics and by government retaliatory and consolatory actions towards non-state groups within a polity. In particular, we argue that (a) pre-existing historical group ideological characteristics (religious, cultural, and political), (b) domestic and international political opportunity structures, and (c) intergroup coalition networks condition the initial decision of a non-state organization to use violence (Tilly, 1973; Lichbach, 1994; Gates, 2002 Berman and Laitin, 2008; Horowitz, 2010). Certain government retaliatory actions to domestic groups connected to the organization, like publically imprisoning nonviolent activists, make a change from nonviolent to violent strategies more likely as these actions undermine trust in the government and credibility in government conciliatory gestures. Conversely, international organizational contacts and the governments expansion of association rights make a move towards nonviolent tactics more likely for non-state groups with a history of violence (Pierskalla, 2010, Siegel, 2011 Bell et al., 2012). Using these theoretical priors, we will use a novel quantitative approach that allows us to simultaneously examine the ideology, behavior, and position of a non-state actor within both its organizational and organizational-country network. One of the key challenges when using quantitative methods to examine social and political stability is that there is very little data that captures non-state actor organizational factors (such as ideology, size, network connections, etc.) that may be related to movements or organizations that are challenging or supportinggovernments.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 14, 2020
- Accession Number
- AD1110756
Entities
People
- Michael Young
- R. K. Rethemeyer
- Victor Asai
Organizations
- University at Buffalo