9 November 2012
Political Science 150
Professor Hawkins
Blog 8: Categorizing Political Violence
The creation and application of labels to events is a
highly politicized, highly charged act in international relations.
If done haphazardly, labeling an act of political violence one way
rather than another can be an implicit value judgment or condemnation
on the people, or the governments, involved. As such, we must be
careful when we apply labels, and we must also periodically review
the labels definitions we use to see if they still fit the world
within which we live. For this reason, we'll examine the events of
Tienanmen Square in China and see if we can fit it into a specific
category; in short, do the definitions we have still cover the
political realities of our time, or do we need new terms?
So, to begin, what terms do we have to work with? We
have Civil War, defined as “armed combat within the boundaries of a
sovereign state between parties that are subject to common authority
at the start of hostilities” (259). We have Cultural Polarization,
which is “intergroup hatred fostered by cultural exclusion or
repression” (264). We have Revolution, which is “armed conflict
within a sovereign state between insurgents and the state, in which
both the insurgents and the state claim the allegiance of a
significant proportion of the population; authority over the state is
forcibly transferred from the state to the insurgents, and the
insurgents subsequently bring about wholesale political change”
(269). And finally, we have Terrorism, which is “threatened or
actual use of violence for political purposes by non-state actors,
directed particularly against civilian targets” (276). All
definitions comes from Comparitive Politics
by David J. Samuels.
Next we need to establish the details of the political
violence that occurred. According to the BBC, “several hundred
civilians” were “shot dead” by government forces for forming a
“democratic protest.” Tanks entered the square “from all
directions” and fired “randomly,” injuring and killing the
“mostly student” protestors after their “seven weeks” of
marching and refusing to move from the square. Clearly there were
political causes, both for the protests, for the wait of seven weeks
before a response, and then for the overwhelming force of the
government in the end.
Now, to the point. Political violence definitely
occurred, what with rocks being thrown, people forcibly expelled from
the area, and government tanks nearly running over people. But which
kind was it? It's certainly not Terrorism, because the “target,”
if we want to call it that, was the government, no civilians, and on
the governments side, the definition actually precludes governments
committing terrorist acts (the “non-state actor” clause). What
about Revolution? It can't be that, first because the protestors
didn't win, and second because they were protesting against the
authority itself, not to mention the fact that one of the parties
wasn't armed at all. The next option is Cultural Polarization. This
is slightly more promising, what with the inclusion of cultural
exclusion or repression, but even here we run into problems. The
definition focuses on the exclusion from cultural participation,
avoiding overtly political or government participation. Repression
is closer, but this was political oppression, not cultural
repression. Our last term is Civil War, but this is clearly wrong as
well. One of the parties wasn't armed, and one of the parties was
the authority itself. It was clearly political violence, but we
don't have a name for what it was.
So now what? Our definitions are clearly
insufficient, but what is it, exactly, that's wrong with them? There
are two main problems. First, the definitions automatically exclude
any kind of government oppression, probably because we can't actually
call any sort of violence that without implicitly condemning the
governments involved, which is not politically very bright. In order
to be listened to by all parties, political scientists have use as
neutral, objective terminology as possible, which has created this
problem. The second problem is that there is no clear way to
categorize within types of violence. A politically motivated riot by
five people is a very different thing from a politically motivated
riot by 500,000 people. An organization of civilians killing and
extorting money from local merchants is very different from
interstate, religiously motivated violence, though they both fall
under the Terrorism flag.
What's the solution? We need to change our
characterization and definition of types of political violence. It's
actually simpler than it sounds, if it is done logically. Why do we
create labels? We create them in order to understand them, and in
the case of violence, in order to stop it. In order to do that, we
need two pieces of information. We need to know why those involved
do what they do, and how they do it. In other words, we need to know
their motivation, and their organization. And example will help.
Let's create a category of political violence with the motivation of
maintaining the status quo. Let's call this Status-Quo violence.
Then let's create a sub-category for organization, with categories
such as cell-based, single large organization, loose confederation of
separate organizations, state-sponsored, etc. We pick the relevant
term (state-sponsored) and there we have the answer. State-backed
Status-Quo political violence.
What does this accomplish? This allows political
scientists to use accurate, descriptive terminology that covers all
types and possibilities of political violence, both now and into the
future. Furthermore, these types of descriptions are not overtly
political themselves, because they attempt to accurately portray the
desired outcome. Though the Chinese government would be loathe to
admit that there was violence, they certainly would be less offended
by the idea of status quo preserving action than, say,
state-sponsored terrorism. In short, this new set of terminology
solves the two main problems of our current terminology.
Sources
Samuels,
David. Comparative Politics.
New York: Pearson Education, 2013. Print.
"BBC ON THIS DAY | 4 | 1989:
Massacre in Tiananmen Square." BBC News - Home. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 9 Nov. 2012.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/4/newsid_2496000/
2496277.stm>.
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