Search results

Theories of ethnic conflict often assume that the cause of political violence is the same across actors and constant over time. I propose that causes differ, depending upon the identity, grievances, and strategy of the perpetrator as influenced by the cultural, economic, and political contexts in which they operate. Together with Granger causality tests, multivariate time‐series analyses of political deaths in Northern Ireland support a multi‐causal perspective. Reflecting identity differences, Loyalist violence but not Republican violence was likely to increase during months when high levels of protest coincided with annual commemorations. By deepening grievances related to ethnic stratification, rising unemployment contributed to Republican violence, but not to Loyalist violence. Repression of Nationalists increased Republican violence but decreased Loyalist violence, supporting a see‐saw conceptualization of political opportunities in divided societies. The findings highlight the need for sensitivity in both conflict research and management to differences between actors and across social contexts.

This paper aims to examine the 10th national election held on 5 January 2014, and the violent incidents took place during, before and after the election in Bangladesh. Violence-free competitive, fair and credible national election is a prioritized issue in the politics and governance discourse in Bangladesh now. In this paper, relevant literature has been reviewed first for conceptual understanding, Then, the paper investigates to explore the causes and outcomes of violence took place centering the 10th parliamentary election in Bangladesh. Finally, it prescribes possible ways forward to overcome this crisis.

The paper is descriptive and qualitative in nature and based on secondary sources of materials. As it focused on a particular country and issue relating to the electoral violence of a particular national election in Bangladesh, it is a case study too. Most of the information and data have been used from published documents like journal articles, books and newspaper reports. Relevant information collected also from online sources.

The electoral violence may happen for various causes, yet the significant cause is the motive of the incumbent for picking up power over and again. Similarly, lack of cooperation of political parties, negligence and domination of ruling parties over opposition are also responsible for electoral and political violence before, during and after the election. In addition, violation of human rights, rule of law and, finally, the poor governance of Bangladesh are because of the lack of meaningful democratic government, strong political will and consensus among all political parties.

The main limitation of this research is the lack of financial supports to collect empirical data from concerned stakeholders through field visit.

The paper deals with an urgent issue of Bangladesh which is essential for a free, fair and credible election. To make the EC an independent institute, a law should be enacted for recruitment of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and other commissioners of EC as per Article 118(1) of Bangladesh Constitution. To find out neutral and impartial CEC and other members of EC, a search committee is very essential, and for constituting a search committee, a law also should be enacted by the Parliament. Therefore, it would be very helpful for electoral and legal reform to overcome the problem of electoral violence in Bangladesh.

The findings of this paper will be accepted by the readers, scholars and policymakers. A radical change will come to the politics and governance of Bangladesh. Thus, the paper would be beneficial for the society and community people as well as citizens of Bangladesh.

The paper would be helpful for policymakers to revamp the existing drawback of electoral policies and practice in Bangladesh. For a meaningful and effective Parliament, it would be necessary. The paper would be essential for the future scholars and researchers of this area to use as reference. Finally, the academicians and readers will find their food in the field of politics, administration and governance.

The international business literature presents an interesting intellectual puzzle regarding the effect of political instability and political risk on foreign direct investment (FDI). Survey evidence shows that multinational executives take into account political instability in making investment decisions, while econometric studies produce conflicting findings. In this paper, I offer a new theory that explains how political violence, an extreme form of political instability, affects FDI. The new theory differs from previous arguments on three points. First, the theory considers how rational expectations and uncertainty on the part of foreign investors affect the ways in which political violence influences investment behaviors. Second, the new theoretical argument argues for the need to investigate separately the effects of different types of political violence (civil war, interstate war, and transnational terrorism). Third, I consider FDI inflows as resulting from two distinct but related decisions, including the investment location choice and the decision on investment amount, and sort out statistically the separate effects of political violence on these two processes. The empirical analysis of FDI inflows covers about 129 countries from 1976 to 1996. The statistical findings largely support my theoretical expectations. My theory helps reconcile the inconsistent econometric findings on the effect of political instability on FDI flows.

The deeply embedded perception that human beings are violent by nature is a worldview that becomes instrumental for justifying armed conflict. Prominent authors in multiple scholarly disciplines have challenged the myth of the violent human being. This article approaches the complexity of challenging political violence by identifying common ground among different disciplines and putting scholarly research in dialogue with recent developments in war and peace across the globe. This article describes the cultural, political and institutional dimensions that sustain violence, and suggests a specific approach for addressing these three strands.

Reactive groups adopt a variety of repertoires ranging from institutional resistance to violence to counter mobilizing efforts of movements. Countermovement studies provide useful insights into how violence by non-state actors can constrain social movements’ success. Few studies however considered the possibility that violence may, on the contrary, facilitate the outcomes sought by the movement. Under what conditions do political killings of movement members affect support for the movement? To answer this question, we follow the evolution of the Kurdish ethnic movement in Turkey as a movement party and track changes in the movement’s constituency in response to countermovement violence (1991–2002). The study uses an original dataset of countermovement killings by the ethnic movement’s Islamist rival, Hizbullah, across 113 districts in 13 southeastern provinces. We demonstrate that countermovement violence has non-uniform effects on electoral support for the movement party. These effects are conditional on initial movement strength: in localities with prior loyalties to the ethnic movement, Hizbullah-inflicted harm consolidates the movement party’s constituency. By contrast, countermovement violence is met with reduced support where the movement is weak and is struggling to make inroads to the community. Our findings suggest that initial preferences might play important roles in understanding movement outcomes.

This chapter aims to contribute to the study of social protests around the world and particularly in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s, with a focus on an Argentinean case. Throughout these years, Argentina like many other Latin American societies witnessed the growth and development of intense social and political struggles in concert with the armed insurgency. Did workers or other popular social sectors support guerrilla organizations in Argentina? What was the interconnection between working-class and armed insurgent struggle? This chapter examines these liaisons by studying the case of an industrial city that has been identified to be a paradigm of labor radicalization and political violence in Argentina—Villa Constitución. Through the reanalysis of documents and sources as well as interviews, we discuss established interpretations on armed and labor struggles that reveal a broader heterogeneity in the forms of social support to revolutionary violence. Solidarity among workers and armed militants appears in (1) the actions of militant workers at their workplaces, and (2) the armed actions organized by militants in support of worker’s fights.” These two groups reinforced each other's activism. But, by no means can we directly deduct from this that rank and file workers immediately identified their strikes with ideologically revolutionary objectives.

Purpose – This chapter maps the conceptual territory that research on school shootings shares with cultivation analysis.

Methodology/approach – It outlines the history of cultivation analysis, which used the statistical methods of content analysis and survey research to argue that television violence was rampant and sexist, and that this had the effect of making audiences fearful. The point of this history is to show that the model was conceptually grounded in critical approaches to media, and established questions about the ideology of media violence that set the grounds for school shooting studies.

Findings – In particular, the chapter focuses on similarities between cultivation analysis and ritual theory, and the cultivation thesis that violence represents gender hierarchies, as the two most obvious points of intersections with studies on school shootings. It suggests that these intersections help explain why a “school shooting” frame was deployed to other sorts of media violence, and debates about the effects of media violence, using Jared Loughner's attack on Gabrielle Giffords as a case study.

Practical implications – Emerging concerns about the effects of aggressive news punditry and political commentary can be addressed by reflecting on what studies of school shootings say about the more general politics of media violence, and cultivation theory is an invaluable resource in this endeavor.

Originality/value of paper – Academically, an engagement with cultivation theory underlines how school shooting studies contribute to critical media research in general, by demonstrating the validity of “second generation” models of media influence in the digital age.

Civil disobedience is often defined as a public, conscientious, nonviolent act of breaking the law in an attempt to change an unjust policy or law. When applied to real-life situations, this widely accepted definition overlooks key features of civil disobedience and ignores civil acts that fundamentally challenge undemocratic institutions or the state and make socio-political changes possible. The purpose of this paper is to criticize and revise the conceptual, ethical and socio-political understandings of civil disobedience by integrating deliberative theory with some radical perspectives on civil disobedience.

This paper integrates and critically revises previous approaches to the justification and role of civil disobedience in democratic systems. Specifically, the ethical concerns about civil disobedience are discussed and the deliberative concept of civil disobedience is expanded as a form of political contestation by incorporating the socio-political aspects of civil disobedience. Although it is a conceptual discussion, the paper opted for an exploratory approach using empirically related examples to illustrate the theoretical discussion.

The paper provides a new perspective to the literature on civil disobedience. The critical review shows that the limited general understanding of civil disobedience conceptually is not useful to analyze various forms of civil disobedience.

The reviewed literature is limited due to a limited space.

The paper includes practical implications for policymakers and authorities when evaluating and responding to civil actions more effectively and for members of civil movements and organizations when creating new forms of civil protest and effective responses to authorities.

This paper may be a modest first attempt to reframe the concept of civil disobedience by integrating deliberative democracy theory and some radical perspectives.

Glass House is a play about the relationship between two young women Phumla and Linda. According to Dike the play was specifically written to show the clashing of two cultures and how white people could not understand the pain of black people. Glass House provides testimony as to how women suffered physical and mental violence whilst in detention, and this play clearly highlights how, for women, becoming part of the struggle meant surviving the acts of aggression and detention by the security forces. In Glass House Dike exposes the agony and survival techniques of women who have had to endure periods in detention desperately struggling to cope in adverse conditions and, on their release from detention, having to contend with the suspicions of their community thinking that they were informers spying for the government.