Do Terrorist Attacks Increase Closer to Elections?

The shadow of violence that elections cast remains poorly understood. A key obstacle impeding cross-national empirical analysis of electoral violence has been the varied nature of such violence. To address this challenge, I examine terrorist attacks as one particular form of electoral violence. By tracking the incidence of terrorist violence relative to election dates over time and across countries using an original dataset for the period from 2000–2005, I find strong support for the hypothesis that terrorist violence increases as we move closer to an election date. In fact, terrorist violence approximates a normal distribution centered on the election date.     

Adapting violence for state survival and legitimacy: the resilience and dynamism of political repression in a democratizing South Korea*

Capacity in violence and its utilization is generally understood to be a first-order condition of the state-building process. As capacity increases and a state gains supremacy over would-be competitors, the use of violence by the state is hypothesized to decline, especially in polities that have made the democratic transition. However, we here demonstrate theoretically and empirically that the conventional wisdom is inadequate. We argue that political violence ubiquitously evolves according to the changing socio-political environment and varying tasks of the state.

Using the case of South Korea, a high-capacity, consolidated democracy, as a prism for theory building and corroboration, this study chronicles the evolution of political violence from the state’s explicit mobilization of thugs to suppress opposition at the early stage of state building through its collaboration with criminal organizations for developmental projects to the manipulation of quasi-governmental organizations after democratization in the late 1980s, coeval with the traditional use of public sources of force. We specifically look at how political development, that is, democratization, has produced new demands for – and constraints on – political violence and how post-authoritarian governments have responded.     

The aesthetics of “everyday” violence: narratives of violence and Hindu right-wing women

“Right-wing” movements see significant participation by women who espouse their exclusionary and violent politics while at the same time often contest their patriarchal spaces. Women also serve as discursive and symbolic markers that regularly form the basis of the rhetoric, ideology, actions and policies of the right-wing. However, even as women’s roles and politics within the right-wing remain diverse and important, dominant feminist scholarship has had uneasy encounters with right-wing women, labelling them as monolithic pawns/victims/subjects of patriarchy with limited or no agency. This article aims to question this notion by examining the aesthetics and visual and oral imagery appropriated, (re)constructed, transformed and mediated by right-wing women. Based on ethnographic and visual research conducted in 2013–2014 with women in the cultural nationalist Hindu right-wing project in India, I argue that right-wing women use a variety of visual and oral narratives (from images to storytelling) to negotiate with spatialities and carve out independent “feminine” discourses within the larger language of the right-wing. I also argue that these narratives are “ritualised” and performed in various spaces and styles and remain crucial to the “everyday” politics and violence of right-wing women. The “everyday” politics of right-wing women often contest, subvert and bargain with the patriarchal goals of the larger projects, rendering narratives as sites of examining agency. Using specific examples of visual and oral narratives from the aforementioned movement, this article articulates how everyday violence is shaped by the aesthetics of the nation and the body, and how these aesthetics shape everyday violence.     

Fighting for a name on the ballot: constituency-level analysis of nomination violence in Zambia

ABSTRACT

What factors increase the likelihood of nomination violence? Nomination violence can be an expression of both horizontal conflict, between local political elites, and vertical conflict, between national and local elites. We theorize about factors that may increase the risks of vertical and horizontal conflict and leverage a unique dataset of constituency-level nomination violence obtained from surveys with 464 domestic election observers active in the 2016 Zambian general election. Our statistical analyses show constituencies with an incumbent standing for re-election were more likely to experience nomination violence. Also, contrary to previous research on general election violence, we theorize and find that more rural constituencies had a higher propensity for nomination violence than urban constituencies. Our findings highlight the importance of intra-party power relations and the bargaining relationship between the centre and periphery.     

Murder in Mexico: are journalists victims of general violence or targeted political violence?

Journalists in Mexico face hundreds of attacks each year, ranging from online harassment and physical intimidation to outright murder. The official narrative typically claims that murdered journalists are the victims of general criminal violence. This article finds that despite the rampant violence in Mexico, the murder of journalists cannot be attributed to the country’s general criminal violence problem alone. Instead, the evidence points to the targeting, and even political targeting of journalists. First, journalists are at a much higher risk of being murdered than the general population. Second, the divergence between homicide rates among the general population and among journalists varies considerably between Mexican states. While recent scholarship has shown that subnational governments can successfully remain authoritarian despite democratization at the central or federal level, this literature has largely ignored the use of political killings in subnational undemocratic regimes. This article attempts to understand the murder of journalists not just as a problem of criminal violence, but also of political violence, and thereby connects the findings to the existing scholarship on subnational authoritarianism.     

Who Speaks for Women? Print Media Portrayals of Feminist and Conservative Women's Advocacy

Feminists have frequently accused media outlets of not giving them enough coverage and/or portraying them negatively. Conversely, conservative women have argued that media suffer from liberal biases. While some studies have addressed the larger question of media and ideological prejudices, none have examined how media report women's activism in comparative terms. Since feminist and conservative women's organizations vie with one another over who represents women's interests, how media portray them has implications for how well they achieve this goal. Using data gathered from four major national newspapers, this study analyzes how print journalists depict feminist and conservative women's activism over a 14-year span. In so doing, it provides information about frequency of media coverage, as well as how advocates are labeled, on which issues they are getting visibility, and whether or not media present feminist and conservative women's organizations as being in direct conflict with each other. Implications for understanding women's political efforts, broadly speaking, are also explored.     

暴力方式与民心向背：寻找治理族群叛乱的条件组合

治理族群叛乱的目标既包括土地的控制,也包括人的控制,这是治理族群叛乱区别于其他形式叛乱的特点之一。人的控制实际包含两个内容,既包括人心向背,也包括人员数量的控制。人心向背关乎民众支持,而争取民众支持的必要性在于,虽然拥有民众支持并不必然导致叛乱的平息,但是没有民众支持是不能平息叛乱的。在族群叛乱已经发生的情况下,国家政府只有赢得更多当地民众的支持,才能成功治理叛乱。根据冲突各方的暴力行为方式及其对当地民众支持的影响,成功平息叛乱应具备国家政府有区别使用暴力、叛乱组织无区别使用暴力、当地温和派主导平叛行动等三个必要条件,以争取更多民众支持。这三个条件构成的条件组合,可以有效控制和减少叛乱组织能够招募到的人员数量,只要国家政府的平叛战略能够有效控制叛乱组织所招募的叛乱人员数量,叛乱组织就将走向衰败并最终消亡,也就是说这一条件组合能够成为国家政府成功平叛的一个充分条件。通过对结合俄罗斯、印度和西班牙等国家治理族群叛乱的经验和教训的分析,进一步证实了以上观点。     

“The savage reduction of the flesh”:1 violence,gender and bodily weaponisation in the 1981 Irish Republican hunger strike protest

This article examines the relationship between performativity, the body and violent identity politics in HMP Maze from 1976 to 1981. In it, I outline a theory of ethnic violence that highlights the exposure of the body to abjection, focusing specifically on the violence against the bodies of Irish Republican hunger strikers during the protest of 1981. I pursue two lines of argument. First, that self-starvation was a means by which the hunger strikers could turn their bodies into weapons, rather than serving as the site of a passive or non-violent protest. Second, while the sexualised abuse of prisoners sought to feminise them, I conclude that the Hunger Strike Protest not only weaponised the bodies of the strikers, but also re-constituted them as masculine.     

乌克兰危机的民族政治解读

乌克兰危机是民主政治、大国地缘政治博弈、民族政治等要素杂糅并复合互动的产物,作者从民族政治的角度对之加以解读。第一,历史上的民族积怨与对立是导致乌克兰危机的重要历史根源,但它在当下如何被“记忆”与“重新发现”才是理解这一根源的关键。第二,在乌克兰二十余年国家建设中,出现了国族主导与主体民族主导两种路径的张力与冲突,这是导致当前乌克兰危机的深层次国内政治根源。第三,在乌克兰民主实践中,出现了现代政党政治与传统民族政治合体的趋势,这一合体包含了内在张力,实际上是乌克兰国家转型不成熟的标志,这是当前乌克兰危机爆发的政治制度与政治文化根源。第四,不恰当地运用民族自决权,则是乌克兰危机迈向国际危机的重要根源。第五,从国内政治角度看,乌克兰危机源自国家建设的失败,其民族政治更应从国家建设意义上加以审视。鉴于乌克兰危机短时间难有转机,面对危机发酵以及后危机时代的冲突治理,民族政治因素的负面作用仍不容忽视,民族政治在未来的乌克兰政治生活中仍将是一个棘手的对象。     

The Politics of Mafia Violence: Explaining Variation in Mafia Killings in Southern Italy (1983–2008)

Violence perpetrated by organized crime nowadays represents a major threat to state stability, both because it directly challenges political institutions, targeting officials and using terrorist techniques, and because severe inter-group conflict strongly affects human security. Though it is a distinctive feature of illegal markets and a constant strategy of Mafia-like groups, the occurrence of violence is localized in time and space. The article aims to explain temporal and spatial variation in Mafia killings focusing on its political determinants, as organized crime is deeply embedded in the political system. The analysis shows that there is a clear link between the structure of the political markets and the severity of violence. In particular, the fragmentation of the political market is negatively associated with the strategy of criminal groups to exploit violence. By contrast, single-party dominance and bipartisanship lead to an increase in homicides since these organizations have few opportunities to access the political arena. Outcomes are assessed through the analysis of monthly homicides reported by police forces in Italian provinces from 1983 to 2008.     

Blessing or Curse for Advocacy? How News Media Attention Helps Advocacy Groups to Achieve Their Policy Goals

This article asks whether and under what circumstances a presence in news media debates helps advocacy groups to achieve their policy goals in European Union (EU) legislative politics. Common wisdom holds that lobbyists eschew the public spotlight and prefer to influence policymaking from behind the scenes. This perception contrasts with the literature on media and interest groups, which typically conceives of media attention as a crucial commodity for interest groups to influence policy decisions. This article unites these seemingly contrasting stances by arguing that media attention can be both a blessing and a curse for advocacy. The central argument posited is that media attention may improve or reduce advocacy groups’ chances of preference attainment depending on how advocacy groups frame their message in the news. The analyses draw from interviews with more than 200 policy practitioners and content analysis of 3,557 media statements connected to a sample of 125 EU policy proposals. The findings demonstrate that an advocacy group’s media presence may improve preference attainment, but only when the advocacy group manages to frame its objectives in the news as aligned with the public interest.     

伊斯兰教与21世纪初的印尼政治

１９９９年１０月,印尼举行总统大选,选出了首次由全民选举出来的总统瓦希德,稍后组成新的政府内阁。人们寄希望于瓦希德政府能够平息印尼国内持续了近２年的社会动荡与混乱,能带领印尼各族迈向新世纪。瓦希德本人就是伊斯兰教师联合会主席,其当选又带有相当的伊斯兰宗教背景。在印尼,教界与政界的关系已是如此的紧密,本文将阐述印尼的伊斯兰教及其政治的发展前景。