Violence

In addition to finding food and shelter, the containment of violence has always been a vital issue for humankind. Violence denotes the use of physical force to inflict injury on persons or cause damage to property and manifests itself in forms as different as homicide or state violence (e.g., repression, coercion). This definition is independent of agents, objects, or circumstances of violence. Political violence can be distinguished from collective or civil violence (such as social banditry) by (a) the number of persons involved, (b) the intentions of the actors, and (c) the reactions of the public.

The more discontent is blamed on the political system, the greater the potential for political violence. Often, there is no clear boundary between a bargaining, a coercion, and a terror model in the use of violence. Also, domestic (political) violence is to be distinguished from interstate violence in that at least one participant is not a government.

Typologies of violence flourish (violence against persons/nonhumans, direct/indirect, physical/psychological, individual/collective, organized/spontaneous, criminal/political, and noninstitutionalized/institutionalized [e.g., the Mafia or the period in Colombian history known as La Violencia, or noninstitutionalized]). Our definition precludes the dichotomy between personal and structural violence, the latter implying no direct actor but rather “structural or indirect” (Gal tung, 1969, p. 170) causes. Such a definition excludes very little and thus inflates the concept of violence.

The most important differentiation is between legal/illegal and legitimate/illegitimate violence. Max Weber defines the modern state by its specific means, that of physical violence. Where the authority of the state is considered legitimate, stable rule will result. In the opposite case of illegal and illegitimate violence, social disorder prevails, with the violence and instability envisioned by Thomas Hobbes. To a lesser extent, social order also breaks down where legal state violence is not [Page 2709]accepted by the population and in the reverse scenario where violence is illegal but considered highly legitimate by the people. These are instances of classical, often revolutionary protest.

The challenge to the state monopoly of violence can be combined with challenges to the national borders, by separatist groups or foreign powers, and to the societal consensus, for example, by revolutionary groups. This leads to a three-dimensional table classifying at least eight different forms of violent political conflict.

Note that with violent protest and demonstrations, usually, neither the state monopoly of violence nor the societal order is challenged. As noted by Douglas Hibbs (1973), the response of the state authorities, to a large extent, determines whether protests escalate into internal war (civil war)—the organized, initially often clandestine form of challenging the state monopoly of violence. Robustly, these two dimensions have reoccurred in analyses of diverse forms of violent political conflict. Apart from genocide and massive external warfare, internal wars claim the largest numbers of victims.

There are many overlaps between these different forms of conflict, especially from a dynamic perspective. International terrorism, for example, would have to be located between the first and second box in the first row of Figure 1. Together with the challenge of international order, a fourth fundamental dimension arises here. Yet there are analytical and empirical limitations for all 16 types to emerge.

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