An account of the origins of violence, its consequences, its uses, and the relationship between violence and democracy.

Illustrated most dramatically by the events of 9/11 and the subsequent ‘war on terror’, violence represents a challenge to democratic politics and to the establishment of liberal-democratic regimes. Liberal-democracies have themselves not hesitated to use violence and restrict civil liberties as a response to such challenges. These issues are at the centre of global politics and figure prominently in political debates today concerning multiculturalism, political exclusion and the politics of gender. This book takes up these topics with reference to a wide range of case-studies, covering Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe. It provides a theoretical framework clarifying the relationship between democracy and violence and presents original research surveying current hot-spots of violent conflict and the ways in which violence affects the prospects for democratic politics and for gender equality. Based on field-work carried out by specialists in the areas covered, this volume will be of high interest to students of democratic politics and to all those concerned with ways in which the recourse to violence could be reduced in a global context. This book has significant implications for policy-makers involved in attempts to develop safer and more peaceful ways of handling political and social conflict. This book was published as a special issue of Democratizations.

Large numbers of people in Soweto & other parts of South Africa live in fear of witchcraft, presenting complex & unique problems for the government. Adam Ashforth explores the challenge of occult violence & the spiritual insecurity that it engenders to democratic rule in South Africa.

The Bhagalpur riots occurred in the Indian state of Bihar during the 1989 Lok Sabha election campaign. In the lead-up, political actors and parties exploited religious identities for their own electoral purposes. In this book, Nakamizo systematically and comprehensively analyses the course of the significant political change that forms the background to these and other outbreaks of violence, from the collapse of Congress's rule to the rise of identity-based political parties. The political change is explained via a multi-layered analysis of the connection between centre, state and rural village levels in the context of the interaction between caste and religious identities.The riots, especially the counter-riot response, are used as a key explanatory variable throughout. Nakamizo's book offers an insightful and highly relevant perspective on the political background to the communal violence that has been a feature of democratic India and continues to this day.

Ludger Mees offers the first comprehensive study of one of Europe's most protracted ethnic conflicts. He carefully analyzes both the historical roots of the conflict and its later growing violent dimension. Special attention is paid to the framing of a new opportunity structure during the 1990s, which facilitated the first serious, but ultimately frustrated, attempt to broker a settlement. In the light of different theoretical and comparative approaches, the reasons for the dramatic return of terrorism and the possibilities of a more successful conflict de-escalation in the near future are discussed.

Emerging from a conference titled "Democracy and Violence" held at the Stanford Alpine Meadows Lodge, California, in September 1997, this volume contains 16 contributions written by professors and scholars in the social sciences. A dominant theme is that democracies have a proclivity to stimulate political violence. Topics addressed include the violence associated with elections, both generally and in countries such as Israel, Italy, Eastern Europe, and the US. Attention is paid to ethnic strife, riots, and terrorism in democracies, as well as general issues such as the meaning of a persistent history of violence and Thomas Jefferson's idea that democratic states need periodic violence to sustain themselves. Distributed by ISBS. c. Book News Inc.

"On January 6 we witnessed what many of us consider a failed insurrection at the US Capitol. But others think this was political violence in service of the preservation of our democracy. When did our political views become extreme? When did guns and violence become a feature of American politics? Nathan Kalmoe and Lily Mason have been researching the increase in radical partisanship in American politics and the associated increasing propensity to support or engage in violence through a series of surveys and survey experiments for several years. Kalmoe and Mason argue that many Americans have become increasingly radical in their identification with their political party and more inclined to view partisans of the other party negatively as people. Their reactions to opposing political views give little room for respect or compromise and make increasing numbers of Americans more likely to either participate in political violence or to view those who do so on behalf of their party favorably. They also find that radical partisans are more apt to be receptive to messages from radical political leaders and less receptive to conflicting information and views. Radical partisanship and political violence are not new to the United States. In most of the 20th century we experienced less radical partisanship, with measures of attitudes towards partisans of other parties that were not as extreme as we see now but this has not been the case throughout much of American history, as witness the fight over slavery that led to the Civil War as well as the violence associated with racism after the fall of reconstruction to the present day"--