Preventing Political Violence in Britain: An Evaluation of over Forty Years of Undercover Policing of Political Groups Involved in Protest

Abstract This study builds on extant literature on autocratization by critically analyzing democratic setbacks, arising from widespread incidents of electoral and political violence in democratic processes in Africa. The study leverages on frustration-aggression propositions to analyze the politico-electoral dynamics in autocratization trends in climes where the incentives to use violence as power acquisition strategy have become a dominant norm either by the ruling elites who seek to remain in power (sometimes by all means – both legal and, mostly, illegal) or by the opposition groups seeking to dislodge the former. As a qualitative research, the study squarely relies on available documented textual materials and rich datasets developed by reputable international research institutes. The analysis of data reveals that autocratization is real, gradual and subtle in Africa, and it is fostered by weak electoral institutions that are helpless in checkmating the use of violent strategies to win an election, which is the most visible element of modern democracy. Based on these findings, deliberate efforts should be made to build and/or strengthen electoral institutions that will rise above group interests and group control and ensure equal playing ground for all political groups in the contestation for state power. This will guarantee stable democratic growth within the context of the democratic principle of equal political opportunity premised on one man, one vote in Africa.

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Electoral Institutions and Electoral Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa

British Journal of Political Science ◽

10.1017/s0007123414000179 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 46 (2) ◽

pp. 297-320 ◽

Cited By ~ 50

Author(s):

Hanne Fjelde ◽

Kristine Höglund

Keyword(s):

Political Violence ◽

Dominant Mode ◽

Sub Saharan Africa ◽

Electoral Institutions ◽

Voting Rules ◽

High Stakes ◽

Electoral Violence ◽

Sub Saharan ◽

Political Groups ◽

Cross National

Political violence remains a pervasive feature of electoral dynamics in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, even where multiparty elections have become the dominant mode of regulating access to political power. With cross-national data on electoral violence in Sub-Saharan African elections between 1990 and 2010, this article develops and tests a theory that links the use of violent electoral tactics to the high stakes put in place by majoritarian electoral institutions. It is found that electoral violence is more likely in countries that employ majoritarian voting rules and elect fewer legislators from each district. Majoritarian institutions are, as predicted by theory, particularly likely to provoke violence where large ethno-political groups are excluded from power and significant economic inequalities exist.

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Technology and Collective Action: The Effect of Cell Phone Coverage on Political Violence in Africa

American Political Science Review ◽

10.1017/s0003055413000075 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 107 (2) ◽

pp. 207-224 ◽

Cited By ~ 129

Author(s):

JAN H. PIERSKALLA ◽

FLORIAN M. HOLLENBACH

Keyword(s):

Collective Action ◽

Political Violence ◽

Communication Technology ◽

Cell Phone ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Group Cooperation ◽

Collective Action Problems ◽

Disaggregated Data ◽

The Impact ◽

Political Groups

The spread of cell phone technology across Africa has transforming effects on the economic and political sphere of the continent. In this paper, we investigate the impact of cell phone technology on violent collective action. We contend that the availability of cell phones as a communication technology allows political groups to overcome collective action problems more easily and improve in-group cooperation, and coordination. Utilizing novel, spatially disaggregated data on cell phone coverage and the location of organized violent events in Africa, we are able to show that the availability of cell phone coverage significantly and substantially increases the probability of violent conflict. Our findings hold across numerous different model specifications and robustness checks, including cross-sectional models, instrumental variable techniques, and panel data methods.

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Conclusion

Fighting for France ◽

10.5871/bacad/9780197266274.003.0006 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Chris Millington

Keyword(s):

Political Violence ◽

The State ◽

State Police ◽

The Right ◽

Political Groups

In the wake of the Clichy riot the head of the state police in Nice wrote an exasperated report on the reaction of niçois political groups to the violence. On the right, parties such as the PSF and the PPF were growing increasingly frustrated at the continual harassment of their meetings. ‘They affirm’, the report noted, ‘that they are the partisans of order’, yet they were nonetheless ‘ready to defend themselves vigorously when attacked.’ The report continued, ‘it is without doubt that they are individually armed like […] their political opponents’. As for the left, the author noted murmurings in the radical and socialist parties about the seriousness of political violence in France: given that it now seemed impossible to state one’s opinion without drawing a violent response, had the country lost its taste for republican freedom?...

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Relative Poverty, Perceived Violence, and Support for Militant Politics: Evidence from Pakistan

Political Science Research and Methods ◽

10.1017/psrm.2016.6 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 57-81 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

C. Christine Fair ◽

Rebecca Littman ◽

Neil Malhotra ◽

Jacob N. Shapiro

Keyword(s):

Political Violence ◽

Large Scale ◽

Psychological Effects ◽

Direct Effects ◽

Relative Poverty ◽

The Poor ◽

Psychological Mechanism ◽

Large Scale Survey ◽

Psychological Perceptions ◽

Political Groups

Challenging conventional wisdom, previous research in South Asia and the Middle East has shown that poverty and exposure to violence are negatively correlated with support for militant organizations. Existing studies, however, provide evidence consistent with two potential mechanisms underlying these relationships: (1) the direct effects of poverty and violence on attitudes toward militant groups and (2) the psychological effects of perceptions of poverty and violence on attitudes. Isolating whether the psychological mechanism is an important one is critical for building theories of mass responses to political violence. We conducted a series of original, large-scale survey experiments in Pakistan (n=16,279) in which we randomly manipulated perceptions of both poverty and violence before measuring support for militant organizations. We find evidence that psychological perceptions do in part explain why the poor seem to be less supportive of militant political groups.

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Fighting for France

10.5871/bacad/9780197266274.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Chris Millington

Keyword(s):

Lived Experience ◽

Political Violence ◽

Third Republic ◽

Physical Punishment ◽

The Political ◽

Democratic Regime ◽

Democratic Culture ◽

Interwar France ◽

Culture Of Violence ◽

Political Groups

Fighting for France is the first book to examine the violent confrontations between political groups in interwar France. A range of groups at the political extremes employed physical aggression against their enemies and threatened to bring about the violent demise of the democratic regime. The scale of confrontations ranged from encounters between individuals to large clashes involving hundreds of activists. Until now, historians have denied and downplayed the frequency and seriousness of French political violence in favour of an interpretation that emphasises France's weddedness to democracy. Fighting for France demonstrates that the democratic culture of the late Third Republic co-existed with a culture of violence in which the physical punishment of rivals and opponents was considered acceptable. Drawing on the narratives constructed around outbreaks of violence, the book reconstructs the lived experience of fighting and the sense that contemporaries made of conflict. It examines violence in a variety of settings, from the street to the factory floor. A range of actors come under investigation, including fascists, communists, and the police. Fighting for France forces us to reconsider the place of political violence in a democratic society. It transforms our understandings of the course of interwar France and Europe.

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Contingent Citizens

10.7591/cornell/9781501716737.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Political Violence ◽

The United States ◽

Political Support ◽

Latter Day Saints ◽

Territorial Expansion ◽

Critical Junctures ◽

Political Expediency ◽

Definition Of ◽

Political Groups

This book features fourteen chapters that track changes in the ways Americans have perceived the Latter-day Saints since the 1830s. From presidential politics, to political violence, to the definition of marriage, to the meaning of sexual equality—the book places Mormons in larger American histories of territorial expansion, religious mission, Constitutional interpretation, and state formation. The chapters also show that the political support of the Latter-day Saints has proven, at critical junctures, valuable to other political groups. The willingness of Americans to accept Latter-day Saints as full participants in the United States political system has ranged over time and been impelled by political expediency, granting Mormons in the United States an ambiguous status, contingent on changing political needs and perceptions.

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