The Logic of Violence

Politics ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Muro-Ruiz

To date, there is no synthetic, general theory of violence able to integrate the less complete theories of violent behaviour. There is little agreement among researchers about the causes of violence (not to mention what to do about it) and the field has become vast in terms of literature. This paper reviews theories of violence, mostly from sociology, political science and psychology both at the level of the individual and the collective. The paper is divided in two parts: the first deals with theories that see violence as a reaction, the second deals with those theories that see violence as a mean to attain goals.

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Smidt

False information, rumours and hate speech can incite violent protest and rioting during electoral periods. To counter such disinformation, United Nations peacekeeping operations (PKOs) routinely organize election-education events. While researchers tend to study how PKOs affect armed group and state behaviour, this study shifts the focus to civilians. It argues that PKOs’ election education reduces violent protest and rioting involving civilians during electoral periods via three pathways. First, learning about PKOs’ electoral security assistance during election-education events may convince people that political opponents cannot violently disturb elections, thereby mitigating fears of election violence. Second, election-education events provide politically relevant information that can strengthen political efficacy and people’s ability to make use of peaceful political channels. Finally, peace messages during election-education events can change people’s calculus about the utility and appropriateness of violent behaviour. Together, these activities mitigate fears, reduce political alienation and counter civilians’ willingness to get involved in violence. To test these expectations, I combine survey data on people’ perceptions and attitudes, events data on violent protest and rioting, and a novel dataset on local-level election-education events carried out by the PKO in Côte d’Ivoire before four elections held between 2010 and 2016. The results show that when the PKO is perceived to be an impartial arbiter, its election-education events have violence-mitigating effects at the individual and subnational levels.


1981 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Smith

With the widespread usage of systems analysis in political science over the last twenty years it is axiomatic that the problem of adaptation has been a recurring theme in the literature. At the level of the individual political system this concern has been germane to the work of Easton, the structural functionalists and the developmental/modernization writers. In International Politics writing, the problem of adaptation is central to both the applications of systems theory, at whatever level of analysis (for example Kaplan, Rosecrance at the systemic level, and Hanrieder and Modelski at the state level) and the less overtly theoretical works which still emphasize the importance of a state adapting to its environment.


Author(s):  
Yulia Fanilevna Aitova ◽  

The article analyzes the issue of determining the legal status of the individual management body of a limited liability company. The author begins his research with the concept of legal status existing in the general theory of law, and then proceeds to consider the issue from the point of view of philosophical categories. In addition, the work explores the diversity of points of view existing in the doctrine regarding the legal status of the individual management body of economic societies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-524
Author(s):  
Lyubov A. Fadeeva

L.A. Fadeeva is the author of numerous publications and key co-author of fundamental encyclopedias published by the Russian Academy of Sciences (Identity: The Individual, Society and Politics. An Encyclopedia, 2017) and the Russian Political Science Association (Trends and problems of the development of Russian political science in the global context: Tradition, reception and innovation, 2018), representing the leading scientific school for identity studies in Russia (see: Perm School of Political Science: Sources, Development, Content, 2019), who has served multiple times as guest editor for the thematic issues of the best Russian political science journals on this topic (Political science (RU), 2020, No. 4). In this introductory article, our guest editor L.A. Fadeeva presents the materials of the current issue of our journal, interpreting their cross-cutting themes as the politicization of the non-political through the prism of identity processes at the macro-regional, regional and national levels.


Author(s):  
Shahrough Akhavi

The doctrine of salvation in Islam centers on the community of believers. Contemporary Muslim political philosophy (or, preferably, political theory) covers a broad expanse that brings under its rubric at least two diverse tendencies: an approach that stresses the integration of religion and politics, and an approach that insists on their separation. Advocates of the first approach seem united in their desire for the “Islamization of knowledge,” meaning that the epistemological foundation of understanding and explanation in all areas of life, including all areas of political life, must be “Islamic.” Thus, one needs to speak of an “Islamic anthropology,” an “Islamic sociology,” an “Islamic political science,” and so on. But there is also a distinction that one may make among advocates of this first approach. Moreover, one can say about many, perhaps most, advocates of the first approach that they feel an urgency to apply Islamic law throughout all arenas of society. This article focuses on the Muslim tradition of political philosophy and considers the following themes: the individual and society, the state, and democracy.


Author(s):  
Victoria M. Grady ◽  
James D. Grady III

The potential benefits of utilizing KM technologies in multinational and global organizations are of particular significance due to the inherent geographic distance and diversity of such organizations. Unfortunately, the process of constantly changing technology can be extremely disruptive at both the individual and organizational level. This chapter explores the relationship between KM technology change within the organization and the theory of an organizational loss of effectiveness (LOE). “The general Theory of Organizational Loss of Effectiveness is predicated upon organizational behavior resulting from a loss of stability, e.g. technology change, within an organization.” (Grady, 2005) The loss of stability, in the context of this theory, occurs when a defined set of symptoms develop in individuals and groups undergoing a change in technology. The assertion is that the development of these symptoms is predictable, and when viewed collectively, results in an organizational loss of effectiveness.


Author(s):  
Joseph Pitt ◽  
Steven Mischler

The modern search for an adequate general theory of explanation is an outgrowth of the logical positivist’s agenda: to lay the groundwork for a general unified theory of science. Carl Hempel and Paul Oppenheim’s “Studies in the Logic of Explanation” (Hempel and Oppenheim 1948, cited under the Deductive-Nomological Model of Explanation) was the first major attempt to put forth an account that met the positivist’s criteria. It initiated a lively debate that has continued up to the present. But as the attention of the philosophers of science became increasingly focused on the individual sciences, it quickly became clear that one general theory of explanation would not do since the particulars of the various sciences called for different accounts of what constituted an adequate explanation in physics and biology as well as chemistry, etc. This article attempts to capture the flavor of the debates and the nature of the shifting targets over the years. It does not profess to be complete, being largely restricted to work published in English, but it is a start. While the modern debates surrounding explanation can be said to begin with Hempel and Oppenheim, the history of philosophical accounts of explanation can be traced at least to Aristotle, whose metaphysics set the logical framework for explanations until Galileo urged that appeals to metaphysical categories be replaced by mathematics and measurement. For the most part, Galileo was not interested in appealing to causes or occult forces. The account of how things behaved was to be expressed in the language of mathematics. Descartes tried to capitalize on that insight with his resurrection of medieval discussions of causation relying on Aristotle’s framework framed in a mathematical physics, only to be countered by Newton, who introduced non-Aristotelian causal explanation grounded in mathematical physics. Finally John Stuart Mill begins the long march to contemporary accounts of causal explanation in both the physical and the social sciences, again relying on certain key assumptions about human nature. So the history of explanation is long and intertwined with a variety of metaphysical frameworks. The Positivists of the 20th century unsuccessfully eschewed metaphysics and sought to create an account of causal explanation that somehow aimed to stick strictly to the dictates of science, only to be thwarted by the metaphysical assumptions in the sciences themselves.


1966 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles F. Cnudde ◽  
Donald J. McCrone

Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes' publication in 1963 of a preliminary report on the Survey Research Center's representation study is an important landmark in the development of empirical political theory. That report addressed itself to the crucial theoretical question of the linkage between mass political opinions and governmental policy-making. More specifically, the report found considerable policy agreement between Congressional roll call votes and the attitudes of the individual Congressman's constituency. This policy agreement was then interpreted through several causal paths and the Congressman's perception of his constituency's attitudes was found to be the main path by which the local district ultimately influenced Congressional outputs.The main body of the report dealt with the broad civil rights issue dimension, and, by specifying the perceptual path by which constituency influence is brought to bear, documented the effect of political issues despite the generally low level of political information held at the mass level. Thus, the Congressmen, through their broad cognitive evaluations, were aware of how far they could proceed in determining their civil rights roll call votes on the basis of their own attitudes before risking the displeasure of their constituents.Beyond such major substantive contributions the representation study introduced to political science a variance-apportioning technique similar to that developed by Sewall Wright, in 1921. Through this variance-apportioning technique, the importance of the perceptual link was isolated and evaluated. This study, then, symbolizes the growing recognition in political science of the importance of more sophisticated methodological tools in the process of theory building.


1971 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl W. Deutsch

This paper is a revision of the Presidential Address delivered to the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Los Angeles, California, September 10, 1970. It identifies nine aspects of political theories: storage and retrieval of memories; assistance to insight; simplification of knowledge; heuristic effectiveness; self-critical cognition; normative awareness of values; scientifically testable knowledge; pragmatic skills; and wisdom, or second-order knowledge of what contexts are worth choosing—a wisdom subject to the possibility of radical restructuring. These nine aspects of theory form an integrated production cycle of knowledge. “Scientific” and “humanistic” political theorists need each other to understand the central task of politics: the collective self-determination of societies. To appraise this steering performance of political systems, large amounts of empirical data as indicators of social performance are indispensable. Political science has grown in knowledge of cases, data, research methods, and sensitivity to problems of disadvantaged groups and of the individual. It is learning to recognize qualities and patterns, verify the limited truth content of theories, and be more critical of its societies and of itself. It needs to increase research on implementation of insights, on positive proposals for reform, changes in political wisdom, and on the abolition of poverty and large-scale war. For these tasks, cognitive contributions from political theory are indispensable; working to make them remains a moral commitment.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 2156
Author(s):  
Vitalii V. VOLYNETS ◽  
Volodymyr A. SICHEVLIUK ◽  
Ilona V. KAMINSKA

At the present stage of its development, the general theory of law is aimed at achieving, as far as possible, a greater degree of practical use. Legal theorists seek to answer questions that are devoid of scholastic nature and derive from the practice of real legal relations. The performance of this task involves the movement of fundamental science, which is the general theory of state and law, on the path of ascending from the array of abstract reflections of legal reality, already formed by it, to obtaining its more specific theoretical reproductions. The purpose of this study is to present the correlation of categories such as ‘legal person’ and ‘legal personality’. The relevance of the study lies in the inability to gain new knowledge without the dialectical application of the framework of categories and concepts and methodology of the theory of law to the study of special (e.g., branch) and single (implemented at the individual level) legal phenomena in their relation to the general regularities of the functioning of the state and law. The research presents the content, correlation and meaning of these categories in the theory of law, and demonstrates their diversified use in Ukrainian legislation. The content of the category ‘subject of law’ covers those persons to whom the rights, duties and responsibilities, which are enshrined in the rules of objective law, are addressed. The category of ‘legal personality’ emphasizes the key role of objective law in constituting legal personality.  


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