Editorial Type:
Article Category: Research Article
| Online Publication Date: 06 Apr 2012
Introduction to a Special Issue on Political Violence and Terrorism: Political Violence as Contentious Politics
Introduction to a Special Issue on Political Violence and Terrorism: Political Violence as Contentious Politics
Page Range: 1 – 5
Five lessons for future research on political violence may be drawn from the articles in this special issue. Researchers should (1) analyze political violence not as a sui generis phenomenon but as one form among others that contentious politics sometimes takes; (2) attempt to determine actors' own reasons for their choice (or rejection) of violent strategies; (3) take the "conflict situation" that encompasses the interactions of all the relevant actors (not single states, movements, or networks) as the unit of analysis for explaining collective strategic choices; (4) take the networks in which individuals interact (not single individuals) as the unit of analysis for explaining individuals' strategic choices; and (5) examine actors' decisions to eschew violence as well as their decisions to employ it in order to avoid overgeneralized explanations for the latter.
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