Contentious Politics: Protest, Violence, and Terrorism

POSC 4360 – Winter 2013

Slot 13, MW: 1400-1515, E-1005

D. Close: SN-2044, , 864-8174

Hours: M, 12-1:30; W, 12-1:30; F, 11-12; or by appointment

Introduction and Description

Politics is about conflict but not all political conflict is the same. Most of what you study in political science courses is conflict occurring within the framework of a legal order. However, there is another order of conflict that we categorize as contentious politics.

Contentious politics involves advancing claims on the state or some nonstate actor to recognize rights, cede privileges, remove some disability or burden, or some combination of the foregoing. Although contentious politics can take place in and through established state institutions, they are more commonly associated with disruptive, confrontational, conflictive actions, usually involving direct contact between whoever makes the claim and the state or, less frequently, the third or nonstate party referred to above. Further, contentious politics are often linked to political protest and movement politics.

Contentious politics thus are identified with politics carried on outside normal channels by political actors who are not part of the established power structure, that use unconventional methods, and have objectives that elites may deem illegitimate. Those who use contentious political action to advance their claims sometimes break the law in doing so but they can also carry on their work within legal bounds. Indeed, they can combine legal and illegal action.

Using contentious politics usually implies attempting to offset official or entrenched power. This further implies that entrenched power is used to the detriment of those advancing their claims contentiously. It also suggests that those using these methods insist on making their claims themselves. They may do so because they do not trust others to represent them or because they think it imperative to speak for themselves.

In general, it is reasonable to begin an examination of contentious politics hypothesizing that those making the claim have found the political system impermeable. Permeability refers to the ease with which someone wishing to make a claim on government can get a hearing, build a coalition, and secure the reforms thought necessary. Where a political system is not very permeable those making claims often use unconventional, forceful, even violent means to get action. A political system that does not offer outsiders opportunities to make political claims within the established governmental framework frequently has to deal with claims from outside that framework.

In POSC 4360 we examine two things. One is how political science and the social sciences more generally currently conceive of and study the various facets of political contention. The other is a selection of the forms contentious politics can take.

Texts

Tilly, Charles, and Sidney Tarrow, Contentious Politics [may be used copies]

Gitlin, Todd, Occupy Nation

Noueihed, Lin and Alex Warren, The Battle for the Arab Spring.

O’Kane, Rosemary H.T., Terrorism, 2d ed. [1st ok if you can find it]

Farney, James, Social Conservatives and Party Politics in Canada and the United States

Assignments

Students may choose to do eitherfour (4)think-piece essays ortwo (2) think-piece essays plus a proposal and a term paper.

AssignmentDateValue

Paper 1February 125%

ProposalFebruary 2210%

_or_

Paper 225%

Term paperMarch 1540%

_or_

Paper 325%

Final PaperExam period25%

All do

Paper 1, due February 1:

Should political movements that use conventional political institutions and processes, like the contemporary conservative movement in the US, be considered examples of contentious politics?

Paper 4, due on date set for the final examination:

Tilly and Tarrow(T&T) provide a complex framework for analyzing contentious politics. They designed it specifically to as a guide to how to study contentious politics for students at approximately your level. Is it necessary to have a special framework to study what T&T style contentious politics? Why? Why not?

All Short Papers

Paper 2, due February 22

What do Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring have in common? What separates one from the other?

Paper 3, due March 15

Can we separate the criminal aspects of terrorism from its political elements? Should we? Why? Why not?

Short Papers

These are think-piece papers (TPP). They should be no more than 5 pages, 1500 words, in length.

As the name implies, these exercises ask you to think. They demand more than a recitation of facts, although you clearly must have your facts right, too. Further, although you can fashion an “A” answer using just the assigned, you may find it useful to consult more widely and use other sources.

How you structure a TPP is up to you. However, you must follow academic conventions and cite sources include a bibliography. In-text citations are preferred. Further, if you are not used to using explanatory footnotes this is a good opportunity to start; you may use either footnotes or end notes for these, though the latter are preferred.

Penalties

Unless a student presents a legitimate (bereavement, illness, unexpected extra job hours), valid (certified by an appropriate authority) excuse, a penalty of five (5) points per diem will be assessed on late papers. This applies to short papers, proposals, and term papers.

Term Papers and Proposals

Proposals for fourth-year political science courses

The Basics

What proposals do not do: actually execute a study

What all proposals do:

(1) explain why a study is being done;

(2) note what prior studies of similar phenomena have said, found, and done;

(3) say what the study will include and exclude, and explain why;

(4) indicate how you will do the study – what data you need, how you will get it, and how you will process it into meaningful results; where appropriate, include research instruments;

(5) suggest what the study will tell us about some broader issue;

(6) include an outline that shows how the work will be structured, remembering that this is subject to change;

(7) provide a good bibliography, not exhaustive, but more than minimally indicative.

This is where a proposal for a term paper will usually stop. Others will go further to do the following, as well:

(8) present a plan of work, a rough schedule of when the various steps in the proposed work will be done;

(9) in a proposal that seeks funding, give good estimates of costs;

(10) address any questions of research ethics.

Setting up a proposal

There are many formats but all go through essentially the same steps. The length guidelines are appropriate for a 4- to 6-page term paper proposal. Honours essay and thesis proposals are necessarily somewhat longer, perhaps 10-15 pages, exclusive of literature reviews and methodological appendices.

·Presentation of Topic: This is more than just the title. You should have a paragraph or two describing why the topic is important and interesting. This means putting in somewhat formal language what it is about the topic that makes it worth treating.

·The State of the Literature: What have others said about this topic, broadly conceived? What angles have they taken when examining this theme? Has the general approach to the issue changed over time or has it remained the same? You may be asked to do a brief literature review. If so, this will be discussed in class. You do not have to have an exhaustive review in your proposal but you must have examined enough of the scholarly literature, as well as other appropriate literature, to have a sense what has gone before. This will be the longest part of your proposal.

·Hypotheses/Research Questions: What do you want to find out? If you can ask a question that can be answered with a yes or a no, you have a hypothesis. If the question is more open-ended, you have a research question. These are equally valid approaches. The important thing is to have a reasonable idea of what you are looking for. Remember that longer studies may well have secondary hypotheses or research questions,

·Scope: The scope sets out the precise focus of the study. For example, if you wanted to study insurgency in Peru in the 1990s, you would have to indicate whether you were going make SenderoLuminoso your main theme, or whether you were instead going to examine the state’s response too.

·Methods: Here were are really talking about a mix of secondary (articles and books) and primary (newspapers or documents) printed sources. It is unlikely that you will use interviews or surveys here, but in other proposals you might. In theses you would see a wider range of methods used.

·Outline: This is not the most important part of the proposal, but it is still necessary. An outline shows the order in which you propose to treat the various themes and sub-themes of your paper.

·Annotated Bibliography, Preliminary: This should have ten to fifteen sources, articles and books, plus documents where these are being used. The annotation need not be long, only a sentence or two. This will help you evaluate you sources.

Term Paper

This is a conventional, fourth-year paper. Thus it will be in the range of 4000 to 4500 words in length and use conventional citation and bibliographic forms. The topic is open; however, it must fall within the general confines of the course.

Possible themes:

Arab Spring:
Violence and non-violence
Success? Failure?
Anti-austerity protests in Europe: violent and non-violent
Compare protest in the Great Depression and the Great Recession
Protest under authoritarianism
PRC today: Ethno-regional; class, e.g. farmers; local
Russia; CIS
Burma
Youth and protests
Compare the 1960s and post-2008
Student protest in Chile
Indignados and Occupy Wall Street
Green Movement in Iran

Movement politics
Movement politics in Canada: farmers, fishers, nationalists, indigenous people, women, environmentalists, gays, etc. This can be a case study or a broader comparison.
Other case studies, e.g., Occupy, Chilean students
Counter-movement politics
Framing contentious politics: how protest politics present themselves and how the media presents them
Transnational movements
Movements, protest, and policy
Effects of technology on contentious politics
Social media
Earlier examples
Guerrillas: case studies of successful, semi-successful, or failed movements.
Compare a successful and a failed movement.
Cases: Moros, Taliban, Syrian insurgents, Iraq
Are guerrillas necessarily terrorists? Can they be terrorists?
Insurgency and counterinsurgency; e.g., American counterinsurgency from the Philippines to Iraq; successful v. failed
Rebellion and revolution.
Case studies
Analysis of concept; e.g., social revolution or social revolution v. political revolution
State responses to contentious politics
Russia, China
Militarized police and protest: US. Spain. UK
Violence and Terror
Violence as a political instrument: the challengers
Is terrorism political?
Terror as an instrument of contemporary political contention

Penalties

Unless a student presents a legitimate (e.g., bereavement, illness, unexpected extra job hours) and valid (certified by an appropriate authority) excuse, a penalty of five (5) points per diem will be assessed on late papers.

Outline

NB: Additional readings may be added to any section. These will be announced in class.

R: On reserve, QEII

Topic I. Contentious Politics: American Conservatism – A Study in Success[weeks 2-4]

Overview

Farney, whole book

Gross, Neil, Thomas Medvetz, and Rupert Russell, 2011, “The Contemporary American Conservative Movement,” Annual Review of Sociology. 37, 325-54; on line through Library.

Phillips-Fein, Kim, 2011, “Conservatism: A State of the Field,” The Journal of American History, 98(3), 723-743; online through Library.

Strauss, Maria, 2010, “An Interview with Kim Phillips-Fein,” Bookslut, October 2010;

Suggested

Phillips-Fein, Kim, 2009, Invisible Hands, ch.10, “Making the Moral Majority,” 213-235. R

Barany, Daran, 2011, “Saving Society from the Presumption of Reason: Classical Conservative and New Right Anti-Welfarism in Post-War America,” Critical Sociology, 37, 779-795; online through Library.

The Tea Party

Williamson, Vaness, ThedaSkocpol, and John Coggins, 2011, “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism,” Perspectives on Politics.9(1), 25-43; online through Library.

Courser, Zachary, 2012, “The Tea ‘Party’ as a Conservative Social Movement,” Society.49, 43-53; online through Library.

Boykoff, Jules and Eulalie Laschever, “The Tea Party Movement, Framing, and the US Media,” Social Movement Studies.10 (4), 341-366; online through Library.

Questions: What distinguishes Canadian conservatism from its American counterpart? Is it surprising to see a conservative reform movement? Why shouldn’t it be? Is the Tea Party better seen as a movement or the insurgent wing of the Republican right?

Topic II: Contentious Politics: Protest and Revolt [Weeks 5-8]

Protest and Movements

Stagenborg, pp. 1-8, 11-24, R

Lukes, S., Power, 11-25, R

Parenti, M.,1970, "Power and pluralism: a view from the bottom," Journal of Politics,32: 501-530; online through Library.

Occupy Movement

Gitlin, whole book

Arab Spring

Noueihed and Warren, Arab Spring, Parts 1 and 2 (chs. 1-9)

Suggested

Esbawy, Yusery Ahmed, 2012, “The Role of the Youth’s New Protest Movements in the January 25th Revolution,” IDS Bulletin, 43(1), 26-36; online through Library.

Questions: Why protest? Who protests? What makes the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring both protest movements?

Contentious Politics III: Violence and Terrorism[weeks 9-12]

Political Violence in General

Dutter, Lee, E., 2012, Why Don't Dogs Bark (or Bomb) in theNight? Explaining the Non-Developmentof Political Violence or Terrorism: TheCase of Quebec Separatism,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism.35, 59-75; online through Library.

Suggested

De la Calle Robles, L., 2007, “Fighting for Local Control: Street Violence in the Basque Country,” International Studies Quarterly. 51: 431-455; online through library.

Insurgency

McClintock, C., Revolutionary Movements in Latin America. 45-92.R

Suggested

Hunt, D., 2010, “Dirty Wars: Counterinsurgency in Vietnam and Today,” Politics and Society. 38: 35-66; online through library.

Qazi, S., 2010, “The ‘Neo-Taliban” and Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan,” Third World Quarterly.31: 485-99; online through library.

Questions: What qualifies as political violence? Why use it? When is it effective? Ineffective?

Revolution

Malia, History’s Locomotives. Conclusion and Epilogue, Appendix 1 (279-301); suggested, ch. 11 (253-278). R

Sanderson, S. Revolutions. Chs. 1, 4-5(1-15, 61-106). R

Civil Wars

Woodward, S., 2007, “Do the Root Causes of Civil Wars Matter? On Using Knowledge to Improve Peacebuilding Interventions,” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.1: 143-170; online through library.

Suggested

Boulden, J., 2009, “Terrorism and Civil Wars,” Civil Wars.11: 5-2; online through library.

Gray, V.,2008, “The New Research on Civil Wars: Does it Help Us Understand the Colombian Conflict?” Latin American Politics and Society. 50 (3): 63-91; online through library.

Questions: How should we define a revolution? Why do insurgencies occur? Are all guerrilla movements the same? Why should civil wars be a separate analytical category?

Terrorism

Political Science and Terrorism

O’Kane, entire Book

HaunstrupQvortrup, Matt, 2012, “Terrorism and Political Science,” British Journal of Poltics and International Relations, 14, 503-517; online through Library.

Conventional terrorism

Abrams, Max, 2012, “The Effectiveness of Terrorism Revisited,” Comparative Political Studies. 45:3, 366-393; online through Library.

Pratt, D., 2010, “Religion and Terrorism: Christian Fundamentalism and Extremism,” Terrorism and Political Violence. 22: 438-456; online through Library.

Suggested

Wilson, M., A. Scholes, E. Brockelhurst, 2010, “ A Behavioural Analysis of Terrorist Action,” British Journal of Criminology. 50: 690-707

Questions: Why use terror? Who uses terror? Why so evident now?

Suicide terrorism

Silke,A. , 2006, “The role of suicide in politics, conflict, and terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence, 18: 35-46 (2006); online through Library.

Crenshaw, M., 2007, “Explaining suicide terrorism: a review essay,” Security Studies, 16:1, 133-162 ; online through Library

Suggested

Blumenfeld, Teri, 2012, “Are Jihadists Crazy?” Middle East Quarterly, 19, 3-13; online through Library.

Dearing, Matthew, 2010, “Like Red Tulips at Springtime: The Absence of Female Suicide Martyrs in Afghanistan,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism.33, 1079-1103; online through Library.

Questions: Why use suicide terror? What are its benefits?

Topic IV: A Framework [weeks 11-13]

Tilly and Tarrow, entire book

Staggenborg, Susan, Social Movements, ch. 3 (pp. 26-42) R

Questions: How and why did T&T develop this framework? Why do they present it as they do?