Follow-up from last week

• factors shaping politically violent groups’ strategy
  • multiple simultaneously
  • some more based around ‘rational’ calculation (e.g., available resources, state posture); others less so (e.g., ideology, emotional dynamics)

Presentation groups

Subculture defined

Subculture example - from ska to skinhead

• 1960s: ‘mod’ subculture in UK (working class youth with upward social mobility, stylish clothes, American soul & Jamaican ska)
  • ‘hard mods’: short haircuts, jeans and boots—worker aesthetic
    • skinheads: Jamaican ‘rude boys’ opposed to authority
• 1970s: skinhead aesthetic, ‘street punk’/Oi! music
  • right-wing skins: rejection of black/Jamaican roots
    • ‘Nazi rock’: pioneering bands like Screwdriver (Ian Stuart Donaldson) and Böhse Onkelz (Brown 2004; Dych 2016)
    • British-German connections
  • left-wing skins: ‘unpolitical’ and clinging to Jamaican roots
    • S.H.A.R.P. (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice)

Subculture example - from ska to skinhead

• So this evolution has created a subculture: music, clothing (e.g., shoelaces), political beliefs and orientation

• 1960s: ‘mod’ subculture in UK (working class youth with upward social mobility, stylish clothes, American soul & Jamaican ska)

  • ‘hard mods’: short haircuts, jeans and boots—worker aesthetic
    • skinheads: Jamaican ‘rude boys’ opposed to authority

• 1970s: skinhead aesthetic, ‘street punk’/Oi! music

  • right-wing skins: rejection of black/Jamaican roots
    • ‘Nazi rock’: pioneering bands like Screwdriver (Ian Stuart Donaldson) and Böhse Onkelz (Brown 2004; Dych 2016)
    • British-German connections
  • left-wing skins: ‘unpolitical’ and clinging to Jamaican roots
    • S.H.A.R.P. (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice)

For those interested in a more recent example…

But no alcohol allowed… (see further in Spiegel article)

Other subculture examples?

Any subculture examples you know? Any overlap with extremist groups? What are the distinguishing characteristics? Certain clothing, music, symbols, practices?

Subculture, radical milieu, and mobilisation - an empirical puzzle

More than 1000 people from the Balkan region travelled between 2012 and 2016 to become foreign fighters (Azinović & Bećirević 2017), a disproportionately high number.

• Why might the Balkans account for a disproportionate (compared to western Europe and to the U.S.) number of ISIS foreign fighters? Let’s hear some hypotheses!

Bosi and Porta (2012, 364) levels schema

Bosi and Porta (2012, 364) levels schema

Cases and case design (Bosi and Porta 2012, 365–66)

• aiming to identify “some of the central paths followed by those individuals who join armed groups” (Bosi and Porta 2012, 361)
• paired comparison of most-different cases of micro-mobilizations into armed activism with the aim of singling out some similarities

Our cases represent two of the most influential armed groups in Europe, among the few who lasted for more than 10 years, with a broad territorial coverage and a relatively high number of members and sympathizers. They differ however in their main ideological roots: ethnonationalist for the PIRA, socio-revolutionary for the BR.

• thoughts on this ideological division?

Cases and case design (Bosi and Porta 2012, 365–66)

some methodological points: scope for generalisation

• population?
• scope conditions?

Cases and case design (Bosi and Porta 2012, 365–66)

some methodological points: scope for generalisation

• population?
  • armed groups (in Europe?)
• scope conditions?
  • groups that lasted more than 10 years
  • broad territorial coverage
  • high number of members and sympathizers

Cases and case design: generalisation (Bosi and Porta 2012, 365–66)

Although our empirical testing concerns PIRA and BR armed activists, we believe that similar micromobilization paths can be found in other armed groups. This is true if we think of the works of Jocelyan Viterna (2006) on the women’s mobilization into the FMLN in El Savador, that of Fernando Reinares (2001) with ETA militants, Olivier Roy’s(2004) work with Islamic militants mobilization into Al Qaeda in the Middle East, or the work of Gilda Zwerman and Patricia Steinhoff (2005) regarding left-wing armed groups in the US and Japan in the post 1960s.

Cases: Provos and BR (Bosi and Porta 2012)

• ideologically dissimilar, organisationally similar…
  • PIRA… “hierarchies of leadership and territorial brigades, battalions, and companies. While the active membership of the organization never exceeded a few hundred at any one time, it is estimated that over 10,000 individuals participated in the PIRA in its almost 30 years of military campaigning”
  • BR… “organized in city columns, which were subdivided into brigades, with “cells” of three to five members each. Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s it was estimated to have over four hundred full-time members, plus an unknown number of supporters.”
• the grim tally: PIRA “responsible for over 1,750 deaths between 1970 and 1994”; BR “claiming responsibility for 145 killings”

Paths of radicalisation (Bosi and Porta 2012)

Paths of radicalisation (Bosi and Porta 2012)

(generalizability): Are the described pathways fitting for less violent groups with more limited goals which never included an attack on the state or the status quo? Can the 3 types be used to analyse counterrevolutionary terrorism?

Ideological path - Bosi and Porta (2012, 372)

“We were all trusted comrades: we had known each other for a long time and were very good friends” (Alberto Franceschini, quoted in Fasanella and Franceschini 2004, 44). In other words, in their initial phases both armed groups exploited pre-existing social and affective ties in recruitment processes in order to avoid possible infiltrations. While in the Northern Ireland case the family was also relevant in recruitment to the armed group (e.g. interviewees 1, 6, 11 and 17), in the Italian case the family remained more important as a cultural symbol, and joining the BR was perceived as a rupture with the family environment

examples of this path from extremist group cases?

Instrumental path - Bosi and Porta (2012, 374)

many activists joined armed groups after a long search for effective strategies to achieve their political aims (Interviewees 2, 5, 18, 19, 20 for the PIRA and Balzerani, Fiore, Peci, Ronconi and Interviewees 26 and 27 for the BR). They usually joined armed groups later in life following dissatisfaction with the “ordinary” politics in which they were involved. They judged armed groups according to whether or not they had the capacity to stage successful campaigns and lead to concrete results.

examples of this path from extremist group cases?

Solidarity path - Bosi and Porta (2012, 380)

The context in which these individuals mobilized was in fact one of escalation. For many individuals the armed struggle was a way to cope with societies which seemed to them in turmoil. High repression and counter-movement violence in collaboration with the establishment worked for young individuals as a loss of innocence, which further delegitimized the regimes and justified their mobilization in the PIRA and the BR. … The leadership of the PIRA had, for example, planned to provoke street disturbances with the deliberate intention of producing an outward spiral of violence, knowing full well the benefits the British Army repression would reap in terms of support and recruits from the nationalist community.

examples of this path from extremist group cases?

Meier (2022) - The Sri Lankan Civil War: Background

• Sri Lankan independence from British Colonial Rule 1948
  • \(\rightarrow\) Sinhalese 74%, Tamil 18%
    
• Inter-generational conflicts within the Tamil Movement
• 1983 anti-Tamil riots as transformative event
• From guerrilla to conventional war
• The LTTE as de facto state
• 2008 military defeat of the LTTE

Meier (2022) - territorial aspect

Meier (2022) - Research interest

• Differential participation in armed groups during civil wars
  • \(\rightarrow\) Variation at the sub-national level
  • \(\rightarrow\) Temporal and/or spatial variation
• Building on Kalyvas (2006) three different mobilization areas can be distinguished according to the actors in control of the area and the degree to which they exert control
  • Rebel controlled areas
  • Government controlled areas
  • Contested areas
• \(\rightarrow\) Different pathways to militancy within the three mobilization areas?

Meier (2022) - Research Process and Methodology

• Selection of research sites
• Interviewing former militants and “similarly placed” civilians
  • \(\rightarrow\) Snowball sampling
• Life history interviews
  • issues with this approach?

Meier (2022) - Argument and Contribution to the Literature

• Argument:
  • Depending on the area where individuals live during civil wars, they are exposed to different political orders and thus experience the conflict in different ways.
  • Variation in conflict experience influences people’s decision to take up arms, resulting in different individual pathways to militancy across spatio-temporal contexts
• Explanatory factors:
  1. actors in control of the area
  2. intensity and form of violence
  3. LTTE recruitment strategy

Meier (2022) - Participation Trajectories LTTE Militants