Browsing by Author "Aitokari, Saara"

This thesis deals with two cases of insurgent organisations that incorporated violent methods in their repertoire in the late sixties and the early seventies. The first case is that of Northern Ireland, where protests and counter-protests escalated into a violent conflict known as the Troubles. The second case is that of United States, during the same period. In both cases, there was first a nonviolent civil right movement which then fragmented and was superseded by groups endorsing more confrontational forms of protest. Despite many similarities in the initial phases of protest in both locations, violent political conflict ensued only in Northern Ireland. In the United States, confrontation peaked at the very end of the sixties, and then declined rapidly in early seventies. The aim of the thesis is to identify reasons for this difference. Social movement theory is used as the theoretical framework of the thesis. The organisations studied are the Weather Underground, the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army and the Provisional IRA. Personal narrative analysis is used to study the material. The primary material consists of six autobiographies. Other personal accounts, government reports, contemporary newspaper articles and secondary research literature are used as complementary material. Both Northern Ireland and the United States were characterised by horizontal inequality. In Northern Ireland, however, inequality was not only socio-economic but also more clearly political. Movement fragmentation, rivalry and violent outbidding also had a significant impact on the escalation of conflict. Violent protest seems to be more likely to emerge in places where the level of state repression is not the harshest imaginable, but where opportunities to demand change through litigation are nonetheless limited. How state authorities then react to protests has significant impact on whether further radicalisation takes place. Overt, dramatic and widely publicised repression usually backfires, weakening the peaceful segments of the movement while strengthening the radical fringes. Violence tends to escalate if the conditions are such that there is acceptance of violent protest among wider population and especially if groups in these conditions end up competing with one another through violent outbidding. Any country’s best preventive measure against political violence is to reinforce its legitimacy through genuinely democratic and liberal practices both in its domestic affairs and its foreign relations.