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Friday, March 16th, 2007
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6:29p - Review Note on Why Men Rebel by Ted Robert Gurr
Research Questions
In Why Men Rebel, Gurr attempts to answer three basic questions on political violence – what the psychological and social sources of the potential for collective violence are, what determines the extent to which that potential focused on the political system, and what societal conditions affect the magnitude, form and consequences of violence.
Theoretical context
According to Gurr, many scholars have undergone studies on riots, rebellions and revolutions, but many of the cases are studied from a historical perspective. There have been few experimental studies dealing with social-psychological mechanisms of collective violence, as well as few attempts to build an empirical theory about psychological and social factors of collective violence. More importantly, political violence in the non-Western world gets relatively little attention, but many of them are in fact destructive conflicts. Therefore, Gurr describes his work as a theory-building process, while adopting more cases and experience from the non-Western world.
Key concept: political violence
Before explaining Gurr’s theoretical framework, the concept of political violence has to be defined. For political violence, he refers to all collective attacks within a political community against the political regime, its actors or its policies. There are three categories of political violence, including turmoil, conspiracy and internal war. Turmoil is relatively spontaneous, unorganized political violence with substantial popular participation. Conspiracy is highly organized with limited participation. Internal war is also highly organized, but it involves widespread popular participation, and is designed to overthrow the regime or dissolve the state and accompanied by extensive violence.
Main arguments
In general, Gurr claims that rebellions are not free of cost. They consume both men and resources. Therefore, rebellions are often developed with some psychological and social factors, and these factors affect the actual result of the rebellion.
Gurr suggests that political violence arises from the development of discontent, and the discontent is then actualized into violent actions against political objects and actors. Different magnitude and forms of political violence depend on the varying degree of the potential of political violence. Therefore, he has developed a model which is comprised of three variables – the potential for collective violence, the potential for political violence, and the magnitude of political violence.
In Gurr’s model, the potential for collective violence originates from the discontent of the people, namely the relative deprivation (RD). RD, more precisely, refers to actors’ perception of discrepancy between their value expectations and their value capabilities. They fail to get something which they think they ought to have, and are capable of getting and keeping. The average intensity of RD and the scope of RD among the people become the psychological and social determinants of the potential respectively.
Whether the potential for collective violence would be directed towards the political regime and its policy depends on a number of factors, such as the regime’s responsiveness to the RD, past experience of the dissidents of dealing with their RD, and the symbols of RD carried in the media. For example, if the regime is responsive to the RD, its legitimacy will be enhanced, and the likelihood for the further development of the potential will be reduced. If the regime is not responsive, and if the dissidents enable to learn from history and realize their value expectation with symbols carried in the media, further mobilizations of dissidents and political violence will be more possible.
Gurr also suggests that the magnitude of political violence would be the greatest when the coercive control and institutional support of the dissidents are approximately equal with those of the regime. Forms of violence vary with different scopes and types of RD, while different scopes and types of RD determine the motives of rebellion of the dissidents.
Methodology
While this is an empirical study, Gurr has used multiple methods including survey, case studies and systematic inference from narrative and aggregate statistical data to figure out major determinants of relative deprivation and the potential for collective violence. For psychological determinants of the potential for political violence, interviews and survey have been conducted; content analysis of doctrinal appeals and evaluation of political support for the regime have been applied for social and historical determinants. Gurr has also compared the magnitude and form of political violence generated from different levels of potential of political violence by comparative case studies.
Main Cases
Gurr has used four cases of rebellion to illustrate the relationship between RD and the outcome of the rebellion. First, the conditions of black Americans in the early and mid-1960s approximate the model of turmoil. Second, the dissidence occurred in Cuba in 1957 fits into the model of conspiracy. Third, the case of the “revolution” in Egypt in 1952 illustrates the situation which is between conspiracy and internal war. Lastly, the French general strike in 1968 illustrates one which is between turmoil and internal war.
Comments
Gurr has demonstrated the way to build a theory, for example, to set up hypotheses and variables step-by-step, and to figure out causal mechanisms. From his model, it is clear that he is in the resource-mobilization paradigm, which takes strategic interactions and cost-and-benefit calculations of utmost importance. However, I think the model is not sufficient to explain activisms arise from ultimate desperation, in which people actually are prepared to sacrifice everything.
current mood:  rushed (comment on this)
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10:50p
好悶，冇心機。躺在沙發上不想動。似乎又對《陀槍師姐》失去興趣，點算，唔通真係紅場。
(comment on this)
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