Collective Violence and Post-Conflict Reconciliation

Are violence and violent struggle part of ordinary politics? The answer to this question has a profound impact upon the way that we view protest activity and the actions of states; it affects the way that we understand struggles for greater rights, struggles for power, and the resolution of those struggles. This course challenges the assumption that violence is simply the end of politics by investigating the uses of violence as an integral part of political processes from the repression of demonstrations to war and terrorism. We investigate central questions concerning the role of violence and its short-term impact upon politics. What leads states to choose war or organizations to choose violent means to press their demands? Under what conditions will nonviolent movement tactics be most effective? Under what conditions do actors tend to move toward violence? Are states losing their relative monopoly on violence? These questions are central not only to important theoretical and philosophical debates but, in the current political climate, increasingly to pressing policy discussions and crucial political and humanitarian choices. How we, both as individuals and as the United States, view violence and how we respond to it can have dramatic consequences for international relations, for states, and for their citizens around the world. We will also investigate a range of theoretical perspectives on the aftermath of collective violence from truth commissions and international criminal tribunals, to local courts and community-based justice mechanisms, and to the international politics of memory, forgetting, and apology.  Prior coursework in the social sciences is required.