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The Politics of Collective Violence

16 Dec 2022 - 04 Nov 2026
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    • book by Charles Tilly, introduced the useful concept of "violence entrepeneurs".
    • Let's have a summary for the lazy (me)
      • Ask Claude
        • Here's a combined summary of both:

        • The Politics of Collective Violence — Charles Tilly (2003)

        • Core thesis:
        • Collective violence is complicated, changeable, and unpredictable in some regards, yet results from similar causes variously combined in different times and places.
        • Crucially, collective violence "emerges from the ebb and flow of collective claim making and struggles for power" — it weaves in and out of politics and cannot be separated from it.
        • What triggers violence?
        • The activation of latent political identities that separate people into "us" and "them" often triggers violence — but it emerges less from preexisting hatred than from sudden uncertainties and shifting social conditions, particularly the declining capacity of authorities to enforce agreements or police existing boundaries.
        • Key mechanisms:
        • The book identifies mechanisms including "category formation," "boundary activation," "polarization," and "brokerage" as drivers of collective violence.
        • Violence entrepreneurs:
        • The argument underscores the importance of collective action, organization, and the behavior of political brokers and violent entrepreneurs in shaping outcomes both in contentious politics generally and in collective violence specifically.
        • These entrepreneurs wield significant influence over the presence, absence, form, loci, and intensity of collective violence.
        • Concretely, at the intersection of high coordination and high salience we find leaders of mercenaries, international weapons merchants, regional warlords, military rulers, and political figures who dispose of their own armed force.
        • Importantly, political entrepreneurs often promote collective violence when a cool reading of their whole constituency's interest prescribes disbanding, escaping, or lying low
        • — i.e., violence serves their interests, not necessarily those of the groups they claim to represent.
        • Government matters:
        • Tilly is unbending and persuasive in his view that undemocratic regimes directly foster collective violence, even though he tends toward a pessimistic view that any politics generates some form of violence.
        • Collective violence rises to the extent that violent specialists escape democratic civilian control.

        • The Blog Post: Nonviolence Entrepreneurs (Omniorthogonal, 2009)

        • The blogger applies Tilly's concept in reverse. Violence entrepreneurs "specialize in building boundaries, polarizing populations, and heightening conflict." The post then asks: what about people doing the opposite?
        • The occasion is the documentary Encounter Point, about Israeli and Palestinian activists — bereaved parents, ex-prisoners, former settlers — who work to build dialogue and reduce hatred. The blogger notes one activist's insight that cuts to the heart of Tilly's concept: "The politicians want to use our grief as an excuse for further violence" — a direct recognition that prolonging conflict is in some people's interests.
        • The key question the post raises: what would it take for nonviolence entrepreneurs to prevail over violence entrepreneurs, given that the latter have strong structural incentives working in their favor?