Tony Castagno
9 November 2012
Professor Hawkins
Pl Sc 150
Blog
8: Categorizing Political Violence
When
categorizing political violence there are four main types to choose from:
Interstate war, civil war, revolutions, or terrorism. These topics and definitions can be broad
when looking at specific individual cases.
I will categorize the political violence that took place and is still
taking place surrounding the Arab Spring and the democratization of Egypt.
The
history of the Arab Spring in Egypt began in January in 2011(UCDP, 2012). After witnessing the Tunisian demonstrations
and the fall of their president, Egypt began protesting against their own
dictator Hosni Mubarak. Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians came out in public
protest against their government. They
were met with harsh resistance and over the course of the year; hundreds of
people had lost their lives. Things
turned in favor for the protestors when the government military force turned
and sided with the protestors. Mubarak
was forced from power and the Egyptian government is still in the process of
holding elections and democratizing the government they currently have (UCDP,
2012).
When
reading about the Arab Spring in Egypt, one would automatically think that this
is classified as political violence.
Though it has aspects of the definitions of political violence,
according to Samuels, it really is not.
Political violence is defined as, “the use of force by states or
non-state actors to achieve political goals”(Samuels, 2012). Along with the general definition, the
Egyptian rising may be considered a revolution.
Samuels definition of Revolutions is “armed conflicts within a sovereign
state between insurgents and the state, in which both the insurgents and the
state claim the allegiance of a significant proportion of the population;
authority over the state is forcibly transferred from the state to the
insurgents, and the insurgents subsequently bring about wholesale political
change” (2012). Though the Egyptian revolution was not nearly as drastic as
this definition may seem, many of the causes of revolutions were present within
Egypt such as state weakness and widespread popular grievances. The Egyptian
incident wasn’t as bloody and the French Revolution or as large as the American
Revolution, but a democracy is beginning to grow from the actions of the
citizens in Egypt.
Though
Samuels definitions can be used to define revolutions and political violence,
his definitions seem to require more drastic violence and bloodshed to actually
count for anything. That doesn’t seem
fair to the people of Egypt who truly made a huge leap is defending their
rights and defying a vicious dictator.
REFERENCES
Department
of Peace and Conflict Research. UCDP conflict encyclopedia: Egypt. http://www.ucdp.uu.se/gpdatabase/info/Egypt%20and%20the%20Arab%20Spring.pdf
(accessed November 9, 2012).
Samuels, David J.
2012. Political violence. In Comparative politics, 257. New York City: Pearson.
Very interesting. I like how you talked about how his definition requires a lot of bloodshed, but that may not always be the case.
ReplyDeleteGood contrast with the American and French Reovlutions
ReplyDeleteI think you're right about Egypt, although the broader Arab Spring has certainly involved a lot of violence. For example, the Libyan civil war and killing of Muammar Gaddafi.
ReplyDelete