Political Violence and Conflict in Comparative Context

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

IT - Trinity College - Dublin (Political Science/POU 33102): How, and to what end, is violence practiced? When do political actors resort to violence over a peaceful solution to conflict? Why are some societies prone to political violence, while others are not? Why do individuals participate in collective violence? How, if at all, do the perpetrators of political violence justify their actions? And how, and under what conditions, does violence end? Drawing on major theoretical approaches to the explanation of violence, we apply various theoretical frameworks to an empirical examination of political violence across a range of comparative cases. We explore how and to what extent the major approaches in the scholarship explain the reality of conflict in different regional, cultural, and historical contexts.