GVPT 280 Chapter Notes - Chapter Week 11: Secret Police, Russian National Unity, Meddle
28 Nov 2018
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Institutional explanations: recall that an institution is a self-perpetuating organization or pattern of activity that is valued for its own sake; they may be either political, economic, or social. Institutional explanations may be based on either a constraining or enabling argument. Institutions may contain values or norms that implicitly or explicitly encourage violence: they may also provoke violence by constraining human activities, political institutions that limit power-sharing may provoke marginalization, polarization, and conflict. Ideational explanations: the word ideational means dealing with ideas . Comparing explanations of political violence: each explanation differs in its treatment of free will. Institutional explanations are deterministic, seeing people as shaped and directed by structures over which they have no control. Individual explanations place their focus on people as the primary makers of violence because they choose to be. Ideational explanations lie in between because ideas are influenced by institutions but also taken up and molded by individuals: another concerns universalism vs particularism.
