Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State

Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State Synopsis

This book presents empirical research on the nature and structure of political violence. While most studies of social movements focus on single - nations, Donatella della Porta uses a comparative research design to analyse movements in two countries - Italy and Germany - from the 1960s to the 1990s. Through extensive usage of official documents and in-depth interviews, della Porta is able to explain the actors' construction of external political reality. The empirical data are used to build a middle-range theory of political violence that incorporates an analysis of the interactions between social movements and the state at the macro-level, an analysis of the development of radical organizations as entrepreneurs for political violence at the meso-level, and an analysis of the construction of 'militant' identities and countercultures at the micro-level.