The comprehensive literature review has shown that a culture of political viol-ence is a forceful but understudied issue. Although most of the works under scrutiny have been neither widely cited nor commonly known, their elaboration has allowed us to see the broad range of promising scientific approaches towards the use of the term in empirical studies. The analysis of its definitions, classifica-tion schemes, and explanatory frameworks considering it to be either the explaining indicator or the indicator to be explained has uncovered the methodo-logical challenges for the researchers who might want to employ them effect-ively to their empirical studies. Indeed, this research has made use of its exploratory and explanatory potential by developing a theoretical framework of a culture of political violence and putting it into work on the research field of stakeholders of the post- 2008 anti- austerity movements in the member states of the Eurozone.
The hard core structuring and organizing the theoretical framework is the cat-egory of a culture of political violence defined as a paradigm of using political violence in a political structure, which is determined by the temporal, subject, and subject matter indicators. This paradigm indicates who takes advantage of the use of political violence, what their mutual legitimation to the use is, how they justify and account for the deployment, what forms of violence they employ, and how intense physical political violence is. The definition has been a foundation of an original conceptual framework applicable to describe and analyze cultures of political violence. The model, however, may and should be refined according to state of the art and empirical demands of particular research fields to enhance its empirical effectiveness.
The application of the conceptual framework of a culture of political violence to the empirical study enabled us to verify the first main hypothesis. When the post- 2008 anti- austerity movements acted, their cultures of political violence were undifferentiated in the political subjects that employed violence to achieve political goals over the duration of the movements. They were, nevertheless, diversified with respect to the values of its remaining four essential features:
mutual legitimation to use political violence, modes of the legitimation of the perpetration, the intensity of the use of physical political violence, and forms of political violence.
DOI: 10.4324/9781351205757-6
Furthermore, the structure of the conceptual framework allowed us to approach the problem of a classification scheme in a qualitatively different manner than social movements have been addressed thus far. The simultaneous and joint application of the five critical criteria paved the way for the typology which consists of seven patterns of a culture of political violence: placidly observing, placidly rationalizing, hector- consenting, hector- acknowledgement, indulgingly militant, obstreperously militant, and aggressively militant. The qualitative comparative analysis enabled us to identify similarities and differ-ences between them and contributed to our knowledge of the variety of the cul-tures of political violence among stakeholders of the anti- austerity movements in the member states of the Eurozone.
The analysis has shown that whereas the hector- led and militant types pre-vailed on the European political scene, the peaceful patterns were in the minority. It indicates the constantly developing civil society willingly deploys physical force to perform its political goals. Worth pursuing are, therefore, studies on the mechanisms and dynamics of radicalization and deradicalization of not only terrorist groups but also a priori non- violent interest groups.
This part of the study might be criticized for not providing a detailed descrip-tion of some events under scrutiny, which the method of observadescrip-tion would have allowed to generate. If the research had not been conducted from the ex- post 2008–2015 anti- austerity mass political mobilization perspective, it would have offered a detail- rich presentation of the activities of the anti- austerity movements in which their stakeholders engaged. Then, the presentation of the cultures of political violence would have been more vivid. The goal of the chapter was not, however, to describe public actions of political subjects in the times of austerity.
Much more important was to glean the pieces of data relevant, necessary, and sufficient to verify the hypothesis. Therefore, mass media conceptual qualitative content analysis has been carried out.
The content analysis of the existing written sources allowed us to access the information concerning the inevitably bygone past. They were nonreactive and did not influence the researcher. Nevertheless, we should keep in mind a poten-tially selective continuance of the sources. The authors of sources might not have captured some pieces of information relevant to the cultures of political violence. They also might have decided to publish some news due to such reasons as political correctness, mass media profile, or particular interest, and ignore other facts, which contributes to the effect of media attention. We cannot sweep aside misinterpretation of events and their actors by a journalist. Further-more, the sources are incomplete due to the archival longevity of particular titles.
Their content may be partial, inaccurate, and inadvertently or deliberately distor-tional (Basu 2017; Raynor 2016). The researcher’s unintended misinterpretation, interpretation, or omission of some details might have undermined the research results as well. Data are inherently composite if we take a look at the content of all the sources needed to verify the hypothesis as a whole.
The substantive information, the pieces of data from public, commercial, and social media often differed widely in the number, for instance, of political
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subjects involved in anti- austerity events, detained, arrested, and injured, the types of objects deployed as weapons, the narratives developed by political sub-jects, the tenor of their activities, and the intensity of physical political violence.
Not to contribute to the conclusion contorting and thus undermining research results, the study excogitates analytical tools by excluding from the subject matter field the potential distortion factors which were not necessary to examine cultures of political violence.
The researcher devised data by applying the conceptual framework to approach the cultures of political violence methodically, systematically, and intersubjectively. Additionally, she took measures to verify if data are reliable because there was no practical alternative to the sources. First, she confronted all the details relevant to determine the patterns of a culture of political violence from the media with other media information from at least five different sources published in native for the states and foreign languages. Thus, the researcher rejected the unsubstantiated claims of journalists. Second, she sent official letters to the police stations located in the states involved in the research to request for documentation of police and riot police actions and statistics from December 1, 2007 to December 31, 2015.
In contrast to the first highly effective precaution measure, the second was only moderately effective. On the one hand, the data from police stations allowed us to verify the solidity of the data concerning Estonia, Germany, Slov-enia, and Spain due to the information facilitated by the Police and Border Guard Board (Guralnik 2017), the Federal Police (Müsgen 2017), the Slovenian National Police (Durić and Žibret 2017), and the Spanish National Police (Horsman 2017) respectively. Thus, data considerably contributed to the hypo-thesis verification and accelerated the discovery process. On the other hand, a number of the police stations that decided to provide the pieces of data was rel-atively low. The Polícia de Segurança from Portugal refused to send the requested data for undetermined legal reasons (Freitas 2017). In similar tone was the response of the Federal Police from Austria that claimed they did not have the competence to make data available (Jedelsky 2017). The Politie from the Netherlands denied access to the police information by quoting having other pri-orities in their work (Politie 2017). Irish An Garda Síochána referred the researcher to the Garda Research Unit which, in turn, after asking the researcher for completion of an application form for access to data, stated that the unit must prioritize operational requests for data and did not provide the access (Copeland 2017a, 2017b; Kavanagh 2017). The Hellenic Police from Greece declined to answer the request because of its “unclear substance” (General Policing Division 2017). Finally, the other police entities from Belgium, Finland, France, Slovakia, and Italy took a rain check.
Additionally, guided by the research problem and emerging directions in the analysis, the researcher collected a set by set of data. According to the principle of theoretical sampling, the theoretical developments that occurred in an analysis of previously gathered data led the following stages of data collection. The cycle of alternation between data collection and analysis did not stop at two repetitions
but continued until theoretical saturation was gained: in other words, until new pieces of data were not introducing the exemplifications of new theoretical ele-ments but instead were confirming what the research already discovered.
The media discourse was crucial to establish what stakeholders of the anti- austerity movements acted in the given set of states and to make sense of the structures of relationships between them. The analysis of data enabled us also to formulate arguments concerning mutual legitimation of political subjects to commit political violence. Information was accessible about the details of how political subjects reacted to the misuse and perpetration of mental, and active and passive physical violence and to what extent they were prone to accept each other’s violent behavior. It was used to place the cases on the continuum estab-lished by the maximum extent and the total lack of mutual legitimation. Further-more, data provided us with information on how political subjects explained and justified their violent action, which was vital to explore modes of the legitima-tion of the use of political violence. The intensity of physical political violence was tough to measure because of limited data. The information was, however, adequate to observe if the threat and active physical force were in use, if political subjects crossed the qualitative line between active and passive physical viol-ence within a political structure, and, if so, which stakeholders of the anti- austerity movements did so. It enabled us to place the cases on the continuum determined by constant and maximally intense use of political violence and its abandonment. Although the fragmentariness of data inhibited the comprehensive assessment of how political subjects deployed mental political violence, it proved to be sufficient to estimate the general types of configurations of forms of political violence. The evaluation of if and how political subjects made use of mental, passive and active physical violence served to locate the cases on the continuum determined by soft and hard power approaches.
Police data was of equal relevance to the media discourse in achieving plausi-bility of the process of theoretical sampling through theoretical saturation. It showed how police stations legitimated their use of political violence springing from political roles and its actual usage over anti- austerity events. The discursive creation indicated how a particular type of representatives of state apparatuses accounted for and justified their aggressive behavior. It also neatly revealed how and to what extent they delegitimated the perpetration of political violence by movement participants. The police perspective allowed us to complete data from the media discourse to evaluate mutual legitimation of political subjects to act violently. Thereby, it contributed to locating the cases on the continuum deter-mined by the maximum extent and the total lack of mutual legitimation. Further-more, it was useful to identify and elaborate the modes of the legitimation of the use of political violence. The properties of authorization and rationalization were stated by policemen, and as such, they provided details relevant to apply effect-ively Theo van Leeuwen’s typology of legitimation (2007, 92) to the analysis of the cultures of political violence.
The existing data were, however, insufficient to adopt a more specific tool to identify and compare modes of the legitimation of the use of political violence.
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Van Leeuwen’s typology of legitimation (2007, 92), which consists of authoriza-tion, moralizaauthoriza-tion, rationalizaauthoriza-tion, and mythopoesis, allowed us to analyze how political subjects justified and accounted for resorting to violent means while they were creating relationships within political structures. It turned out, however, to be moderately vulnerable to observe any critical differences between political discourses. Although it appeared useful to determine three general clus-ters of the modes, two of them contained no more than one case. Whereas in Slovakia, the configuration of authorization and rationalization occurred, in Estonia, the set of authorization, rationalization, and mythopoesis was in use.
The variety of the cultures of political violence in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Greece, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Portugal, Slovenia, and Italy shared authorization, rationalization, and moralization but the character of the three- element set for particular types remained unapproached. Future studies should put emphasis on how to deal with the similarities and dissimilari-ties of the placid, hector- led, and militant patterns in the discursive creation of justification and explanation of the deployment of political violence. The restricted choice of methods applicable to generate useful data and the existing evidence makes this challenge demanding.
One may argue against the comprehensiveness of the research by claiming that it has not dealt with mental political violence in depth, or it has understudied the types of relationships between representatives of state apparatuses and move-ment participants (della Porta and Reiter 1998; Tarrow 2012). The counter-argument is that protest policing has not been the exact research field, even if it potentially might have enriched the view of the cultures of political violence.
Moreover, the intensity of mental political violence might have been examined like physical political violence. However, it would be hardly possible to generate necessary and sufficient data to identify and compare the extents of intensity from the ex- post facto perspective. For instance, it is hindered to determine an extent of the vulgarity of verbal and non- verbal communication used during austerity protests and other collective actions initiated by movements’ stake-holders because of the elusive nature of their physical media such as banners or comments on web pages. No database contains information on the key features of the category exemplifications which emerged in social media. The chance of studying this aspect of a culture of political violence should not be abandoned in planning future studies if data are accessible. Overall, the validity of the research results may and ought to be discussed critically as long as it leads us to the development of the field.
Criticism may also flow directly from the thesis of the research that a culture of political violence is a forceful theoretical category to explore and explain violent behavior in austerity- driven Europe. The thesis circumscribed the scope of the tested theories to those literally coping with a culture of political violence.
On the one side, the assumption has established what explanatory frameworks are to be verified, which spawned a more intersubjective selection of theories than any other criterion. On the other side, it inevitably left several potentially forceful theories behind. It would be particularly interesting to see in future
research how the theoretical approaches concerning a culture of violence, not only and exactly political violence, compete while explaining why some anti- austerity movements turned to violence and others did not (Rak 2017b). The research perspective of cultures of violence deals with a question of why soci-eties are more or less violent, and it may challenge a researcher to adopt a broader understanding of violence that may carry a political meaning but do not have to be political by its very nature.
Furthermore, although an attempt to include political culture in the studies on a culture of political violence occurred in the specialist literature, the causal rela-tion suggested by its author has not been empirically confirmed by this study.
Social science methods do not offer a reliable means to assess the direction of influence in the relationships between those two categories. It may be of import-ance in the field to look at political culture as a theoretical category and use it to examine the differences and similarities within political structures created by stakeholders of anti- austerity movements and, then, to explain sources and con-sequences of different patterns of political cultures. A relationship between the categories and the empirical expressions of a culture of political violence and political culture is still puzzling.
It may also be analytically challenging to determine the categories of nar-rower and broader semantic fields than a culture of political violence, and verify their empirical effectiveness by following the methodological assumptions pro-posed in his research changed in the core category organizing a research process.
The second main hypothesis relates to what accounts for a culture of political violence. The research tested the explanatory frameworks identified in the liter-ature review by using statistical analysis, causal- process observation, and critical argumentation. The current theories of cultures of political violence have informed the research process. On the one hand, the study has shown that the existing explanatory frameworks to a low extent explain why stakeholders of the post- 2008 anti- austerity movements had the particular patterns of a culture of political violence. On the other, it has established a new avenue into accounting for the sources of their diversity.
The particular configurations of the explaining indicators have turned out to have greater explanatory power than individual indicators or their full fixed sets.
Interestingly, the combo of the intrastate, regional, and colonial indicators is not applicable to explain the diversity of the cultures of political violence because there is no significant statistical correlation between the variables. Nonetheless, the Negussay Ayele proposal has an explanatory potential. Although it is not a major issue if the three indicators originate in a state in the fixed set, it matters in what configuration its components emerge. In this case, the correlation coeffi-cient equals 0.651, indicating a strong positive linear correlation and letting us see that the coefficient is significantly different from 0. The Sig. 2-tailed level is 0.012, which is substantially lower than 0.05 and proves a statistically significant correlation. The research has indicated that if in the history of a state both the intrastate and colonial indicators occur as well as the regional one does not take place, it is probable that placid cultures of political violence originate in the
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state. More violent patterns show up in the states where the intrastate indicator appears. This feature typifies hector- led and militant types, but it is the only feature that characterizes the former. The latter may also originate in the states where the full set of the intrastate, colonial, and regional indicators or just the configuration of the intrastate and regional made an appearance in the state history. In one state, however, no indicator occurred, which undermines the
state. More violent patterns show up in the states where the intrastate indicator appears. This feature typifies hector- led and militant types, but it is the only feature that characterizes the former. The latter may also originate in the states where the full set of the intrastate, colonial, and regional indicators or just the configuration of the intrastate and regional made an appearance in the state history. In one state, however, no indicator occurred, which undermines the