Choosing Violence or Nonviolence: Attractiveness and Unattractiveness
in Strategic Decision-Making
Abstract
Due to the stark distinction between the use of violent and nonviolent strategies, political
parties and terrorist groups are seldom viewed as comparable organizations. While the
first is commonly associated with the use of legitimate formal-legal strategies to obtain
its goals, the latter is generally associated with the use of violence. A historical review of
the strategies adopted by political parties and terrorist organizations in many parts of the
world exposes a discrepancy in this reasoning. In reality, a dichotomous differentiation is
incompatible with empirical evidence. An analysis of cases shows that political parties
sometimes turn to violence to achieve their goals. Likewise, terrorist groups have been
known to shift from violent to nonviolent strategies in some cases in order to function
legitimately within established political institutions. In addition, both organizations are
associated with political ambitions and the need to attract mass support. For these
reasons, we discard a dichotomous differentiation between parties and terrorist groups,
opting instead to treat both organizations as political groups that use different strategies
under different conditions. In order to detect which factors shape the strategic decisions
of political groups, we focus on the attractiveness of strategic alternatives. We present a
theoretical framework that serves as the foundation for the analysis of strategic shifts by
diverse political groups. We then test this framework using simple statistical procedures.
2
Convention