The Historical Roots of Political Violence
Revolutionary Terrorism in Affluent Countries

Offers the first comprehensive analysis of the wave of revolutionary terrorism in affluent countries.

Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca (Author)

9781108482769, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 June 2019

296 pages, 18 b/w illus. 27 tables
23.5 x 15.9 x 2 cm, 0.56 kg

'In summary, this book is truly a tour de force, highly recommended for experts on the matter and for those who wonder about the crossover between the right methodology to analyse long term processes, ideas, culture, institutions and specific facts that give results where luck and the individual and collective actions are also involved.' Carmen Lopez Alonso, Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas

Following the protest movements and radicalism of the late sixties, many affluent countries experienced lethal revolutionary terrorism. Groups like the Red Brigades in Italy and the Red Army Faction in Germany provoked political crises in their countries. Other affluent countries, however, did not experience this same kind of violence. This book offers a historical-comparative explanation of this cross-national variation, focusing on the development paths followed by countries during the interwar period. The countries that followed a non-liberal path (marked by anarchist terrorism, democratic breakdowns, civil wars, land inequality, non-liberal capitalism, and late industrialization) suffered lethal left-wing terrorism decades later. Terrorism is thus explained as a feature of the political and economic system. Drawing on several fields, including comparative politics, political economy, international relations, and historical sociology, this book offers novel hypotheses about the determinants of violent conflict.

Introduction
1. The argument: from development paths in the interwar years to revolutionary terrorism in the 1970s
2. Revolutionary terrorism and its ideological roots
3. The major cases of revolutionary terrorism
4. Contemporary effects and background conditions
5. The long-term determinants of revolutionary terrorism
6. Historical mechanisms: radicalism and repression
7. Individualism, modernization and violence.

Subject Areas: Terrorism, armed struggle [JPWL], EU & European institutions [JPSN2], Comparative politics [JPB], European history [HBJD]