Tilly, Charles (2003). The Politics of Collective Violence. Cambridge: CUP, pp. 130-276.

In the first part of the book, Tilly draw the conceptual and theoretical background of the
collective violence. He presented mechanism, processes, actors and their roles. He categorized
collective violence under six categories based on coordination and salience features in two-
dimensional diagram. Then, he examined the first two types of the collective violence in
details. In the rest of the book, he examines the characteristics of other four types with
historical examples, mechanisms that generates these types and how they switch to other
types, their relations with government capacity and democratic regimes. At the end of the
book, he concluded with the conclusion chapter.

In the Chapter 6, Tilly examines opportunism. Tilly located opportunism into the center right
section of his diagram as high salience with low to medium levels of coordination. According
to Tilly, in order to be qualify a violence as opportunism depends on (a) how salient the
damage is in all interactions between perpetrators and recipients of violence and (b) how
much coordination links the performers of violence.

The examples are hijacking, kidnapping, hostage taking, carjacking, looting, rape, and small-
scale vengeance, piracy, enslavement, and gang rapes.

The mechanisms generating opportunism are activation of available us–them boundaries;

response to weakened, distracted, or failed repression; signaling spirals; selective retaliation
for previously experienced wrongs. Then, Tilly examines the Hutu and Tutsi conflicts of
Rwanda between 1990 and 1994 as a case study and presents mechanism.

Moreover, for Tilly, government capacity determines the character of opportunism.

Democratic regimes inhibit opportunistic violence due to having relatively broad and equal
rights, equal protection, and responsive government. On the contrary, low-capacity
undemocratic regimes suffer the most from opportunistic violence because violent specialists
to can take advantage of the government’s lack of control.
In the Chapter 7, Tilly examines brawls. Brawls located into low-coordination, and high-
salience collective violence. According to Tilly, collective violence qualifies as brawling
when, within a previously nonviolent gathering, two or more persons begin attacking each
other or each other’s property. Compare to violent rituals brawls have less coordination. All
six mechanisms (boundary activation and deactivation, polarization, competitive display,
monitoring, containment, and certification–decertification) he presented in violent rituals also
occur in brawls but the first three (activation, polarization, and competitive display) on a
smaller scale and more intermittently than in violent rituals. The last three (monitoring,
containment, and certification–decertification) depend on and constitute high levels of
coordination.

According to Tilly, brawls emerge when activation, polarization, competitive display, and
signaling spirals begin in the absence of monitoring, containment, and certification. Brawls
can easily shift to other types of collective violence especially into opportunism or even
coordinated destruction with the increase in levels of coordination. These switches mostly
occur when one of the parts are violent specialists.

Tilly demonstrates brawls in many cases, but especially twentieth-century English and
eighteenth-century French (Ménétra case). Furthermore, Tilly also emphasize that in the most
cases brawls have less evidence due to problems of documentation and problems of
distinction.

In the Chapter 8, Tilly examines scattered attacks. Scattered attacks located in the low-level
coordination and low salience. There are three main types of scattered attacks: skirmishes
(where two or more participating parties are more or less evenly matched, and nonviolent
interaction generates occasional violence), shows of force(where two or more participating
parties are more or less evenly matched, and nonviolent interaction generates occasional
violence), and resistance (where one party enjoys the preponderance of force but now the
other side responds to its demands or interventions with intermittent, dispersed damage).

Compare to other forms, scattered attacks occur more frequently when violent specialists do
not initiate the doing of damage, when relations among the parties are relatively stable, when
stakes of the outcome for the parties are fairly low, and when third parties are present.
Examples are sabotage, scattered clandestine attacks on symbolic objects or places, assaults of
governmental agents, and person.

The mechanisms and processes those cause to scattered attacks are network-based escalation,
setting-based activation, signaling, polyvalent performance, selective retaliation for
previously experienced wrongs.

Scattered attacks can switch into other forms with the combination of these mechanisms and
processes more. With the increase in salience and coordination, scattered attacks can shift
toward opportunism or coordinated destruction especially when political entrepreneurs or
violent specialists join the action on either side. Tilly defines scattered attacks and
coordination destruction as not a twin but at first cousins: two concatenations of similar
mechanisms that produce somewhat different outcomes.

According to Tilly, scattered attacks concentrate in undemocratic regimes because oppressed

parties have fewer alternatives and potential allies than in democratic regimes. They also
occur more frequently when regime capacity is changing rapidly. While rapid increases in
capacity threats group survival, rapid decreases in capacity signal the vulnerability of
authorities to forms of resistance.

Tilly regards scattered attacks as weapons of the weak and includes terrorism into this form of
collective violence. He also gives examples of peasant resistance to landlords and
governments in Southeast Asia, Iran Revolution, Barcelona’s Tragic Week of 1909, Swing
Rebellion in Great Britain from 1758 to 1834, Chinese Tiananmen crisis, Romanesque
Violence in France’s Piedmont region east of the Rhone during 1579 and 1580.

In the Chapter 9, Tilly examines broken negotiations. Tilly located broken negotiations into
the upper left-hand corner with medium-high on coordination and relatively low on salience.

to medium-high levels of coordination and relatively low salience of damage across all the
relevant interactions. Broken negotiations occur when one or more parties respond by actions
that damage persons and/or objects in a generated resistance or rivalry.

Compare to other forms, nonviolent interactions occupy a significantly higher proportion of

the social process in broken negotiations. Parties in broken negotiations are carrying on a
relatively organized nonviolent interchange that produces collective violence as a by-product.
Tilly includes demonstrations, governmental repression and military coups into this category.

Mechanisms and processes causing violent breaks in negotiations include the old standbys
brokerage, certification– decertification, polarization, and network activation, as well as
newcomer object shift.

While broken negotiations shift into scattered attacks when decline in coordination, it shifts
into coordinated destruction with increase in salience. While shift from scattered attacks to
broken negotiations results from mechanisms such as network-based escalation, setting-based
activation, and brokerage, shift from broken negotiations to coordinated destruction results
from causal mechanisms such as activating available boundaries, stories, and relations.

According to Tilly, broken negotiations more occur in undemocratic regimes since democratic
regimes allow and tolerate for nonviolent collective claims – for example by petitioning,
shaming, marching, voting, boycotting, striking, forming special-interest associations, and
issuing public messages. Yet, even in democratic regimes, such forms of collective claim
occasionally generate open violence.

Tilly examines cases such as Narayanpur village in India, British and North American
activists of the 1760s and 1770s, demonstration in France, demonstration against taxation in
Europe and China, the Vendee during 1791 and 1792.

As a conclusion, Tilly examines collective violence as a part of contentious politics. He

analyzes the causes, mechanism and process that generate collective violence and cause
variation and change in different forms of collective violence. As well as the role of the
political entrepreneurs and violence specialist. Tilly claims that understanding causes and
change and variation of collective violence of will help us to minimize the damage that human
beings inflict on each other.

The main argument of the Tilly is that collective violence varies systematically with
government capacity and political regimes. He argues that collective violence mostly in low-
capacity undemocratic regimes. Regime differences determine the character and intensity of
collective violence in several distinct ways:
 - By establishing prescribed, tolerated, and forbidden forms of public claim making,
thereby shaping both occasions for violent encounters and opportunities for nonviolent
alternatives;
- By facilitating, tolerating, and repressing different categories of political actors and
thus offering threats and opportunities to different segments of the population;
- By creating, controlling, co-opting, and/or deploying violent specialists;
- By appropriating, protecting, redistributing, or ignoring valuable resources that are
subject to exploitation and opportunity hoarding.

I have no additional responses or criticisms to the last week response paper.

However, when we evaluate the Tilly’s book in terms of first week readings, Tilly concentrate
on mechanisms and causal explanations. Rather than larger theory, he prefers small size
causal explanations. He can be regarded as pragmatist.