Peaceful political actors can legitimize violence by their co-ethnics without direct causal linkage.
Evidence
Although they may differ in methodology, peaceful actors may stand to benefit from the actions of their violent peers. Wittingly or unwittingly, ostensibly peaceful actors can contribute to an atmosphere in which violence is legitimized. This violence may then destabilize the peace process by goading opponents into an overreaction and making peace negotiations an impossibility. For example, the continued use of derogatory language to depict outgroup members may create conditions in which it is permissible to launch attacks but to justify such attacks as defensive or pre-emptive (Anand, 2005). Of course it is usually impossible to make direct causal linkages between a seemingly peaceful political act, such as a speech, and an act of violence. In some cases, outbidders may be able to maintain a Janus-faced position of publicly abhorring violence by fellow in-group members but privately acknowledging that such violence may help their common cause. — Cathy Gormley-Heenan and Roger Macginty, Ethnic Outbidding and Party…, 61
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The Janus-faced co-benefit mechanism between peaceful politicians and violent co-ethnics is a subtle, durable analytic point about how ethnic outbidders exploit violence without endorsing it.
- XREF: Connects to the threatened-privilege/outbidding literature and to Horowitz’s classic work on ethnic outbidding, plus the Kenya/Zambia authoritarian comparison case for regime-type contrast. — connects to: Kin solidarity, not ideology, dictates who condemns violence in civilizational conflicts; Belief content may not cause intergroup violence; solidarity may instead. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 532
Broader Connections
- Belief content may not cause intergroup violence; solidarity may instead.
#corroborates(0.85) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 532 - Kin solidarity, not ideology, dictates who condemns violence in civilizational conflicts
#expands(0.82)