Bridge Clubs Versus The Michigan Militia: The Impact of Social Capital on Attitudes Toward Political Violence

Violent political action is a serious concern for contemporary democracies. There is growing documentation that citizens in general are becoming distrustful of government and frustrated with conventional polifics, They instead are turning to alternative, sometimes violent forms of participation. A growing body of literature suggests that high levels of social capital may foster successful democracy by promoting norms of interpersonal trust and generalized reciThis paper examines the impact of trust and civic involvement on both citizens' attitudes towards political violence and their propensity to engage in system-challenging acts. Where social capital bridges traditional ethnic, religious and familial cleavages, people are lessl ikely to support or engage in political violence. Where social capital bonds individuals to primordial loyalties, people are more likely to support using violence for political means. This article is available in Res Publica Journal of Undergraduate Research: http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/respublica/vol6/iss1/4 Bridge Clubs Versus The Michigan Militia: The Impact of Social Capital on Attitudes Toward Political Violence Terrence L. Chapman Violent political action is a serious concern for contemporary democracies. There is growing documentation that citizens in general are becoming distrustful of government and frustrated with conventional polifics, They instead are turning to alternative, sometimes violent forms of participation. A growing body of literature suggests that high levels of social capital may foster successful democracy by promoting norms of interpersonal trust and generalized reciThis paper examines the impact of trust and civic involvement on both citizens' attitudes towards political violence and their propensity to engage in system-challenging acts. Where social capital bridges traditional ethnic, religious and familial cleavages, people are lessl ikely to support or engage in political violence. Where social capital bonds individuals to primordial loyalties, people are more likely to support using violence for political means. Introduction Contemporary democracies often face the frightening prospect of violent political division. This division may manifest itself in the form of violent strikes, demonstrations, or assassinations, and has the potential to create widespread turmoil within a society. Riots in urban America during the 1960s, the indigenous uprising in Chiapas Mexico in 1994, ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflicts, poisonous gas attacks in Japanese subways, and violent world-wide protests during the past year regarding the policies of multilateral lending institutions are but a few examples of such violent, system-challenging acts. These acts disrupt peaceful democratic functioning and may carry high costs for society by disturbing economic interactions, causing the loss of human life, and creating a demand for law enforcement or military expenditure. Politically motivated violence also breeds distrust, both in fellow citizens who are committing the violence and in government institutions, upon which the difficult duty of restoring order falls. Traditional explanations have accounted for such acts in two main ways. The first, relative deprivation, views political violence as a deep-seated emotional outburst, resulting from citizens' expectations rising faster than economic realities. In Why Men Rebel Ted Gurr defines relative deprivation as a perceived discrepancy Terrence Chapman is a 2001 graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University with a Political Science major and Economics minor. A member of Pi Sigma Alpha (Political Science honorary), Omicron Delta Epsilon (Economics honorary), Phi Kappa Phi, and Phi Beta Kappa, Chapman will attend the LaFollette School Of Public Policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison beginning in the Fall of 2001. 8 Bridge Clubs Versus the Michigan Militia between "value expectations" and "value capabilities." Relative deprivation ultimately asserts that individuals who feel marginalized, who believe that they are under-privileged, ineffective, and excluded from mainstream society and institutions are more likely to engage in political violence. The second, a rational choice approach, regards political violence as a strategic, cost-benefit calculation. This approach suggests that individuals (and the groups they comprise) participate in political demonstrations, strikes, and uprisings only if they expect to profit more than they stand to lose. Individuals who are already thoroughly marginalized and have nothing to lose, who feel that their culture faces extinction or that they face barriers to conventional participation, are more likely to embrace political violence (Olson, 1965; Tullock, 197 1). Russell Dalton, in Citizen Politics, introduces a third explanation for system-challenging acts. He writes, "there is mounting new evidence ... that citizen orientations toward democratic political institutions and democratic processes are changing substantially. By the early 1990s, public trust in government hit historic lows in the public opinion polls ... this suggests that the ideals of a democratic political culture are changing" Palton, 2000). Dalton, among others, proposes a resource mobilization model that "presume(s) that political dissatisfaction and social conflicts are inherent in every society; thus the formation of social movements depends not on the existence of these interests but on the creation of organizations to mobilize this potential" (Oberschall, 1973; McCarthy & Zald, 1973; McCarthy & Zald, 1987; Jenkins, 1983; Dalton, 1990). Resource mobilization theorists do not regard challenging participation as a threat to democracy, but rather as a transitioning of democratic values. This is largely the case because resource mobilization studies focus on protest politics, strikes, and demonstrations and the citizens with the resources to engage in these forms of "protest politics." Citizens engaging in protest politics tend to be educated and affluent individuals who hold postmaterialist values (Inglehart, 1990). The political motivations for violent acts, however, are inextricably linked to system-challenging acts and changing attitudes towards "politics as usual." Unconventional political participation includes a variety of acts, not all of which pose an imminent threat to society. The following figure represents a continuum of some forms of participation. Figure 1. Continuum of Political Participation Voting Contact rep. Signing petition Strike Demonstrations Occupying a building Bombing/Assasin. Participation encompasses a broad spectrum, moving from conventional participation on the left of this continuum (voting, contacting an elected represen