There are at least two types of borderline behavior in which either both nonviolent and violent means are applied or the application of a particular means fails. An example of the first is the throwing of stones at the police by protestors during a demonstration: the activity of demonstrating indicates an application of a nonviolent means, and the activity of throwing stones at the police indicates an additional activity that involves application of physical force. An example of the second type is a person’s refraining from pulling the trigger of a gun that is pointed at a policeman: in this case, there is no application of physical force, even though, by pointing the gun at the policeman, it can be said that physical force is considered a means. Table 2 gives an overview.
Based on these considerations, nonviolent activism may include a large range of activities. What they all have in common is that they (1) exclude physical force, (2) involve goals related to the rejection of physical force and the embrace of other means instead, (3) are conducted by civil perpetrators, and (4) target the state.
The Venn diagram in Figure 1 gives an overview of the concepts discussed in this section. Specifically, it identifies various types of activities as political violence, nonviolent activism, and borderline behavior. Note that although the second type of borderline behavior does not occur, it has been placed at the intersection of political violence and nonviolent activism, because it is identifiable as borderline behavior by negating the major components of violent and nonviolent activism. Table 3 provides particular examples of activities.
Figure 1. Venn diagram of political violence, borderline behavior, and nonviolent activism.
Table 3: Examples of Political Violence, Borderline Behavior, and Nonviolent Activism
| Political violence | Borderline behavior | Nonviolent activism |
| Hatschepsut Massacre, 1997 Assassination of President Sadat, 1981 Kidnapping and shooting of the chairman of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations, Hanns-Martin Schleyer, 1977 Killing of a German police officer who wanted to check passports of members of the Red Army Faction, 1976 Attack on the building of the Berlin Law School, 1976 Kidnapping of the candidate for the mayoral elections in Berlin, Peter Lorenz, 1975 | Egyptian Revolution, 2011(violent and nonviolent activism) Greek protests against austerity measures, 2011(violent and nonviolent activism) Strike of Egyptian textile workers in Mahallah, April 2008(violent and nonviolent activism) German student protests, 1960s(violent and nonviolent activism) Failure of detonation of bombs placed on German trains, 2006 (none) Failure of detonation of a bomb placed in the main train station of Bonn, Germany, 2012 (none) | Gandhi’s resistance campaign Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama, 1955–1956 “Defy Unjust Laws” campaign in South Africa, 1952 Norwegian teachers’ resistance to the Nazis’ use of their schools for indoctrination, 1942 |
Outlook: Chapter Overview
Drawing on these definitions, the following chapters investigate the question why some individuals take up arms while others who live under the same conditions engage in nonviolent activism instead.
In Chapter 1, I introduce the CMA and show how it can be used to study political violence. I also introduce a formalization of cognitive maps that copes with the maps’ complexity: it allows the researcher to develop computational models processing the cognitive maps as directed acyclical graphs (DAGs). The formalization is based on Judea Pearl’s theory of causality (2000) and provides new possibilities for the application of the CMA. It also presents a new approach to studying counterfactuals. Specifically, it suggests how intervening on the actors’ beliefs about the world rather than on the world itself can explore their behavior in alternative worlds.
In Chapter 2, I introduce the individuals I interviewed for this study and describe several situations in which I interviewed individuals. I elaborate on the research design—a double-paired comparison of violent and nonviolent individuals from Egypt and Germany—and explain my identification strategy of individuals while conducting fieldwork. I also consider potential biases related to this research. Finally, I draw comparisons with other analyses about violent individuals from Egypt and Germany.
In Chapter 3, I describe the historical context in which the individuals decided to engage in violent or nonviolent activism. Specifically, I introduce their groups: the nonviolent Muslim Brotherhood and the violent al-Jihad and al-Jamaʿat al-Islamiyya in Egypt, and the violent Red Army Faction and Bewegung 2. Juni, as well as the nonviolent Kommune 1 and the Socialist German Student Union in Germany. I discuss the beginning, development, and, in some cases, dissolution of these groups with special emphasis on the 1970s, when most of the individuals I interviewed were active.
In Chapter 4, I describe how I constructed cognitive maps from the interviews and how I identified the three main components of cognitive maps from the direct speech of the individuals—beliefs, belief connections, and decisions. Since they are constructed from direct speech, these cognitive maps are not immediately comparable. Accordingly, I employed Spradley’s theme analysis to abstract the beliefs of different individuals into more general categories. I show how I constructed a coding scheme, which consists of several dozen categories. The scheme identifies five broad sets of factors related to political violence and speaks to the analytical framework presented in this Introduction. It shows that the reasoning processes of violent and nonviolent individuals are surprisingly similar, and that there are no significant differences between Muslims and non-Muslims who engage in violence. Rather, the reasoning processes of all individuals primarily rely on beliefs about the state environment. There are also extraordinarily few beliefs about violent groups and about the individuals’ personality. There is no evidence that violent individuals suffer from mental illnesses or act based on a “terrorist personality.”
Chapter 5 presents the computer program and analysis of the cognitive maps. In more than 100,000 runs, the analysis identifies ten mechanisms related to political violence (five mechanisms) and nonviolent activism (five mechanisms). These mechanisms show that both violent and nonviolent individuals act in self-defense by responding to the belief that the state is aggressive. More specifically, this belief is so significant that individuals who hold it may decide to take up arms even if they believe the state is stronger than they are, and that they will suffer severe consequences from engaging in violence. This belief may also encourage nonviolent individuals to make decisions, even if they do not believe their activity will have any effect on state aggression. Nonviolent individuals may further be motivated by the belief that there is economic deprivation in their direct environment—a motivation usually attributed to violent individuals.
In Chapter 6, I show how the program can be applied to study counterfactuals. In more than 100,000 runs, the analysis investigates alternative worlds in which violent individuals would not have taken up arms. Individuals would not have decided to take up arms had they not believed their