Limits on Violence; Limits on Responsive Regulatory Theory

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6090668
AutoresJohn Braithwaite (0000-0001-8538-2404, Australian National University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2014
Volumen36
Número4
Páginas432-456
Fecha de publicación2014-10-01
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLaw & Policy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0265-8240 • E-ISSN: 1467-9930
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/lapo.12026
OpenAlexW2151080784
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas29

Responsive regulation is a general theory of how to steer the flow of events. This article seeks to understand when violence is and is not defensible as an enforcement escalation. It specifies limits on the claim of responsive regulatory theory that a tough enforcement peak to a regulatory pyramid helps drive regulation down to persuasion at the base of the pyramid. Those limits are about the counterproductive effects of violence at the peak of an enforcement pyramid. Erica Chenoweth and her colleagues show that nonviolent civilian resistance to regimes is twice as likely as armed struggle to succeed. Nonviolence complemented by a violent radical flank is less effective than disciplined nonviolence. This refutes the “benign big gun” aspect of responsive regulatory theory as a general theory of the regulation of social action. The theory implies that capacity to escalate to armed struggle at the peak of a regulatory pyramid should empower resistance. Can responsive theory be adapted to this empirical challenge? Can that adaptation show a productive path to an ethics of when to constrain escalation to violence as an option at the peak of all kinds of regulatory pyramids? Lessons are drawn from how Nelson Mandela's struggle against apartheid opened nonviolent paths to transformation without total renunciation of violence

Enforcement · Law and economics · Persuasion · Political science · Renunciation · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Psychology · Social Psychology · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses