Book Review: Violence, Nonviolence and the Palestinian National Movement

• Author: Yael Zeira
• DOI: 10.1177/0010414013486438
• Published date: 01 August 2013
• Date: 01 August 2013
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Comparative Political Studies

46(8) 994 –1000

© The Author(s) 2013

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Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Pearlman, W. (2011). Violence, Nonviolence and the Palestinian National Movement.

New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Reviewed by: Yael Zeira, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0010414013486438

Why do self-determination movements sometimes use nonviolent protest and

at other times violent tactics? This is the puzzle that Wendy Pearlman poses

in her important new book, Violence, Nonviolence and the Palestinian

National Movement. While sharing broadly similar goals and challenges,

self-determination movements exhibit remarkable variation in their strategies

and tactics. Of the 132 self-determination movements active in 2006, only 18

engaged in armed conflict (p. 2). Self-determination movements also differ in

their use of violent tactics over time. As Pearlman shows in her authoritative

analysis of nearly 100 years of Palestinian history, self-determination move-

ments often fluctuate between violent and nonviolent strategies and tactics

over the course of their struggles.

Pearlman attributes this variation in the use of violence by self-determination

movements to internal cohesion: the cooperation among individuals that

enables unified action (p. 9). Pearlman operationalizes this definition in terms

of three factors that are hypothesized to foster internal cohesion: leadership,

institutions, and collective purpose. Leadership contributes to movement

cohesion when a movement has one unified leadership body rather than sev-

eral and its adherents judge it to be legitimate. Institutions contribute to

movement cohesion when they are strong in the Huntingtonian sense, mean-

ing they are adaptable, complex, autonomous, and coherent, and thus acquire

value and stability. Last, collective purpose is the extent to which a popula-

tion agrees on and is committed to clear objectives across societal cleavages.

A movement can be considered to be cohesive when a “sufficient portion of

adherents is governed by a single leadership, institutional framework and

sense of collective purpose” (p. 11). Movements that rely on only one of

these elements at the expense of others are “brittle” and likely to break down

in the face of external pressures.

486438CPS46810.1177/0010414013486438Comparative Political StudiesBook Reviews

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