The Politics of Vigilantism

• Author: Regina Bateson
• DOI: 10.1177/0010414020957692
• Published date: 01 May 2021
• Date: 01 May 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414020957692

Comparative Political Studies

2021, Vol. 54(6) 923 –955

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0010414020957692

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Article

The Politics of

Vigilantism

Regina Bateson1

Abstract

Vigilantism is theoretically and empirically important for political science,

because it is closely related to core concepts like power, order, state-

building, and collective action. Yetalthough political scientists are increasingly

interested in vigilantism, our discipline has never developed a sustained,

cumulative research agenda on vigilantism. I argue this is largely because

existing definitions of vigilantism are contradictory, tautological, and not

easily operationalized. This article cuts through the conceptual muddle,

equipping and motivating political scientists to study vigilantism. First, I

define vigilantism as the extralegal prevention, investigation, or punishment

of offenses. Next, I provide a crisp conceptualization of vigilantism, and I

situate vigilantism in relation to other concepts in political science. I conclude

by addressing methodological and ethical issues in the study of vigilantism.

Keywords

vigilantism, crime and politics, political violence, conceptualization

Vigilantism is more than a reaction to crime; it is an exercise in power. In

Dahl’s (1957) influential formulation, “A has power over B to the extent that

he can get B to do something he would not otherwise do” (pp. 202–203).

1University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Corresponding Author:

Regina Bateson, University of Ottawa, 120 University Private, Room 6020, Ottawa, ON K1N

6N5, Canada.

Email: rbateson@uottawa.ca

957692CPSXXX10.1177/0010414020957692Comparative Political StudiesBateson

research-article2020

924 Comparative Political Studies 54(6)

Vigilantism often involves this type of direct coercion. When security patrol-

lers demand that pedestrians show their identity documents, or when a lynch

mob captures a suspected criminal, the perpetrators of vigilantism are exert-

ing power over their targets.

Vigilantism is also an exercise in power because it shapes the terms of

public debate. Bachrach and Baratz (1962) call this, “setting the agenda” (pp.

948–960).1 Vigilantism creates and reinforces hierarchies that amplify some

voices and silence others, stifling dissent. At the same time, by selectively

punishing only certain offenses, vigilantes can draw attention to particular

issues. In California, for example, vigilante attacks on the homeless have

generated national media coverage, shaping popular perceptions of the state’s

homelessness crisis (Fuller et al., 2019).

If political science is the study of power, then vigilantism should have a cen-

tral place in the political science literature. Vigilantism is common around the

world,2 and it is closely connected to important concepts like order, state-build-

ing, and collective action. Yet for decades, political science has largely ceded the

study of vigilantism to historians (Allen, 2004; Pfeifer, 2006), anthropologists

(Abrahams, 1998; Goldstein, 2003, 2004), sociologists (Bailey et al., 2011;

Godoy, 2006; Tankebe, 2011; Tolnay & Beck, 1995; Tolnay et al., 1996), cul-

tural studies scholars (Arellano, 2012), and interdisciplinary initiatives (Berg &

Wendt, 2011; Buur & Jensen, 2004; Huggins, 1991a; Pratten & Sen, 2008).

Figure 1. Articles mentioning “vigilantism” or “vigilante” in the top 10 political

science journals, 1930 to 2014. Figure 1 is based on searches of the 10 most-read

political science journals, per Garand et al. (2009): the APSR, AJPS (formerly the

Midwest Journal of Political Science), JOP, IO, World Politics, ISQ, CPS, BJPS, CP, and

Political Theory. The APSR and CP are broken out separately because together they

published 56% of the articles identified.

Bateson 925

As shown in Figure 1, the terms “vigilantism” and “vigilante” typically

appear in leading political science journals only once or twice per year. These

mentions are often figurative (Kerner, 2015, p. 41) or peripheral (Bateson,

2012, p. 583; Carey et al., 2015, pp. 856–857; Tajima, 2013, pp. 106–107).

To be sure, some political scientists have written more substantively about

vigilantism, notably Rosenbaum and Sederberg (1974, 1976) and more

recently Roessler (2005); Kirkpatrick (2008); Stan (2011); Reno (2011);

LeBas (2013); Schuberth (2013); Phillips (2017); Moncada (2017); Obert

and Mattiacci (2018); Smith (2015, 2019); Zizumbo-Colunga (2017, 2019);

Osorio et al. (2019); and Jung and Cohen (2020). But as Moncada (2017)

observes, their work has not coalesced into a coherent research agenda

because political scientists lack a common vocabulary to understand, mea-

sure, and study vigilantism.

According to Abrahams (1998), “vigilantism is not easy to define in rigor-

ous, authoritative terms” (p. 6). In the political science literature, “vigilan-

tism” can refer to radically different behaviors, from uncivil disobedience

(Kirkpatrick, 2008) to terrorism (de la Calle & Sanchez-Cuenca, 2011) to

establishment violence (Rosenbaum & Sederberg, 1974, p. 542).3 This con-

ceptual discord makes measurement and cross-case comparison nearly

impossible. It also obscures connections between vigilantism and related

concepts and research agendas, impeding knowledge accumulation (Mahoney

& Rueschemeyer, 2003). Indeed, the current political science literature on

vigilantism perfectly illustrates how “semantic confusion throws a wrench in

the work of social science” (Gerring, 1999, p. 361).

This article cuts through the muddle, defining vigilantism as the extrale-

gal prevention, investigation, or punishment of offenses. First, I provide a

crisp conceptualization of vigilantism, and I situate vigilantism in relation to

other important concepts in political science. Next, I identify several dimen-

sions along which vigilantism can vary, and I outline potential research agen-

das utilizing vigilantism as a dependent or independent variable. I conclude

by addressing methodological and ethical issues in the study of vigilantism,

offering practical guidance for political scientists seeking to conduct empiri-

cal research on this challenging yet important topic.

Conceptualizing Vigilantism

Existing Definitions

Intuitively, vigilantism is often understood as “the taking of the law into one’s

own hands” (Rosenbaum & Sederberg, 1974, p. 542). This parsimonious

notion of vigilantism travels widely across cultures and contexts. For exam-

ple, vigilantism in Latin America is commonly called “justicia a mano