Collective Political Violence and Analysis of Islamist Social Movements: The Case of Hamas

A survey of the literature on political violence reveals that there is no paradigmatic approach with which to study different forms of collective political violence. Thus, there is a need for a new framework which overcomes the shortcomings of the existing literature. While the study of social movements has generally focused on non-violent collective action in democratic settings and neglected violence in social movements, it still provides the necessary tools to examine cases of collective political violence. Just like non-violent social movements, movements that adopt political violence experience problems related to organization, mobilization of resources, recruitment and construction of collective action frames. They are also affected by the changing political opportunities. Thus, this study argues that Social Movement Studies can contribute to the development of a more comprehensive approach with which to analyze collective political violence as it offers the necessary theoretical and conceptual tools such as political opportunity structures, resource mobilization, organizational mobilization strategies and processes of framing and identity construction. Such tools would help us better situate a complex organization such as Hamas, which is often inadequately analyzed within the literature on collective political violence dominated by Terrorism Studies.