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Summary: Given the persistence of organised criminal violence in Mexico, the possibility of overcoming it by using transitional justice measures has been discussed. What would be so feasible for its implementation? We try to answer this question in two steps. First, we draw up a conceptual map of organised societal violence that allows us to identify so-called drug violence as an economic civil war and to distinguish it from political civil wars. We then discussed the applicability of transitional justice to the Mexican context. Although we identified important analogies, we finally highlighted an insurmountable obstacle: transitional justice can only serve as a pacifying channel if the state using it to disarm criminal gangs has the capacity to ensure that such disarmament is permanent. ; Resumen: Ante la persistencia de la violencia criminal organizada en México, se ha discutido la posibilidad de superarla usando medidas de justicia transicional. ¿Qué tan viable sería su aplicación? Tratamos de responder a esta pregunta en dos pasos. Primero, trazamos un mapa conceptual de la violencia societal organizada que nos permite identificar la llamada narcoviolencia como una guerra civil económica y distinguirla de las guerras civiles políticas. Después, discutimos la aplicabilidad de la justicia transicional al contexto mexicano. Aunque identificamos analogías importantes, terminamos resaltando un obstáculo infranqueable: la justicia transicional solo puede servir como vía pacificadora si el Estado que recurre a ella para desarmar a las bandas criminales tuviera la capacidad de garantizar que ese desarme sea permanente.

What makes terrorism a unique form of political violence is its underground nature. According to the conceptualization of the phenomenon offered in this book, terrorism is the kind of violence carried out when the perpetrators lack territorial control. There is a strong link between terrorism and secret, clandestine operations, making terrorists attacks ephemeral, as opposed to battles and assaults. The book offers a comprehensive conceptual analysis of terrorism, comparing it with competing theories and views on the subject, such as terrorism is killing civilians, or terrorism is a form of violence that relies on the distinction between direct and indirect targets. The conceptualization advanced here makes sense of some peculiar traits of terrorism, from international attacks (in which the underground constraint is most obvious), to lone-actor ones (in which a single individual commits a deed). It also delimits the possibility of state terrorism as covert operations by security forces, normally abroad.Approaching terrorism in terms of the underground not only makes sense of how we talk about terrorism, but it also generates testable consequences. Through a combination of statistical and comparative analyses, it is shown that the use of terrorism is driven by the degree of asymmetry between the contending parties.

This article presents a dataset of fatalities of domestic terrorism in Western European countries for the period 1965–2005. The Domestic Terrorism Victims (DTV) dataset, unlike others such as TWEED or GTD1, is based on local sources in each country and, consequently, it registers a higher number of killings. Measurement of the quantity of terrorism is therefore more accurate. The unit of observation is the fatality, not the attack, although the data can be transformed in terms of lethal attacks. Detailed information about each killing has been collected, making it possible to create new variables about the quality of violence: target selection, selectivity of the killings and their strategic aim. The ideology of the terrorists generates interesting variation in these three variables. The DTV is particularly suitable for hypothesis testing on the quantity and quality of terrorism.

Regional elections in the Basque Country on 1 March 2009 put an end to three decades of nationalist rule by the PNV. Although the PNV won the elections, the nationalist forces did not get a majority of seats in the Basque Parliament. A new minority government, led by the Socialist party, has been formed with the parliamentary support of the Spanish conservative party. This article analyses these crucial elections, the electoral changes that have taken place with regard to previous ones, and the possible consequences for the vexed issue of terrorism in the near future. Adapted from the source document.

In the last 40 years, ETA has killed 829 people. We have constructed an exhaustive database that allows us, for the first time, to analyze patterns of mortal victim selection. We present quantitative information that summarizes ETA's activity (types of victims, degree of selectivity in killing, specific campaigns against civilians, etc.). Moreover, we show variations in the killings of ETA's different branches, in the conditions of victims along time, in the ways of killing people, & in geographical distribution. Using the database, we confirm important changes in victim selection as a consequence of strategic changes in ETA that took place in the mid nineties, when the war of attrition strategy was replaced by the nationalist front strategy. Tables, Map, References. Adapted from the source document.

Although non-ideological voters make up a considerable share of the electorate, the literature has systematically overlooked their voting behaviour. Using Spanish electoral data from the 1979-2008 electoral period, we seek to identify the alternative cues ?in the absence of ideology? these voters may use when casting their ballot. We do not find that evaluations of the incumbent?s performance have a greater influence on non-ideological voters, as the retrospective voting literature suggests. Nor do we find that other shortcuts such as candidate evaluations or party identification are used more by this group when they vote. Instead, our results indicate that non-ideological voters have exchanged the traditional ideological shortcut for simple proincumbent voting as a decision rule.