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Institutional Settings and Violence
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THE IMPORTANCE OF INSTITUTIONAL SETTINGS

Conventional wisdom views nationalist violence as a burst of uncontrolled brutality, not a rule-bound endeavor. In instances of stateorganized repression, however, agents of state violence are embedded in context-specific webs of rules, regulations, and expectations. Armies, paramilitaries, and police forces use violence in specific, norm-laden institutional settings. These settings differ in terms of how fully they are controlled by the state and how saturated they are by regulations, as well as in the degree to which the state is accountable for a region's fate. Densely institutionalized settings score high on most or all of these measures, while weakly institutionalized settings score much lower. For example, marginalized groups living in the national capital are in a more heavily institutionalized setting than are co-nationals in poorly controlled peripheral provinces. These differences, in turn, influence patterns of state violence. States are more likely to use police-style methods in institutionally dense settings, but more destructive tactics in institutionally thin arenas.

I borrow the notion of institutional setting from organizational sociology's institutionalist theory, a body of research highlighting the ability of context—alternately termed organizational environments, organizational fields, or institutional environments—to shape organizational choices, attitudes, and methods.[10] Explicit rules and tacit norms pervade institutional settings to a greater or lesser extent, pushing organizations to behave in contextually appropriate ways.[11] I extend this insight to state repression, arguing that violence takes place in discrete institutional settings, each of which has its own logic of appropriateness.


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Institutional Settings and Violence
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