The Dynamics of Intergenerational Diffusion of Political Violence: A Cross-Temporal Study of Three Left-Wing Clandestine Groups in Greece

The current literature on political violence has focused either on the vertical (from the global to the national level) or horizontal (from one actor to another) diffusion of clandestine violence, while the proliferation of violent tactics from one generation to another remains understudied. At the same time, there is an either explicit or implicit view that countries that hosted major clandestine organisations will – after their dissolution – experience the diffusion of violence to a newer generation of groups. However, the intergenerational diffusion of political violence should not be taken for granted as there is no causal relationship between a group’s disbandment and the diffusion of violence to a new cohort of militants. In fact, it is the broader dynamics of contention within a polity as well as the dynamics of radicalisation within the wider movement that facilitate or impede the diffusion of violent tactics and the emergence of multiple generations of groups. An ideal case study for the cross-temporal examination of clandestine violence is Greece. Indeed, the country has experienced the last decades regular instances of low-level violence as well as multiple generations of armed groups. In particular, a series of left-wing clandestine groups have emerged in Greece since the 1960s, making the country the oldest and most protracted case of left-wing extremist violence in Europe, and one of the most resilient globally. To unpack the dynamics of radicalisation that facilitated the diffusion of clandestine violence in Greece, this paper focuses on the contentious episodes of three clandestine groups from different generations: the Popular Revolutionary Resistance (LEA) (1965-1974), the Revolutionary Organisation 17 November (17N) (1975-2002) and the Revolutionary Struggle (RS) (2003-2009). Hence, through the use of a historical comparative approach that combines process tracing with a rigorous frame analysis of primary data, this paper aims to unravel the dynamics of radicalisation in each episode, to trace the similarities and differences between the groups’ radicalisation processes, and to track the causal pattern that enabled the reproduction of the phenomenon over time.