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This review essay focusses on Gelderloos's normative theory of diversity of tactics. The book is worth serious attention by political theorists because of its sustained analysis of violence, nonviolence, tactics and strategy, but the normative theory fails. The essay endorses Gelderloos's nuanced analysis of the violence-nonviolence distinction and aspects of his account of tactics-strategy-goals. But the concepts 'state' and 'politics' are both treated by him in an overly simple way. Although aspects of his account show how complex any state-society distinction is, in other contexts he suggests that it is easy for actors to divide state enemies from oppressed society friends. He rejects politics as the capture of state power for dominating and self-interested purposes, and dismisses all other aspects of political power, institutions and relationships. He thereby denies any role for politics in the sustainability of the anarchist activism he wishes to defend and endorse. In particular his disavowal of any political power base to coalitions, means that coalitional action can only be depicted as evanescent and episodic, while anarchist action is premissed on putting fellow actors who are not comrades beyond the realm of care of concern.

Violence – from state coercion to wars and revolutions – remains an enduring global reality. But whereas it is often believed that the point of constitutional politics is to make violence unnecessary, others argue that it is an unavoidable element of politics. In this lucid and erudite book, Elizabeth Frazer and Kimberly Hutchings address these issues using vivid contemporary and historic examples. They carefully explore the strategies that have been deployed to condone violence, either as means to certain ends or as an inherent facet of politics. Examining the complex questions raised by different types of violence, they conclude that, ultimately, all attempts to justify political violence fail. This book will be essential introductory reading for students and scholars of the ethics and politics of political violence.

The naming of violence in feminist political campaigns and in the context of feminist theory has rhetorical and political effects. Feminist contention about the scope and meaning of 'Violence against Women' (VAW) and 'Sex and Gender-Based Violence' (SGBV), and about the concepts of gender and of violence itself, are fundamentally debates about the politics of feminist contestation, and the goals, strategies and tactics of feminist organisation, campaigns and action. This article examines the propulsion since the late twentieth century of the problems of VAW and SGBV on to global and national political agendas. The feminist theory that underpins the uptake of this new agenda is contested by opponents of feminism. More significantly for the article it is also contested within feminism, in disputes about how feminist political aims should be furthered, through what institutions and with what strategic goals in view. The article aims to show that theoretical and philosophical controversy about the concepts of violence, and sex and gender, are always political, both in the sense that they are an aspect of feminist competition about how feminist politics should proceed, and in the sense that the political implications of concepts and theory must always be a significant factor in their salience for feminist action.

There appear to be striking contradictions between different strands of anarchist thought with respect to violence – anarchism can justify it, or condemn it, can be associated with both violent action and pacifism. The anarchist thinkers studied here saw themselves as facing up to the realities of violence in politics – the violence of state power, and the destructiveness of instrumental uses of physical power as a revolutionary political weapon. Bakunin, Tolstoy and Kropotkin all express ambivalence about violence in relation to political power. Instead of reading this ambivalence as a mark of inconsistency, or of abdication of responsible judgement, we argue that it signals a profound recognition of the dynamics of violence in both repressive and resistant politics. Kropotkin and Bakunin seek a cooperative collective political effort which is negated by individual acts of violence although it cannot be committed to non-violence as such. Tolstoy by contrast in his recognition of the organised violence of political power, turns from politics to morality, from organisation to individual renunciation. Tolstoyan non-violence is the opposite of Kropotkin's mutual aid, and paradoxically Tolstoyan renunciation has effects only when it is underpinned by violence. Tolstoy leaves violence in its place, in his renunciation of it; and Bakunin and Kropotkin leave violence in its place in their plans for its undoing.

This article explores feminist contentions over pacifism and non-violence in the context of the Greenham Common Peace Camp in the 1980s and later developments of feminist Just War Theory. We argue that Sara Ruddick's work puts feminist pacifism, its radical feminist critics and feminist just war theory equally into question. Although Ruddick does not resolve the contestations within feminism over peace, violence and the questions of war, she offers a productive way of holding the tension between them. In our judgment, her work is helpful not only for developing a feminist political response to the threats and temptations of violent strategies but also for thinking through the question of the relation between violence and politics as such.

This article seeks to problematise the dominant understandings of the relationship between politics and violence in political theory. Liberal political theory identifies politics with the pacified arena of the modern state; although violence may sometimes be an instrument for the pursuit of political goals, politics is conceptualised as the ongoing non-violent negotiation of competing rights and interests, and the overall aim of liberalism is to remove violence from the political process. Radical critics deny liberalism's promise to deliver a divorce between politics and violence, but they often share liberalism's premise that politics and violence are distinct in principle, and ought to be so in practice, developing a vision of politics beyond violence. In contrast, the theory of politics and violence that can be read in the work of Machiavelli, Clausewitz and Weber understands politics as immanently connected to violence. Neither politics nor violence is reducible to a singular logic. A distinctively political violence constitutes and polices political distinctions. In doing this political violence is bound up with its own limitations – it is one medium for the construction of a world which, according to these three thinkers, it does not and cannot fully control. Liberal and radical thinkers tend to treat Machiavelli, Clausewitz and Weber in their theory of political power as outdated or, worse, as celebrating the role of violence in politics. In our interpretation, however, their work has the virtue of demonstrating the paradoxes of political action, in particular the complex relationship between politics and violence which is neither one of naturalistic necessity nor pure strategy or instrumentality, but is embedded in politics as statecraft.

Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part II includes a number of scenes representing the Kent rebellion of 1450, led by Jack Cade. In these, we argue, Shakespeare explores the ways in which claims to legitimate rule are often secured through performances of word, deed and gesture. We examine some of the concerns about drama expressed by political theorists alongside some of the techniques of political dramatists, and argue that a reason for the often tense relationship between drama and politics is this power of the former to make visible the aesthetic and theatrical aspects of the latter. The brilliance of Shakespeare's representation of Cade, we argue, lies in the way in which it holds up the performance of sovereignty for public scrutiny and assessment. Adapted from the source document.