Citation

Stewart MR, Suedfeld P. Dyn. Asymm. Confl. 2012; 5(2): 77-95.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/17467586.2012.740680

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Predicting when political violence is likely to erupt is a major problem for international, national, and local governments and agencies. In this study, thematic content analysis (TCA) was used to measure integrative complexity (IC) and power motive imagery (PMI) in editorials written by the spokesman for President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Decreased IC and increased PMI have been shown to precede and accompany war versus negotiation in international confrontations. Here, they were used for the first time in the case of a prolonged history of domestic political violence committed by an oppressive government and its supporters. A less time- and labor-intensive, computerized method of content analysis, Profiler Plus, was also tested as a possible alternative to TCA. The scores were correlated with levels of political violence at the time of the publication of the editorial and with levels of violence 2, 3, and 4 weeks later. Although violence was significantly correlated with changes in several measures, IC decrease was the only variable that was also significantly correlated with violence at all three prediction periods. Together, decreasing IC and rising PMI provided unique predictive utility. The overall model accounted for 73% of the variance in log-transformed violence.