The Remains of the Movement: The Role of Legal Support Networks in Leaving Violence While Sustaining Movement Identity

Abstract

This article examines disengagement from political violence and the persistence of a movement identity as concurrent and interrelated processes. Our inquiry is based on long-term qualitative data on 90 individuals associated with twelve underground organizations in the United States and Japan during the 1970s and 1980s. We find that as armed activists face the challenges of arrest and detention, trial, and imprisonment, the network of trial support groups and defense committees that was central to their capacity to engage in violence at the peak of the protest cycle also facilitates the process of disengaging from violence as the cycle declines. The distinctive characteristics of this network (herein referred to as the legal support network or LSN) permit insurgents to retain a movement identity while disengaging from violent activity. The study contributes to a small but expanding literature on post-recruitment dynamics in marginalized, high-risk social movements as well as to research on disengagement from political violence.