ABSTRACT
The introduction presents a non-traditional research design and puts forward the methodological assumptions for the research. In particular, it reveals the research goals, the temporal, territorial, subject, and subject matter field, problems, hypotheses, methods, techniques, and tools. The methodological choices that structure, organize, and fuel the discovery process are discussed and justified. The goals of the study are of both a theory-verification and a theory-generation nature. The first objective is to describe cultures of political violence of the stakeholders of the anti-austerity movements which entered Europe in the times of austerity in a way that captures similarities and differences between them. The similarities and differences that the clusters of European cases have in common are crucial for distinguishing between patterns because their particular configuration creates the types of a culture of political violence. Second, the research aims at explaining the sources of the types. Third, it aims to account for the results of the types. The point is to investigate to what extent the sources and the results of the cultures of political violence are explainable by existing explanatory frameworks. Most importantly, to inquire into the roots of differences between the cultures and the meaning of those differences for the repercussions of the cultures.
