Soldiers and Students : A Study of Right- and Left-Wing Radicals

Soldiers and Students (1975) adopts an original approach to the confrontation of deprived and possessing parties under conditions of scarcity. With reference to the course of conflict, the actions of the competing parties are shown to be interlinked, yet the difference between their strategies are clearly defined. Right-wing radicalism is treated through a study of military intervention in domestic politics; left-wing radicalism through analysis of student radicalism. The case studies are centred on recent Dutch history, but the theoretical perspective underlying the argument is essentially comparative. Thus Dutch military responses to the decolonisation of Indonesia serve to illustrate the strategies of a military apparatus on the brink of politicisation, radicalism among Dutch students in the sixties offers the empirical reference for the analysis of left-wing radicalism.