Civil wars

Question 1

Greed in terms of civil war

Answer 1

makes sense of civil war in terms of individuals’ desire to maximize their profits, primarily in a narrowly materialist sense. argument that combatants in armed conflicts are motivated by a desire to better their situation (more individual and material) and perform an informal cost-benefit analysis in examining if the rewards of joining a rebellion are greater than not joining.

Question 2

Grievance argument for civil war

Answer 2

view internal conflict as a reaction to socioeconomic and/or political injustice. argument that people rebel over issues of identity, e.g ethnicity, religion, social class, etc., rather than over economics. In practice, even proponents of strong versions of these arguments admit that the opposing argument has some influence in the development of a conflict.

Question 3

commonality of greed and grievance argument in civil war

Answer 3

the common factor is the perception of a certain deprivation
. If it is an economic deprivation, the inequality will be a vertical inequality and the cause of war will be ‘greed’. If the deprivation is caused by ethnicity, age, religion or gender, it will be a horizontal inequality and the cause of war will be due to the ‘grievances’.

Question 4

vertical inequality

Answer 4

disparities or differences in socioeconomic outcomes that exist along a hierarchical or vertical dimension within society. It focuses on inequalities between individuals or groups that occupy different positions or levels within the social hierarchy. Vertical inequality typically involves differences in income, wealth, or social status between individuals or groups at the top, middle, and bottom of the socioeconomic ladder

Question 5

horizontal inequality

Answer 5

disparities or differences among individuals or groups that share similar characteristics or attributes, such as race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or geographic location. It focuses on inequalities between groups that are seen as being on the same level or horizontal plane within society. eg access to education or healthcare

Question 6

definition of civil war

Answer 6

Cederman and Vogt - Civil war can be defined as armed combat within a sovereign state between an incumbent government and a nonstate challenger that claims full or partial sovereignty over the territory of the state. In other words, civil war always concerns an incompatibility in terms of political control.

Question 7

Kalyvvas role of local cleavages in civil war

Answer 7

individual and local actors take advantage of the war to settle local or private conflicts often bearing little or no relation to the causes of the war or the goals of the belligerents.
* local cleavages are typically articulated in the language of the war’s master cleavage, often instrumentally. To give a recent example, local factions in Afghanistan accused one another of being Taliban or al-Qaeda so as to have rivals bombed by the U.S. Air Force.
* War may generate new local cleavages because power shifts at the local level upset delicate arrangements.
o One of the most potent cleavages produced by civil wars is generational: rebels (but also incumbents) often recruit young people who then proceed to repress their village’s elders

Question 8

example of local cleavages in civil war- China

Answer 8

o The Chinese Civil War was often fought by diverse and shifting coalitions of bandits and local militias;for a long time, the Communists were for the bandits “only one of several possible allies or temporary patrons.” In Manchuria, for instance, it was extremely difficult to differentiate between members of the Anti-Japanese Resistance and bandits because moving from one to another was very common: it is estimated that 140,000 of a total 300,000 resistance members had a bandit background.

Question 9

example of local cleavages in civil war- Spain

Answer 9

o A study of a northern Spanish town found that the main cleavage in its central neighbourhood began in the early 1930s as a dispute between two doctors competing for the title of official town doctor, which entailed a lucrative state-guaranteed practice. Many families became engaged on the side of one doctor or the other: “Simultaneously, the political turmoil of the end of the Republic added a wider political dimension to what was in essence a dispute based on local issue

Question 10

example of local cleavages in civil wars - Northern Ireland

Answer 10

The violence between the neighboring villages of Coagh and Ardboe, in Northern Ireland, which cost the lives of 30 men in the space of three years in the late 1980s and early 1990s (for a combined population of just over a thousand people), was not simply violence between the Catholic Irish Republican Army and the Protestant Ulster Volunteer Force, but also a “bitter vendetta” and the “freshest cycle of a blood feud” that pitted these particular two villages against each other.

Question 11

group conflict/ violence

Answer 11

• The concept of group conflict or group violence entails the total interchangeability of individuals, either as participants and perpetrators or as targets. “Group conflict” makes sense only if group members are fully substitutable for each other. & If targets of violence are selected along lines that go beyond group attributes, then the violence cannot be described as simply ethnic, class-based, etcetera.
  the notion of local vendettas means it goes beyond group conflict

Question 12

extreme local vendettas - Bonsia

Answer 12

In Omarska camp in Bosnia: One day, a Serb guard came in at night and insulted a prisoner who, as a judge, had fined him for a traffic offense in the late 1970s!

Question 13

Kalyvvas- alliance

Answer 13

allows for multiple rather than unitary actors, agency located in both center and periphery rather than only in either one, and a variety of preferences and identities as opposed to a common and overarching one. Alliance entails a transaction between supralocal and local actors, whereby the former supply the latter with external muscle, thus allowing them to win decisive local advantage; in exchange the former rely on local conflicts to recruit and motivate supporters and obtain local control, resources, and information—even when their ideological agenda is opposed to localism
o Alliance is for local actors a means rather than a goal.

Question 14

ethnic conflict

Answer 14

• The majority agree on defining a war as ethnic “if the contending actors or parties identify themselves or one another using ethnic criteria.”

Question 15

rationalist explanation for ethnic conflict

Answer 15

Lake builds on James Fearon’s understanding of the security dilemma to assert that ethnic war occurs primarily because information failures and commitment problems prevent competing groups from reaching a negotiated bargain that all would prefer
weingast propose an alternative model that purports to explain not only ethnic war but also genocide. They argue that predatory elites are the key cause of ethnic war and genocide, because they provoke violence as a way of maintaining power and misleading their supporters into thinking the other side is to blame for the violence.

Question 16

Kaufman - why rationalist explanations for war are incorrect

Answer 16

• Look at Sudan and Rwanda - Why did Sudanese President Jaafar al-Nimeiri, who had signed a peace agreement in 1972, abrogate that agreement in 1983 and restart Sudan’s north-south civil war? And why did hard-liners in Rwanda resort to war and genocide in 1994 in the aftermath of President Juvénal Habyarimana’s death
• uncertainty model is incorrect because uncertainties such as information failures and commitment problems were irrelevant in the Sudan case and are insufficient to explain the Rwanda case. The elite-predation model rightly assumes that both conflicts were the result of elite predation—not uncertainty— but it identifies the wrong mechanism. In neither case was the predatory strategy the best option for leaders seeking to maintain power; in fact, in both cases their violent strategies resulted, predictably, in their loss of power.
  o Eg In the Sudan case, Nimeiri was forced to form a coalition with his strongest rivals—who soon replaced him—because their aggressive policy was more popular than his previous peaceful one

Question 17

Kaufman - the right explanation for ethnic war

Answer 17

• the critical causes of extreme ethnic violence are group myths that justify hostility, fears of group extinction. The hostile myths, in this view, produce emotion-laden symbols that make mass hostility easy for chauvinist elites to provoke and make extremist policies popular.

Question 18

ethnic identity according to Kaufman

Answer 18

• ethnic identity is more than a social category manipulated by elites…. each ethnic group is defined by a “myth-symbol complex” that identifies which elements of shared culture and what interpretation of history bind the group together and distinguish it from others. These definitions of identity are always subjective. For example, in some places (e.g., Ireland and Bosnia), myths divide groups by religious tradition into different nations, whereas in other cases (e.g., Germany), shared language and presumed common descent trump religious diversity.

Question 19

symbolism and emotion in ethnic conflict - why does it work

Answer 19

• Symbolic politics theory builds on the findings of neuroscience, which show that emotions, not rational calculations, motivate people to act.
• Emotions also help people set priorities among competing goals: fear, for example, causes people to prioritize security over other values such as wealth.
• Symbols are powerful because they simultaneously refer to an interest and to an emotionally laden myth, often framing a conflict of interest as a struggle against hostile, evil, or subhuman forces. Ethnic or national symbols are immensely powerful in this context, enabling a politician to reinterpret a conflict of interest as a struggle for security, status, and the future of the group. Using these symbols to evoke emotions such as resentment, fear, and hatred is how politicians motivate supporters to act

Question 20

3 preconditions for ethnic conflict according to Kaufman

Answer 20

o A group mythology that justifies hostility is a precondition for violent ethnic conflict; it must exist before a politician can manipulate it.
o ethnic appeals are successful in producing extreme violence only if the group also fears that its existence is threatened. In some cases, as among Israelis, there may be a literal fear of genocide. In other cases, more limited threats can be exaggerated so they seem to be existential ones
o political opportunity - there must be enough political space (whether the result of political freedom, state breakdown, or foreign support) to mobilize without facing effective repression; access to state institutions obviously increases the opportunity to act + a territorial base: ethnic rebels cannot mobilize unless they either are territorially concentrated in some region or have a territorial base in a neighbouring country

Question 21

Sudan as an example of ethnic war background

Answer 21

• in 1983 the same Sudanese leader, Jaafar al-Nimeiri, provoked a new round of north-south warfare - , the second north-south war that began in 1983 was most violent and resulted in the deaths of some 2 million people.
• Sudan is divided between a Muslim, Arabized north and a Christian and animist black African south; northerners and southerners are in turn broken up into a large array of groups, tribes, and clans. A cross-cutting cleavage is ethnolinguistic: some northern groups are less Arabized than other
• Given the consistent history of northern dominance of Sudanese governments, northerners always have the opportunity to initiate violence against the south: they simply unleash the army. Given the vast size of Sudan’s territory and the difficult terrain, the option of guerrilla resistance is equally omnipresent for Sudanese southerners – lack of opportunity is therefore not a constraint on ethnic war

Question 22

Sudan - the south

Answer 22

The largest of the southern peoples are the Dinka, who have formed the back- bone of the rebel groups, and the Nuer, who have typically been divided between the rebel and government camps. Neither Dinka nor Nuer have an overarching ethnic leadership, and their subgroups have often fought each other as well as other southern peoples.

• In the southern myths, however, the south is the land not of slaves but of those who resisted northern slave raids

Question 23

Sudan - the north

Answer 23

Northern families cultivate myths of descent from Arab ancestors as a way of claiming membership in the Arab world and a distinction from the “Africans” of the south.
* Another element of the northern Sudanese nationalist narrative is a proselytizing brand of Islam. While northerners see their Muslim Arab identity as superior, many also view southerners as “eligible for salvation through Islam.”
Talk of an Islamic state was thus a familiar and widely popular symbol in northern Sudan.

Question 24

how Sudanese leader cultivated an ethnic war

Answer 24

• Nimeiri clearly engaged in such symbol manipulation. Deng writes, “[He] began to dress in Arab garb, with all the outward symbols of an Islamic sheikh or imam.” He publicized his attendance at Friday sermons, requested that his ministers refrain from drinking alcohol. Evidence shows that this Islamist tilt was probably necessary for any politician seeking support in northern Sudan
• Cooperation with the Islamists and picking a fight with the southerners offered the hope of increasing Nimeiri’s political support through chauvinist mobilization, rallying the northern population behind the key symbols of Sudanese nationalism

Question 25

Sudanese example against rationalist explanations

Answer 25

no evidence of a commitment problem (R4) or of military incentives for pre-emption (R5). The institutional framework established in the 1972 Addis Ababa agreement remained functional until Nimeiri dismantled it
Neither did either side attack pre-emptively. Rather, Nimeiri moved piecemeal to respond to southern mutinies as they occurred, and rebellious troops responded piece- meal.
o for the elite-predation model to make sense, ethnic war must have been the best available strategy for Nimeiri (R7) on rationalist grounds. This is more dubious. Nimeiri abandoned his southern allies, who had every reason to want to help him stay in power and had saved him in 1976. Instead he invited his Islamist rivals to return to the country, re- build their power bases, and share power in the government until they eventually replaced him. He gave the Muslim Brotherhood control of the Islamic banks, which they used to bankroll their rise to power, and gave them free rein to proselytize in the army, ultimately turning it against him. He imposed sharia, though no one had a material interest in it. This does not make sense as a power-conserving strategy.

Question 26

Lewis on ethnic rebellion

Answer 26

Ethnicity = escalating not initiating

Question 27

Lewis’ dataset

Answer 27

Uganda- I identify all rebel groups that formed there since 1986-more than half of which are missing from standard data sets because they failed early.
15 additional, distinct rebel groups- which didn’t previously list in big data sets. All of these groups had the initial stated goal of overthrowing the state, and all began as small, clandestine organisations, typically led by a small cadre of leaders of roughly two to five people.
Only four of the 16 groups became a viable threat to the Ugandan government, which I operationalize as occurring if the group was able to maintain a base on Ugandan soil of at least roughly 100 people for at least 3 months.

Question 28

Lewis’ empirical findings from Uganda

Answer 28

• the ethnic make-up of the population where nascent rebel groups had already formed is associated with whether those nascent rebellions became viable challengers to a state; rebel groups that formed in ethnically homogeneous areas were more likely to succeed in becoming viable groups than those that formed in more heterogeneous areas.
  Eight rebel groups formed in homogeneous areas (below the mean for the 16 cases) and eight formed in heterogeneous areas (above the mean). In other words, for these cases, there is no system- atic relationship between ethnic demographic concentration and initial rebel group formation, contrary to what we would expect to find in the data if ethnic mobilization leads to initial rebellion onset.

Question 29

Lewis’ findings of initial mobilisation of rebel groups

Answer 29

• Several interviews of former rebel leaders indicated that when initially forming their group, their focus was not on mobilizing a broad swathe of the local population, as this may have led to detection by the government- rather, they were concerned with maintaining the population’s silence
  a former rebel leader explained, “We had to maintain secrecy, so we only relied on the most reliable people”.
• When asked about the initial stages of rebel group formation in their communities, civilians did not typically describe large rallies or a strong, widely held pro-rebellion sentiment in their communities. * Rebels also described using the early phases of violence to shape local civilians’ perceptions about the rebellion. One rebel leader explained that although he was uncertain early on about whether his group could succeed in overtaking the government, they “misled the public” by spreading propaganda locally indicating that they had the military strength to do so. They also aimed to score early victories by attacking “easy” targets, such as remote, small police detachments

Question 30

example of anti government narratives emerging after rebellions were underway in Uganda

Answer 30

in Teso, a highly ethnically homogeneous area where the Iteso people are concentrated, villagers and other observers commonly cited the devastating cattle raids in the late 1980s by the neighboring Karamojong ethnic group as an explanation for why the Iteso disliked the NRM government and supported the Uganda People’s Army (UPA) rebels; they resented the government’s negligence in failing to protect their cattle. However, it appears that the most severe cattle raids to hit Teso did not occur until several months after the UPA rebel group had already formed and initiated violence against state targets, such as nearby police barracks. In fact, in one interview, a UPA rebel leader suggested that the UPA was aware that the cattle raiding could help their cause, and indicated that “his men” were involved in some of the raids.

rebels were not using ethnic conflict but rather producing it

Question 30

Collier and Hoffler greed v grievance in civil war

Answer 30

grievances are immaterial because they are ubiquitous and therefore cannot explain the outbreak of rare events such as civil wars. Instead, grievances are merely used as an ideological smoke screen by greedy rebel leaders who, rather than being swayed by political ideas, are assumed to carefully calculate the costs and benefits of resorting to arms

Question 31

Fearon and Latin- cause of civil war

Answer 31

insurgent violence is more likely to erupt in weak states than in those with stable and resourceful governments
shifts the attention away from rebel motivations to political and institutional factors.
Inspired by economic theories on the “resource curse,” the article applies this concept to the functioning of the state, in order to explain why oil extraction leads to bad governance and state weakness. Rather than investing in tax collection and public good provision, resource abundant governments can take the shortcut of rent seeking. But this also means that their control of the state’s territory, especially in peripheral regions with inaccessible terrain, is weak, making uninformed and brutal counterinsurgency fighting more likely once insurgencies occur.

Question 32

Vogt and Cederman on civil war cause

Answer 32

against thinkers like Fearon and Collier
civil war cannot be reduced to a “closed-polity” model and that both (ethnic) grievances and opportunities contain an important transnational dimension.
introduces a broader spectrum of explanatory logics that includes not merely individual greed and private grudges but also ideologically committed individuals who are fighting to overcome repression and injustice. Conceiving of conflict continuation as repeat decisions to fight
civil wars often occur in countries where political power and resources are concentrated in the hands of a few dominant groups, leading to exclusion and marginalization of other groups. This exclusion creates grievances and tensions that can escalate into violent conflicts.

Question 33

Vogt and Cederman on the aftermath of war / legacy of war

Answer 33

“the social and institutional legacies of conflict are arguably the most important but least understood of all war impacts” still remains true today. i.e more complex than greed.
in the context of weak institutions, democratization may exacerbate existing social tensions, thus making conflict recurrence more likely. Indeed, competitive elections have been found to undermine postconflict peace building, especially if held too soon after the end of violence.
The dire socioeconomic consequences of civil violence prepare the ground for renewed conflict by locking countries into “conflict trap.” Moreover, the adverse economic consequences of civil wars tend to spill beyond the conflict states, having an important negative impact on economic growth in neighbouring countries.
In terms of military power sharing, a 2013 study of post conflict suggests that policies (such as quotas) designed to foster ethnic inclusion in the military may help transcend ethnic conflict

Question 34

Stanton and Balcells on how to approach civil war

Answer 34

we advocate moving beyond the language of the micro- and macro-level divide
*macro-level approaches, which focus on state structures, institutions, and systemic factors, can provide valuable insights into the broader context and conditions that facilitate or inhibit violence against civilians. On the other hand, micro-level approaches, which focus on individual motivations, behaviours, and interactions, can offer insights into the specific mechanisms and dynamics of violence at the local level- ntegrated approach allows for a deeper analysis of how macro-level factors shape and interact with micro-level dynamics, and vice versa

Question 35

Kalyvas & Balcells example of macro level in civil war

Answer 35

During the Cold War, military and financial backing from the United States and the Soviet Union increased the military power of both governments and rebel groups, with most civil wars fought as irregular, or guerrilla, wars. A decline in superpower backing following the end of the Cold War contributed to a decline in irregular civil war, as governments and rebel groups suffered a loss of military capacity + the dissolution of post-communist states contributed to a series of conventional civil wars.

Question 36

how macro level impacts onset and violence of civil wars

Answer 36

• rebel groups who receive material support from foreign governments—financing, supplies, weapons, or troops—are less dependent on local civilian populations for support and consequently have few incentives to rein in opportunistic violence against civilians or to refrain from punitive attacks against civilians
• External military intervention may exacerbate government perceptions of threat and therefore increase government incentives to engage in mass killing. external threats and rivalry create incentives for governments to engage in violence against out-groups within domestic society.

Question 37

how macro and micro level creates restraint in civil wars

Answer 37

In the years following World War II, for example, international actors formalized protections for noncombatants with the signing of the Genocide Convention and the Geneva Conventions, arguably helping to strengthen international norms emphasizing respect for human rights and humanitarian standards. that governments and rebel groups that are vulnerable domestically and, therefore, need diplomatic support from Western international audiences are more likely to exercise restraint toward civilians.
* types of progovernment militias—in particular, militias that are closely tied to the communities where they operate—are less likely to target civilians.
rebel groups that participate in elections are less likely to engage in violence against civilians because they are more accountable to their civilian supporters than are rebel groups that are not subject to elections.

Question 38

Fearon- empirical increase in civil war

Answer 38

the number of civil wars in progress each year increased steadily throughout the Cold War, already reaching levels in the 1980s greater than at present. There was a rapid increase around the time of the end of the Soviet Union, a spike that contributed to the perception that widespread civil war was a new, post–Cold War international problem. But after reaching a high point of forty-eight ongoing wars in 1992, the prevalence of civil war has actually declined.
o The reason for the impressive increase in prevalence up to the early 1990s is that the rate at which civil wars have ended has been consistently lower, averaging 1.77 per year.

Question 39

Fearon- why civil wars are easier to start than end

Answer 39

Growth of independent states: 1945, 64 independent states. Now 193 states
o Post-independence leaders have–most of the time successfully–used state revenues and offices to buy supporting coalitions, reducing the risk of coup attempts and rebellions. But positive shocks to the relative strength of potential rebels versus a central government sometimes occur. These shocks create windows of opportunity to try to seize power or at least get an armed organization over a threshold of military viability against what are often chronically weak government forces
* Once an armed rebel group gets over the threshold of military viability in a developing country with good conditions for insurgency, civil war can be extremely difficult to end. Civil wars end either by military victory or with a power-sharing agreement.
* In civil wars fought over a central government, stable power-sharing deals are hard to reach and implement in the absence of long-term, credible third-party commitments to enforce them. Each side has good reason to fear that the other would try to grab full control

Question 40

example of civil war post independence - Libya

Answer 40

the collapse of the Gaddafi regime in Libya in 2011 led to a flow of arms and fighters to northern Mali, providing a positive shock to insurgent capabilities that, in combination with postcoup weakness of the government in Bamako, made for civ- il war onset

Question 41

example of civil war post independence - Syria

Answer 41

In Syria, the mass demonstrations sparked by the Arab Spring created a window of opportunity for the formation of armed rebel groups, spurred on by the aggressive repression of an Assad regime that saw no prospects for stable and safe power-sharing with a moderate opposition.
o the heart of the problem in the Syrian war has been that Assad and his supporters realistically fear that diluting their control of the Syrian military in any power-sharing deal would create an unacceptable risk of genocide against them: even relatively moderate Sunni opposition figures cannot credibly commit that greater opposition power would not unintentionally head in the direction of control by more extreme factions. Likewise, if opposition forces were to agree to a deal with Assad that gave them no real hold in the state’s military, Assad could not credibly commit not to use the military to punish and secure himself against future trouble from current opposition forces.

Question 42

Koubi and climate change- direct pathway to conflict

Answer 42

• warmer or colder temperatures, by elevating levels of discomfort and aggressiveness, increase hostility and violence
  adverse climatic conditions, e.g., high temperatures or low rainfall, coupled with overpopulation reduce the resources needed to sustain human livelihood. Reduced resources increase competition, which leads to conflict.
• Climate change is predicted to increase both the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as storms, floods, landslides, and droughts. With the exception of drought, most natural disasters occur relatively abruptly and do not last for an extended period. Yet, by damaging public and private infrastructure, destroying crops, and killing livestock, they can cause or worsen scarcity that can lead to conflict.
  the existing empirical literature does not provide strong evidence that natural disasters affect the onset of conflict, it seems that natural disasters increase the duration of civil conflict
  Natural disasters also increase state-sponsored repression the incidence and severity of insurgent and government attacks and transnational terrorism

Question 43

Koubi and climate change - indirect pathway

Answer 43

An individual’s incentive to rebel rises as individual/household income and economic opportunities decline- more financial struggle reduces the short-term opportunity cost of fighting.
Consequently, since adverse climatic conditions, e.g., higher temperature, lower precipitation, or extreme weather events, depress output many scholars predict an inverse relationship between climate-depressed economic output and conflict.
climate challenging events are more likely to directly affect agricultural incomes due to their heavy dependence on weather conditions. This implies that the opportunity cost theory predicts the strongest inverse relationship between insurrection and agricultural incomes
* Climate change can cause a large number of people to flee from their homes The influx of large numbers of “environmental migrants” is likely to burden economic and resource bases in the receiving areas, thus promoting contests over scarce resources.