3. Strategic Theory

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas G. Mahnken
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
Causes Of War ◽  
Underlying Causes

This chapter examines a range of theories that explain why wars occur and how these various explanations of war give rise to different requirements or conditions for peace. It first considers the difficulties involved in studying war before discussing the immediate and underlying causes of war. It then explores explanations of war based on human nature and instinct, along with psychological theories that emphasize misperception and frustration as causes of aggression. It also analyses the ideas of those who find the causes of war in human collectives — states, tribes, and ethnic groups — and those who favour ‘systemic’ rather than ‘unit’ explanations. Finally, it looks at the debate between ‘greed’ and ‘grievance’ as a cause of civil wars as well as wars that occur ‘within’ and ‘beyond’ states.

4. The Causes of War and the Conditions of Peace

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Garnett ◽  
John Baylis
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
Causes Of War ◽  
Underlying Causes

Introduction 67 The Study of War 68 Human Nature Explanations of War 72 Wars ‘Within’ and ‘Beyond’ States 78 Conclusion 81 Scholarship dealing with the causes of war is voluminous and multidisciplinary. This chapter describes and explains theories that have been advanced by biologists, philosophers, political scientists, and sociologists about why wars occur. It groups their ideas into categories and shows how different explanations of war give rise to different requirements or conditions for peace. It is argued that it is useful to make distinctions between immediate and underlying causes of war. The chapter pays particular attention to explanations of war based on human nature and instinct, but it also considers those psychological theories that emphasize misperception and frustration as causes of aggression. The ideas of those who find the causes of war in human collectives—states, tribes, and ethnic groups—and those who favour ‘systemic’ rather than ‘unit’ explanations are also described. The chapter also looks at the debate between ‘greed’ and ‘grievance’ as a cause of civil wars....

5. The Causes of War and the Conditions of Peace

2018 ◽  
pp. 72-88
Author(s):  
John Garnett ◽  
John Baylis
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Bargaining Model ◽  
Ethnic Conflicts ◽  
Causes Of War ◽  
Bargaining Model Of War ◽  
Just Peace ◽  
Inter State

This chapter examines theories that explain the causes of war. It considers ideas advanced by political scientists, sociologists, biologists and philosophers, showing that different explanations of war give rise to different requirements or conditions for peace. After highlighting the difficulties in studying war, the chapter discusses human nature explanations of war, citing such factors as frustration, misperception, misunderstanding, miscalculation, and errors of judgement as well as the role of human collectives including factions, tribes, nations and states. It then describes the bargaining model of war before turning to inter-state wars, intra-state conflicts, and ethnic conflicts. It also explores the debate over whether ‘greed’ or ‘grievance’ are the main causes of civil wars. The chapter concludes that identifying a single cause appropriate to all wars is an exercise in futility and that a worldwide ‘just’ peace is unattainable.

Reputation and the occurrence and success of mediation in civil wars

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 410-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Keels ◽  
J Michael Greig
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Intrastate Conflict ◽  
Ethnic Exclusion ◽  
Negotiated Settlement ◽  
Future Challenges

In this article, we argue that because governments fear that accepting mediation and reaching agreements with opponents may signal weakness to other potential challengers, civil war governments tend to resist mediation as a means of demonstrating their resolve. Building on current theories of reputation in civil war, we argue that the threat of future challenges from other groups is likely to be particularly acute in states with multiple ethnic groups, especially states with high levels of ethnic exclusion. We therefore expect that civil wars in these states will be less likely to see mediation and to produce agreements when they do. By examining all instances of mediation in intrastate conflict from 1990 to 2008, we test this argument empirically and find that mediation is more likely to emerge in civil wars where there are a large number of ethnic groups, but is less likely to occur when many of those ethnic groups are excluded from the political process. Once mediation is underway, however, it is less likely to yield a negotiated settlement when there are a large number of ethnic groups, but more likely to end in a negotiated settlement when many of the ethnic groups are excluded from the political process.

Social Identification and Ethnic Conflict

2013 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 294-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICHOLAS SAMBANIS ◽  
MOSES SHAYO
Keyword(s):  
Simple Model ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Ethnic Conflict ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Group Identification ◽  
Social Identification ◽  
Entire Population ◽  
Ethnic Identification ◽  
Empirical Results

When do ethnic cleavages increase the risk of conflict? Under what conditions is a strong common identity likely to emerge, thereby reducing that risk? How are patterns of social identification shaped by conflict? We draw on empirical results regarding the nature and determinants of group identification to develop a simple model that addresses these questions. The model highlights the possibility of vicious and virtuous cycles where conflict and identification patterns reinforce each other. It also shows how processes of ethnic identification amplify the importance of political institutions and traces the effects of national status and perceived differences across ethnic groups. Finally, we demonstrate how a small but sufficiently potent group of ethnic radicals can derail a peaceful equilibrium, leading to the polarization of the entire population. We reexamine several historical cases as well as empirical correlates of civil wars in light of these results.

Central African Republic: Coups, Mutinies, and Civil War

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Stapleton
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Central African Republic ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Military Officers ◽  
Political Liberalization ◽  
Fragile State ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The 1960S

Since independence from France in 1960, the Central African Republic (CAR) has experienced numerous military coups both successful and unsuccessful, mutinies by disgruntled soldiers and civil wars that have had terrible impacts on civilians. Three career military officers took power by force and led the country for a total of 36 years: Bokassa (1965–1979), Kolingba (1981–1993), and Bozize (2003–2013). From the 1960s to 1990s, both military and civilian rulers politicized, regionalized, and weakened the CAR military by packing it with supporters from their home areas and ethnic groups, and establishing alternative security structures and bringing in foreign troops to secure their regimes. In this period, the CAR military became a Praetorian force obsessed with the country’s internal political power struggles. In the 1990s, in the context of the post-Cold War political liberalization of Africa, the CAR’s transition to democracy was undermined by a succession of army mutinies over lack of pay and other grievances that fatally weakened an already fragile state. A series of civil wars in the 2000s and 2010s resulted in the near dissolution of the CAR military and the partition of the country into a network of fiefdoms dominated by antagonistic local armed factions separated from each other by beleaguered UN peacekeepers.

scholarly journals Ethnonationalist Triads: Assessing the Influence of Kin Groups on Civil Wars

2009 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars-Erik Cederman ◽  
Luc Girardin ◽  
Kristian Skrede Gleditsch
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Quantitative Studies ◽  
Kin Support ◽  
Geocoded Data ◽  
The Empirical Analysis

Although the case-based literature suggests that kin groups are prominent in ethnonationalist conflicts, quantitative studies of civil war onset have both overaggregated and underaggregated the role of ethnicity, by looking at civil war at the country level instead of among specific groups and by treating individual countries as closed units, ignoring groups' transnational links. In this article the authors integrate transnational links into a dyadic perspective on conflict between marginalized ethnic groups and governments. They argue that transnational links can increase the risk of conflict as transnational kin support can facilitate insurgencies and are difficult for governments to target or deter. The empirical analysis, using new geocoded data on ethnic groups on a transnational basis, indicates that the risk of conflict is high when large, excluded ethnic groups have transnational kin in neighboring countries, and it provides strong support for the authors' propositions on the importance of transnational ties in ethnonationalist conflict.

Workforce Diversity at the Lagos Business School, Pan-African University, Nigeria

2012 ◽  
pp. 73-87
Author(s):  
Kemi Ogunyemi
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Business School ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Workforce Diversity ◽  
Administrative Staff ◽  
Academic Environment ◽  
Academic Curriculum ◽  
Pan African ◽  
Christian View

The School has a fair distribution of people from different ethnic groups. It also has a mission that identifies expressly with the Christian view of human nature and yet is open to people of all religious inclinations. As an academic environment, there is also the inevitable risk of distance between academic staff and administrative staff and between lecturers and students. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the positive practices at the LBS that help them leverage workforce diversity and to make a few suggestions for improvement. This chapter will also highlight how the school reflects the importance of leveraging diversity in its academic curriculum.

scholarly journals Why Do Ethnic Groups Rebel? New Data and Analysis

2009 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars-Erik Cederman ◽  
Andreas Wimmer ◽  
Brian Min
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
State Power ◽  
The State ◽  
Central State ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Government

Much of the quantitative literature on civil wars and ethnic conflict ignores the role of the state or treats it as a mere arena for political competition among ethnic groups. Other studies analyze how the state grants or withholds minority rights and faces ethnic protest and rebellion accordingly, while largely overlooking the ethnic power configurations at the state's center. Drawing on a new data set on Ethnic Power Relations (EPR) that identifies all politically relevant ethnic groups and their access to central state power around the world from 1946 through 2005, the authors analyze outbreaks of armed conflict as the result of competing ethnonationalist claims to state power. The findings indicate that representatives of ethnic groups are more likely to initiate conflict with the government (1) the more excluded from state power they are, especially if they have recently lost power, (2) the higher their mobilizational capacity, and (3) the more they have experienced conflict in the past.

War

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kekes
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Causes Of War ◽  
The Human Condition

AbstractThis article is an explanation of the causes of war. It shows the inadequacy of existing explanations in terms of competition for scarce resources, aggressiveness as a trait inherent in human nature, and struggle for power. It constructs a new explanation that combines the defensible elements of the inadequate explanations and adds to them conflicts between systems of value on which the identity of the warring parties depends as the most important of the causes of war. It concludes that since values are plural and conflicting, conflicts between systems of value are ineliminable. This has the consequence that war is a permanent adversity that is an unavoidable obstacle to the improvement of the human condition.

scholarly journals Disaggregating Ethno-Nationalist Civil Wars: A Dyadic Test of Exclusion Theory

2008 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 531-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Halvard Buhaug ◽  
Lars-Erik Cederman ◽  
Jan Ketil Rød
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Balance ◽  
Dyadic Analysis ◽  
Rough Terrain ◽  
Political Center ◽  
Actual Operation ◽  
Conflict Research ◽  
Do So

Contemporary conflict research usually measures the influence of ethnicity on conflict by capturing ethnic constellations as country-based indices, such as ethnic fractionalization or polarization. However, such aggregated measures are likely to conceal the actual operation of actor-specific mechanisms. In this article, therefore, we introduce a disaggregated model that measures ethnic groups' access to power. We do so by disaggregating both ethnicity and conflict to the level of explicitly geo-coded center-periphery dyads. This procedure allows us to measure the power balance between politically excluded ethnic groups and dominant actors in terms of group sizes, distances between the center and the periphery, and the roughness of the latter's terrain. We rely on geographic information systems (GIS) to compute demographic and ethno-geographic variables. The dyadic analysis enables us to show that exclusion of powerful ethnic minorities increases the likelihood of conflict considerably. In addition, we show that the risk of conflict is positively associated with the extent of rough terrain in the peripheral group's home region and its distance from the political center.

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