scholarly journals Group Grievances & Civil War: Some Theory and Empirics on Competing Mechanisms, 1990-2017

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Indra de Soysa ◽  
Krishna Vadlamnnati ◽  
henning finseraas
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Private Ownership ◽  
Economic Governance ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Political Exclusion

<p>Recent scholarship forcefully claims that group grievances due to political exclusion and discrimination drive civil wars. This perspective argues that socio-psychological factors allow groups to overcome collective action problems. We argue that the grievance perspective (over)focuses on the <i>ends</i> and not <i>means</i>, which are critical to explain how groups survive state repression, allowing contention to become civil wars. We suggest that inclusive economic governance reduces investment in state-evading infrastructures for quotidian economic reasons. Our analyses show that group-grievance-generating political factors are poorer predictors of civil war compared with economic freedoms measured as free-market friendly policies and the private ownership of economies. These results are robust to several alternative models, data, and estimating method. Theory that ignores the <i>means </i>explain the main causes of costly violence only partially or mistake symptom for cause. Freedom and inclusiveness are intrinsically valuable and hard to obtain when violence is waged for narrower ends. </p><p> </p>

scholarly journals Group Grievances & Civil War: Some Theory and Empirics on Competing Mechanisms, 1990-2017

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Indra de Soysa ◽  
Krishna Vadlamnnati ◽  
henning finseraas
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Private Ownership ◽  
Economic Governance ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Political Exclusion

<p>Recent scholarship forcefully claims that group grievances due to political exclusion and discrimination drive civil wars. This perspective argues that socio-psychological factors allow groups to overcome collective action problems. We argue that the grievance perspective (over)focuses on the <i>ends</i> and not <i>means</i>, which are critical to explain how groups survive state repression, allowing contention to become civil wars. We suggest that inclusive economic governance reduces investment in state-evading infrastructures for quotidian economic reasons. Our analyses show that group-grievance-generating political factors are poorer predictors of civil war compared with economic freedoms measured as free-market friendly policies and the private ownership of economies. These results are robust to several alternative models, data, and estimating method. Theory that ignores the <i>means </i>explain the main causes of costly violence only partially or mistake symptom for cause. Freedom and inclusiveness are intrinsically valuable and hard to obtain when violence is waged for narrower ends. </p><p> </p>

Political Exclusion, Lost Autonomy, and Escalating Conflict over Self-Determination

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Micha Germann ◽  
Nicholas Sambanis
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Conflict Escalation ◽  
Extant Literature ◽  
Common Causes ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Political Exclusion

Abstract Most civil wars are preceded by nonviolent forms of conflict. While it is often assumed that violent and nonviolent conflicts are qualitatively different and have different causes, that assumption is rarely tested empirically. We use a two-step approach to explore whether political exclusion and lost autonomy—two common causes of civil war according to extant literature—are associated with the emergence of nonviolent separatist claims, with the escalation of nonviolent separatist claims to war, or both. Our analysis suggests that different types of grievances matter more at different stages of conflict escalation. We find that political exclusion is a significant correlate of the escalation of nonviolent claims for self-determination to violence, while its association with the emergence of nonviolent separatist claims is weaker. By contrast, lost autonomy is correlated with both the emergence of nonviolent separatist claims and, if autonomy revocations are recent, their escalation to violence. We argue that these results are consistent with both grievance- and opportunity-based theories of conflict.

Warwickshire Catholics in the Civil War

1980 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
David F. Mosler
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Recent Scholarship

Recent scholarship has challenged the Marxist and Whig-Liberal views which placed the Catholics solidly behind Charles I in the Civil War. Kieth Lindley, Martin J. Havran and others argue that they were hard hit by the taxation policies of Thorough in the 1630s, and that when the Civil Wars came they were too impoverished and politically alienated to risk life and property for the King. The story of Catholics in Warwickshire during the Civil War and Interregnum well illustrates these revisionist interpretations.

scholarly journals Varieties of post-civil war violence

2021 ◽  
pp. 263300242110398
Author(s):  
Daniel Odin Shaw ◽  
Enrique Wedgwood Young
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Violent Crime ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Recurrence Risk ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Low Intensity ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
War Outcomes

Quantitative research on the “durability” of peace following civil wars typically captures the breakdown or survival of “peace” in a binary manner, equating it with the presence or absence of civil war recurrence. In the datasets that underpin such studies, years that do not experience full-scale civil war are implicitly coded as “peaceful.” Yet, post-civil war environments may remain free from war recurrence, while nevertheless experiencing endemic violent crime, state repression, low-intensity political violence, and systematic violence against marginalized groups, all of which are incongruent with the concept of peace. Approaches to assessing post-civil war outcomes which focus exclusively on civil war recurrence risk overestimating the “durability” of peace, implicitly designating as “peaceful” a range of environments which may be anything but. In this article, we discuss the heterogeneity of violent post-civil war outcomes and develop a typology of “varieties of post-civil war violence.” Our typology contributes to the study of post-civil war peace durability, by serving as the basis for an alternative, categorical conceptualization of “peace years” in conflict datasets.

Through the prism of Spain. Socio-economic causes of different outcomes of Russian and Spanish civil wars

2017 ◽  
pp. 142-155
Author(s):  
I. Rozinskiy ◽  
N. Rozinskaya
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Russian Civil War ◽  
World War ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Economic Well Being

The article examines the socio-economic causes of the outcome of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1936), which, as opposed to the Russian Civil War, resulted in the victory of the “Whites”. Choice of Spain as the object of comparison with Russia is justified not only by similarity of civil wars occurred in the two countries in the XX century, but also by a large number of common features in their history. Based on statistical data on the changes in economic well-being of different strata of Spanish population during several decades before the civil war, the authors formulate the hypothesis according to which the increase of real incomes of Spaniards engaged in agriculture is “responsible” for their conservative political sympathies. As a result, contrary to the situation in Russia, where the peasantry did not support the Whites, in Spain the peasants’ position predetermined the outcome of the confrontation resulting in the victory of the Spanish analogue of the Whites. According to the authors, the possibility of stable increase of Spanish peasants’ incomes was caused by the nation’s non-involvement in World War I and also by more limited, compared to Russia and some other countries, spending on creation of heavy (primarily military-related) industry in Spain.

Stick Then Carrot: When Do Governments Give Amnesty during Civil War?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lesley-Ann Daniels
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Policy Choice ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
The Government

Abstract Governments grant amnesties to rebel groups during civil wars and this is a puzzle. Why would the government offer an amnesty, which can be interpreted as a signal of weakness? In certain circumstances, offering amnesty is a rational policy choice. Governments should give amnesties when they are winning: the risk of misinterpreted signals is lessened, costs are low, rebel groups are weakened, and so amnesty can be used instrumentally to encourage defection or division among foot soldiers or as an incentive to leaders. Therefore, the government capitalizes on its military advantage and offers amnesty in a “stick then carrot” tactic. Using a database of amnesties during conflicts from 1990 to 2011, the article shows that governments are more likely to give amnesties following high rebel deaths. The use of amnesty during conflict is nuanced and context is important when understanding strategic choices.

Oil Wealth, Post-conflict Elections, and Postwar Peace Failure

2015 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 1021-1045 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Keels
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Oil Revenue ◽  
Oil Wealth ◽  
New Research

New research has emerged that suggests there is a troubling relationship between elections and civil wars; primarily, elections increase the risk of civil war recurrence. I investigate this relationship further by examining the economic factors associated with the connection between postwar elections and peace failure. Specifically, how does the presence of oil wealth impact the risk posed by postwar elections. Drawing on previous findings in the democratization literature, I suggest the immobility of oil wealth dramatically increases the stakes associated with postwar elections. As postwar elites use irregular electioneering to consolidate their control of oil revenue, it increases the incentives for postwar opposition to use violence as a means to achieve their objectives. Using post-civil war data from 1945 to 2005, I demonstrate that postwar elections that occur in oil-rich economies dramatically decrease the durability of postwar peace. Once controlling for petro elections, though, I demonstrate that subsequent postwar elections actually increase the durability of postwar peace.

Captain Aguilera and filicide: an attachment-based exploration

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-297
Author(s):  
Arturo Ezquerro
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Historical Investigation ◽  
Group Attachment ◽  
Unresolved Trauma

This article aims to explore a constellation of individual-attachment, family-attachment, and group-attachment experiences, as well as other psychosocial, cultural, and political factors, which contributed to the dual filicide perpetrated by Captain Gonzalo de Aguilera Munro—a count, landowner, cavalryman, and propaganda press officer for General Francisco Franco’s army during the Spanish Civil War. Learning from Luis Arias González and, above all, Paul Preston’s biographies of Captain Aguilera, the article will employ a combined methodology of historical investigation, psychiatric clinical formulations, and group analysis. In doing so, it will take into account a highly complex context of brutal group dynamics of national depression and exaltation, unresolved trauma, military rebellion, war, genocide, holocaust, and dictatorship.

Transnational Jihadism & Civil Wars

Daedalus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 146 (4) ◽  
pp. 59-70
Author(s):  
Martha Crenshaw
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Domestic Terrorism ◽  
Transnational Activism ◽  
Power Centers ◽  
Soviet Invasion ◽  
Competing Power ◽  
Foreign Fighters ◽  
The Relationship

When rebels also employ terrorism, civil wars can become more intractable. Since the 1980s, jihadism, a form of violent transnational activism, has mobilized civil war rebels, outside entrepreneurs, foreign fighters, and organizers of transnational as well as domestic terrorism. These activities are integral to the jihadist trend, representing overlapping and conjoined strands of the same ideological current, which in turn reflects internal division and dissatisfaction within the Arab world and within Islam. Jihadism, however, is neither unitary nor monolithic. It contains competing power centers and divergent ideological orthodoxies. Different jihadist actors emphasize different priorities and strategies. They disagree, for example, on whether the “near” or the “far” enemy should take precedence. The relationship between jihadist terrorism and civil war is far from uniform or constant. This essay traces the trajectory of this evolution, beginning in the 1980s in the context of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

"The Necessary Murder": Myth, Ritual, and Civil War in Lucan, Book 3

1994 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. M. C. Green
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Sacred Grove ◽  
Bellum Civile ◽  
Sacred Place ◽  
Blood Sacrifice ◽  
Ultimate Cause ◽  
Historical Basis

It is the argument of this paper that many aspects of Lucan's characterization in the Bellum Civile of Caesar and Pompey, and of the conflict itself, reflect a ritual combat for kingship such as the combat and murder codified in the myth of Romulus and Remus. It was a well-established convention by Ennius's time, further developed in the late Republic, that the conflict between the founding brothers over control of Rome was the ultimate cause for the Civil Wars. The religious (and possibly the historical) basis of this myth can be found in the rites of the priest of Diana at Aricia, the rex nemorensis, which were still extant in Lucan's time. The evidence for Lucan's use of this paradigm is reviewed, and Book 3 of the Bellum Civile is then reassessed in the terms that it suggests. The themes of sacred place (especially the sacred grove), scared combat, and the necessary murder are most clearly presented in Book 3. It is further argued that seeming inconsistencies in the nature of the gods in Lucan's epic can be at least partially resolved if we understand that the gods must remain aloof and outside the action while the ritual takes place, even though they themselves have instituted the ritual of kingship murder, and will, when it is completed, receive the murderer as their ritually validated priest-king. In the conclusion, ways are suggested in which this paradigm, if accepted, begins to clarify various puzzling choices Lucan has made elsewhere in the epic regarding his narrative of events, his development of character, and the recurrent images of lightning, tree, and blood-sacrifice owed to the gods.

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