Rivalry and Revenge: The Politics of Violence During Civil War

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

What explains violence against civilians in civil wars? Why do armed groups use violence in some places but not in neighboring places with similar characteristics? Why do they kill more civilians in some places than in others? More specifically, why do groups kill civilians in areas where they have full military control and their rivals have no military presence? The theoretical argument put forward in this book is that armed groups target civilians who have been politically mobilized by the enemy group, who are perceived as threats behind the frontlines. The book proposes a distinction between indirect and direct violence against civilians, and argues that the distribution of political loyalties relates differently with respect to each of these types. These differences emanate from their diverging form of production: indirect violence is perpetrated with heavy weapons and is unilaterally carried out by the armed group. In contrast, direct violence is perpetrated with small weapons and is produced by armed groups in collaboration with local civilians. Also, direct violence occurs when enemy supporters are located in zones controlled by the armed group, whereas indirect violence occurs when enemy supporters are located in zones controlled by the adversary. When targeting enemy supporters behind enemy lines, the armed group aims to kill as many of them as possible, hence they target locations with high concentrations of enemy supporters. In territory the armed group controls, in contrast, the group must take into account the preferences of its own supporters, whose collaboration is crucial. Group supporters are likely to collaborate in the killing of their neighbors if and only if it is in their own interest to do so, which is the case when eliminating enemy supporters can decisively shift the demographic balance and help them gain or consolidate political control of the locality. Because of the latter, direct violence is likely to occur where the balance between group supporters and enemy supporters is relatively even. Thus, the main prediction in the book is that indirect violence increases with rival supporters’ domination of a locality whereas direct violence increases with parity between supporters of the two rival groups.

The hypotheses are tested with a multi-method empirical strategy. The research design consists of exploring intra-country variation (with large-n sub-national data) of violence during the Spanish civil war (1936-1939) and the Ivorian civil wars (2002-2011), and combining it with additional secondary evidence from other cases in order to provide external validity. For the case studies, the author draws on archival and historiographic sources to construct a set of novel databases of victims of lethal violence, pre-war elections results, and geographical and socioeconomic variables. She also uses qualitative evidence collected from oral sources and from over a hundred published sources, including general history books, as well as regional and local studies.

This panel will discuss the book as well as next steps to advance two research agendas: (i) local agency in civil war; and (ii) the study of historical civil wars to learn about current and future armed conflicts. Five critics will discuss the book: Jessica Stanton (University of Minnesota), David Skarbek (Brown University), Gary Uzonyi (University of Tenessee), Benjamin Lessing (University of Chicago) and Tanisha Fazal ((University of Minnesota). These experts will bring together their knowledge on civil war, violence and restraint during armed conflict, organized crime, and local agency in contexts affected by different kinds of violent actors. They will present some of their own research, which is in direct dialogue with Balcells’s book. The panel will be chaired by Prof. Paul Staniland (University of Chicago).

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 21: Conflict Processes

Chair

• Paul Staniland University of Chicago

Presenters

• Laia Balcells Georgetown University

• Tanisha Fazal University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

• Benjamin Lessing University of Chicago

• David Skarbek Brown University

• Gary Uzonyi University of Tennessee

• Jessica Stanton University of Minnesota, Twin Cities