Civilian Noncooperation in Civil War: Conceptualization and Theory Development

• In Event: Order and Violence in Latin America: States, Civilians and Armed Actors

Abstract

Descriptions of civilians living in warzones tend to portray them as stuck inexorably within the dichotomous choice of either collaborating with an armed actor or fleeing the area. A deeper insight into the life of civilians in the midst of a civil war reveals however that their portfolio of responses to armed groups’ strategies is wider. Although far from a dominant strategy, organized noncooperation is a possible course of action. With the aim of setting up the basis for a research agenda on collective noncooperation as strategy to respond to civil war violence, this paper makes two initial contributions, one conceptual and the other theoretical. First, it carefully conceptualizes noncooperation strategies and develops a framework that describes the spectrum of relevant variation these strategies are likely to exhibit. Second, it proposes an argument, amiable to empirical scrutiny, about the conditions and micro-foundations for the emergence of these strategies. Although in a broader project I claim that noncooperation strategies are a function of the evolution of a desire for noncooperation and the capacity to act upon this desire, in this paper I focus on the former and argue that such a desire is more likely to evolve in the face of acute indiscriminate violence and when territorial control is in flux or highly contested. I illustrate this argument with qualitative data gathered through extensive field work in two different localities in Colombia.

Author

• Juan Masullo, European University Institute