The Power of Uncertainty: How Change in Conflict Influences Security

• In Event: Poster Session: International Security I

Abstract

How do changes in armed conflict influence people-centered security? I argue that, while a static view on conflict emphasizes violence and displacement as security outcomes, a perspective on change reveals otherwise missed, less tangible security impacts, including fear, uncertainty, and the erosion of social fabric. Integrating political science literatures on political violence, anthropological approaches to fear, and criminological insights on distrust with the debates on macro level and micro level change in conflict, I move beyond conventional security research that typically only addresses one of these dimensions. The study is based on extensive fieldwork conducted in and on three hubs of instability that stand out through their protractedness and the convergence of armed conflict and organised crime: Colombia/Venezuela, the Golden Triangle (with a focus on Myanmar) and the Horn of Africa (with a focus on Somalia). Using process tracing, I demonstrate the causal mechanisms that link various forms of change in conflict with different types of harm that undermine people-centered security: physical harm (e.g. violence, displacements), non-physical harm (e.g. erosion of social fabric, mistrust, undermining of state-society relationship), and long-term harm. These insights serve as theoretical underpinning to improve policy interventions aimed at stabilizing regions affected by violence.

Author

• Annette Iris Idler, University of Oxford