Also: Causes tremendous suffering Affects neighboring states Often engages the interests of distant states
Source: blattman 2010
Source: Frieden Lake Schultz 2012, p. 215-242
Collective disadvantages: - Economic discrimination: apartheid - Access to employment - Access to services - Access to land - Political discrimination - Government - Bureaucracy,police - Loss of political autonomy: Tibet - Repression - Cultural discrimination (language, religion)
In fact, diversity makes conflict LESS likely! Diversity \(\rightarrow\) difficult to maintain cohesion \(\rightarrow\) difficult to recruit. Also no effect on duration
Effect if dominance. Homogenous society potentially more dangerous. Most dangerous = one ethnic grp has between 45 and 90% of pop. Enough to exploit the minority \(\rightarrow\) Even if the minority is the one in power, cannot trust democracy
Source: “Buhaug et al, ‘One effect to rule them all? A comment on climate and conflict’, Climatic Change (2014) 127:391–397
Modern empirical estimates for the effect of climate variability on civil conflict. The markers illustrate the estimated percentage change in conflict with a 1 degree increase in temperature (red), loss of rainfall (blue), increase in drought (orange), El Nino-like conditions (brown) or increase in severity of climatic natural disasters (gray). Whiskers denote the 95 % confidence interval. The solid horizontal line indicates the median climate effect with the 95 % highest density interval in grey, based on a Bayesian hierarchical model. The panels at the right show the distribution of results from all candidate studies (black) or those focusing squarely on temperature effects (red); solid lines represent the variance-weighted distribution while dashed lines depict the Bayesian hierarchical distribution. Studies listed alphabetically
Grievances, aka motivation
Source: Frieden Lake Schultz 2012, p. 215-242 At the root of all civil wars is some conflict of interests between the government and some subset of the population. two main sources: grievances and greed
Grievances: arise when the policies of the government discriminate against members of a particular group, such as by repressing their language or culture, blocking their access to jobs or political office, or denying them government services, such as education, health care, and public infrastructure. These kinds of policies can lead to vast inequalities in wealth and quality of life among groups. - fight against injustice - ethnic hatred - inequality - political repression
Greed refers to a group’s desire to control more of the country’s economic resources, such as by having a greater share of the profits from natural resource extraction (e.g., oil or minerals) or privilege access to jobs and government largesses. - Lust for econ/political gain; - Loot natural resources; - Gain power
OR
Popular perception: civil wars caused by grievances
But rebel groups have an interest in promoting this image
Whether war occurs has little to do w/ the motivation for conflict. What matters is whether it is feasible - whether the organization can sustain itself financially - Whether can get recruits - Opportunity costs - Feasibility of fighting
Assumption: there are grievances everywhere
What matters is feasibility. Feasibility depends on:
Factors that lead young men (mostly) to choose fighting over other activities \(\rightarrow\) facilitates recruitment
\(\Rightarrow\) Typical profile: Young, uneducated male
Source: Blattman 2010
The difficulty to mobilise in intrastate conflicts: An important problem for rebels is to mobilize people. If you do this at home for, say, an environmental cause, you need to find people willing to support, etc. But in the context of finding people willing to take up arms against the police or the military, plant bombs or blow themselves up, finding people willing to contribute is a lot harder. You also have to figure out how to buy guns, explosives, and other tools of rebellion. There is also a danger that people you approach will alert the police and you will end up in prison or worse.
What circumstances would lead you to take these risks? and how could you get others to follow you? This dilemma is the central challenge faced by rebel groups and terrorist organizations.
States have the ability to mobilise troops, so when we modeled bargaining, we assumed a given underlying power. For non-state actors, however, the problem of collective action is much more prevalent. Groups need to find like-minded individuals and motivate them to participate in the fight. And governments in conflict with such groups have to implement strategies that diminish the pool of potential supporters and/or encourage free-riding.
What can ease the free riding problem? Often individuals may be motivated by very strong religious or ideological beliefs that lead them to see contributing to the cause as beneficial in its own right. Individuals from the same ethnic or religious group may have higher levels of trust or collective solidarity ??????> easier to recruit people from the same ethnic group. ethnic groups may also be more concentrated geographically, making it easier to coordinate their activities Another way to amass fighters is through forcible recruitment, or kidnapping. The UN estimates that there are more than 250k children under the age of 18 participating in civil conflicts around the world. In the absence of strong ethnic ties, might need to compensate supporters materially. diamonds or precious minerals. E.g., Sierra Leone’s blood diamonds; Colombia and cocaine trade; Taliban and poppies (heroin). Some rebel groups are essentially criminal gangs deeply engaged in smuggling, human trafficking, and extortion. Population: larger pool to recruit from, and easier to hide
Source: BBC
Capacity to control or regulate
Costs of collective action increase
Political institutions: the incentive to threaten or use violence depends in part of whether the normal political process allows peaceful methods for redressing grievances. After all, fighting is very costly, so it makes sense to seek policy change or influence through existing political channels. If groups can pursue their goals by running candidates in elections or securing their rights through courts, then they have an alternative to taking up arms. This suggests that democratic countries shod have a lower risk.
But the relationship with political institutions is more complex: it also depends on the government’s repressive capacity—that is, how easily it can prevent, deter, or eliminate armed opposition.
State strength also matters: ability to project power. Richer states tend to have better and stronger police and military forces as well as better ability to project their authority throughout the country. By contrast, poorer countries often have police and militaries that are not much better trained or equipped than their domestic opponents. The inability to project forces throgughough the country makes it possible for rebel groups to organise in places that are beyond the government??????s effective reach.
Operate from bases abroad, e.g. sanctuaries
Ideology (e.g. Iran supports Hamas and Hezbollah)
Rebel movements more likely if supported by ethnic diasporas Irish American support of IRA Support of KLA by Albanians in Germany
Direction of causality: diasporas causing civil wars, or the reverse?
Motivation and feasibility still cannot explain:
These explanations are good but insufficient. Without negotiation theory, we cannot explain: Why do at-risk governments not sign more negotiated settlements?
Governments should take the risks of civil war into account and compensate potential rebels
Variation across countries. In particular, 3 puzzles: - Variation of outbreak of violence across countries - Many countries are poor and unstable, but no civil war - Variation in duration of conflicts - Mozambique, Colombia, Ethiopia > 30 years - Other just a few months - Why some wars recur and others do not
Negotiation theory can help us w/ these puzzles
If parties involved in a dispute had complete information about the outcome of a war, they would almost always prefer a settlement to the costs and risks of war
Asymmetric info is particularly severe in intra-state conflicts: - Info about the military capabilities of potential rebel groups is difficult to obtain - Size of the army - Financial flows, often subject to change - Degree of support among population - Organization - Potential rebel groups may not know their own strength without first engaging in battle and building support over time - Even if domestic groups knew their own capabilities, strong incentives to withhold this information b/c government could easily exploit it
Resources are also often subject to abrupt changes: - Outside patrons, diasporas - Rebels may enjoy the support of a foreign government early in a conflict only to lose this backing when the patron’s political, economic, or ideological circumstances change. Irish-Americans were the primary source of funding for the Irish Republican Army (IRA) until Prime Minister Thatcher asked President Reagan to help stop the flow of cash - Natural resources (price fluctuations) - Rebels in Colombia, Burma, and Nepal have access to coca and poppies, but these resources are vulnerable to drought and disease, antidrug policing, and fluctuations in world demand. - Third parties - Angola’s UNITA rebels lost the backing of the United States and South Africa when the ColdWar ended (after which they obtained financing by taking control of lucrative diamond fields). - Diamonds, - Oil - Agricultural products (bananas, coca) \(\rightarrow\) droughts
In addition, multiple groups seek concessions, but only a handful of them can fight \(\rightarrow\) Governments need to screen Empirical Consequences: - Uncertainty highest when the rebels’s capabilities are neither so great nor meager - Uncertainty highest when monitoring is difficult - Rough terrain - Large Geographic size - Weak government forces Governments also have private info about their own willingness to fight Incentives to signal toughness when numerous potential challengers exist
But still, in long wars, information about strength or resolve should be revealed/learned \(\rightarrow\) other bargaining problems: commitment/indivisibilities.
Problem of Enforcement
If settlement cannot be enforced over time and leaves one or both sides vulnerable to attack or abuse \(\rightarrow\) Decisive military victory preferred
Commitment problems particularly acute in civil wars Typically large power asymmetry \(\rightarrow\) easy for government to renege on promises. Government can promise to reform the political system, share power, or transfer autonomy, but little ability to punish the government it if fails to follow through. Credible commitments are particularly difficult to make to minorities. The majority almost always has the numbers to override promises made to a weaker rival, and the minority can do little to prevent this. E.g., Sunnis in Iraq, after US leaves. Iraqi Sunnis thus boycotted the January 2005 elections in part because no assurances existed that majority Shia would share power once safely in power.
Even if a domestic group is strong enough to threaten force, it will become weaker as a result of a settlement - Demobilization - Control over territory transferred to government
War should stop when all information is revealed. Yet information in unlikely to be revealed at the same rate in each conflict
Wars particularly slow at revealing information \(\rightarrow\) longer wars Guerilla wars / terrorist tactics: - Many start and stops - Difficult to assess strengths - Opponents who operate from remote regions or foreign base camps - Multiple, shifting factions, and/or outside actors - Need more information - Info collected can become irrelevant more quickly as coalitions shift
Ibos in Nigeria
Information problems do not explain why wars can drag on for many years, even when no new info is revealed
Also, even generous offers are often rejected
Two main sources of commitment problems - Treaties are typically signed during periods of government weakness \(\rightarrow\) as gvt regains strength, will have incentives to renege - Demobilization period
Two types of countries less likely to overcome these problems - Countries with clear asymmetry of power - Mutual enforcement difficult - Countries with no chance of 3rd party intervention. Empirically, countries are: - Less likely to send peacekeepers to: - countries with strong governments - countries that are democratic - countries with relatively high living standards - More likely to send them to: - Countries where the rebels are strong - Countries with low living standards - Multiple factions are involved in fighting
A second civil war depends on the quality and amount of info combatants received about each other in the first war. This depends on 2 main factors - Duration of first war: longer = more info - Outcome of first war: decisive victory = more info
Empirical record: 50% of negotiated settlements broke down into renewed war 15% of decisive military victories Negotiated settlements provide more info about government’s willingness to negotiate
Decisive victory solves the commitment problem
Give war a chance?
The main reason decisive military victories lead to longer periods of peace is that they solve otherwise difficult commitment problems
The 1972 agreement to end the civil war in Sudan, for example, broke down in 1983 when the government reneged on its promise not to institute Sharia law
Current relevance: - Iraq (?) - South Ossetia - The case for partition: hardened ethnic cleavages - Cyprus 1974 - East-West Pakistan 1971
See Sambanis, International Security, What’s in a line.
Partition: This includes cases of de jure partition, in which a new internationally recognized state is formed as a result of a successful secession (e.g., Bangladesh, Croatia, and Eritrea); and de facto partition, in which there is divided sovereignty over the territory of a single internationally recognized state (Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in Cyprus)
Case for partition: Arguments for partition rely on claims that ethnic identities are hardened by war, making interethnic cooperation difficult and increasing the risk that individuals will be targeted for violence simply because of their ethnic group membership. Thus, by physically separating ethnic groups in conflict, partition promises to reduce the risk of continued or escalating violence. This conjecture has intuitive appeal.
Examples may suggest that partition, under certain conditions, might work. - After Cyprus was repartitioned in 1974 and Greeks and Turks were forcibly separated, there was no further war in Cyprus or between Greece and Turkey; - After West and East Pakistan were partitioned in 1971, there was no war between Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) and Pakistan.
Nevertheless, these outcomes may well be idiosyncratic. India stands between Bangladesh and Pakistan, creating a long buffer zone that is hard to cross in renewed hostilities. Peace in Cyprus was partly enforced by the superior military strength of Turkey and NATO’s watchful eye
Partition also has costs, however, as it changes political boundaries and forcibly relocates populations.
Case against partition: A cursory glance at the world, however, suggests that redrawing borders, with or without substantial physical separation of people, is often unsuccessful in reducing the risk of war recurrence. - Soon after it declared independence from Yugoslavia in June 1991,9 Croatia’s government was at war with Serb minorities in Eastern Slavonia. - After Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia in 1993, the two countries fought a bloody territorial war from 1998 to 2000 and were again on the brink of war in 2005, even after a complete separation of their populations. - The de facto secession of Somaliland from Somalia in 1991 seems to have benefited Somaliland, but Somalia is a failed state with a resurgent civil war and recursive secessions in Puntland and Sool. - India and Pakistan have fought three wars since they were partitioned in 1947, and a low-level insurgency has been taking place in Kashmir for the past twenty years. - The partition of Palestine in 1948 was, by most standards, not a great success. - Other civil wars that involved ethnic groups in conflict and threatened state collapse have ended without partition, as in South Africa and Guatemala, or in the conflict between Tigreans and Amharans in Ethiopia
By definition, in a country where partition creates social homogeneity along any salient social cleavage, there should be no more internal conflict between the partitioned groups. That seems to be the standard used to judge the effectiveness of partition by most pro-partition scholars. But this standard is based on a narrow concept of civil war. Partition can encourage competition over power or resources such that individuals sort themselves into groups with new ethnic or class identities, and new conflicts can arise between those new groups over the type of government, redistribution, or ethnic advantage. The only reasonable standard of the effectiveness of partition is one that takes into account the complicated ways in which partition can generate new conflict. Several types of new conflict can occur following partition:
conflict by a new group seeking to secede from the newly formed state either to rejoin the rump state or to create a new entity: After partitioning of territory (and internal war between Kenyans and the British), ethnic Somalis in Kenya tried to secede to rejoin a “greater Somalia” in the Shifta War of 1963–67. The help that Somalia gave the rebels shows how these new conºicts can develop along several dimensions, because it led to tension between Somalia and Kenya. - Ethnic serbs in Bosnia or Croatia
and conflict between the newly formed state and the rump state (interstate conºict, if the new state has legal sovereignty): An example is the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea five years after their partition (1998-2000) Eritrea gains independence in 1993 from Ethiopia after a 30 year civil war. But the two parties cannot agree on their borders, they cannot interpret colonial treaties in the same way, and so in 1998 Eritrea invades the border region of Ethiopia, Badme.
-Also possible is conflict over control of the government in the rump state as nationalist groups challenge the government over the loss of territory to the secessionists, or conflict arising from the distributional consequences of per capita income loss associated with the loss of resource-rich territory: Nationalist backlash resulting from territorial loss has led to abrupt regime change.
In Argentina, the junta fell after the Falklands war, as did the junta in Greece after the partition of Cyprus (74), and the military government of president Yahya Khan of Pakistan after the secession of East Pakistan in 1971
Conflict between rump state and other minorities
-Finally, conflict may arise between the government of the predecessor state and other minorities that rebel as a result of secondary consequences of partition: Following the partition of India, tribal conflicts intensified with the influx of refugees, who displaced tribal people from their ancestral lands. The Nagas rebellion in 1956 is directly related to the 1947 partition, and insurgency in Tripura was triggered by the influx of Bengali refugees from what became East Pakistan following the 1947 partition and during East Pakistan’s secession from Pakistan in 1971.
Similarly, the Assamese insurgency resulted from rapid changes in the demographic balance between Bengalis and the outnumbered Assamese. The large scale migration from Bangladesh has significantly altered demographics in India’s northeastern states, leading to social, economic, and political tensions between tribals and Bangladeshi Muslim settlers. For instance, in Assam, Muslims make up approximately 33% of Assam’s population, and 11 out of 27 districts in the state now contain Muslim majorities. Bodo leaders in Assam assert that Bangladeshi Muslims are using their growing power to impose their culture and religion in the area.
Explaining civil wars: