Rivalry, Instability, and the Probability of International Conflict
Peace on quicksand? Challenging the conventional wisdom about economic growth and post-conflict risks
Shared Space: Ethnic Groups, State Accommodation, and Localized Conflict
Shirts Today, Skins Tomorrow: Dual Contests and the Effects of Fragmentation in Self-Determination Disputes
Understanding Civil War : Evidence and Analysis, Volume 1. Africa
The two volumes of Understanding Civil War build upon the World Bank’s prior research on conflict and violence, particularly on the work of Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, whose model of civil war onset has sparked much discussion on the relationship between conflict and development in what came to be known as the “greed” versus “grievance” debate. The authors systematically apply the Collier-Hoeffler model to 15 countries in 6 different regions of the world, using a comparative case study methodology to revise and expand upon economic models of civil war. (The countries selected are Burundi, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Sudan, Algeria, Mali, Senegal, Indonesia, Lebanon, Russian Federation, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and the Caucasus.) The book concludes that the “greed” versus “grievance” debate should be abandoned for a more complex model that considers greed and grievance as inextricably fused motives for civil war.
Understanding Civil War : Evidence and Analysis, Volume 2. Europe, Central Asia, and Other Regions
The two volumes of Understanding Civil War build upon the World Bank’s prior research on conflict and violence, particularly on the work of Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, whose model of civil war onset has sparked much discussion on the relationship between conflict and development in what came to be known as the “greed” versus “grievance” debate. The authors systematically apply the Collier-Hoeffler model to 15 countries in 6 different regions of the world, using a comparative case study methodology to revise and expand upon economic models of civil war. (The countries selected are Burundi, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Sudan, Algeria, Mali, Senegal, Indonesia, Lebanon, Russian Federation, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and the Caucasus.) The book concludes that the “greed” versus “grievance” debate should be abandoned for a more complex model that considers greed and grievance as inextricably fused motives for civil war.
Decolonization or National Liberation: Debating the End of British Colonial Rule in Africa
When discussing the end of British colonial rule in Africa, many historians have highlighted the role of postwar international relations and the impact of domestic imperial politics on decolonization and have failed to recognize the role of African nationalists. This article argues that such a viewpoint is flawed because it conceives of colonial policy makers as isolated and autonomous entities impervious to changes taking place in the colonies. The national liberation movements in Ghana, Central Africa, Kenya, and other regions of East Africa are explored in this article to illustrate the central role that colonial subjects played in the British decolonization of Africa. While dominant scholarship on the failures of the post-colonial state has made studies of decolonization and African nationalism less fashionable, it is becoming increasingly clear that our understanding of the nature and mechanics of the crises that beset the continent requires taking fresh stock of the record of European colonial rule in Africa. In this regard, the study of colonialism and decolonization in continues to be of critical relevance.
International Borders and Conflict Revisited
Postwar Reconstruction, the Reverse Course and the New Way Forward: Bis Repetitas?
This article introduces a new dataset on post-conflict justice (PCJ) that provides an overview of if, where, and how post-conflict countries address the wrongdoings committed in association with previous armed conflict. Motivated by the literature on post-conflict peacebuilding, we study justice processes during post-conflict transitions. We examine: which countries choose to implement PCJ; where PCJ is implemented; and which measures are taken in post-conflict societies to address past abuse. Featuring justice and accountability processes, our dataset focuses solely on possible options to address wrongdoings that are implemented following and relating to a given armed conflict. These data allow scholars to address hypotheses regarding justice following war and the effect that these institutions have on transitions to peace. This new dataset includes all extrasystemic, internationalized internal, and internal armed conflicts from 1946 to 2006, with at least 25 annual battle-related deaths as coded by the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset. The post-conflict justice (PCJ) efforts included are: trials, truth commissions, reparations, amnesties, purges, and exiles. By building upon the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset, scholars interested in PCJ can include variables regarding the nature of the conflict itself to test how PCJ arrangements work in different environments in order to better address the relationships between justice, truth, and peace in the post-conflict period.
Three Two Tango: Territorial Control and Selective Violence in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza
Violence and Control in Civil Conflict: Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza
Networks of third-party interveners and civil war duration
Where Do States Go? Strategy in Civil War Intervention
Origins and Persistence of State-Sponsored Militias: Path Dependent Processes in Third World Military Development
This article uses a sequential mixed method approach to examine the origins and persistence of paramilitaries and state-sponsored militias in the developing world. Combining comparative case studies of Southeast Asia and the Middle East with statistical analysis, it shows that revolutionary decolonization produces more decentralized and localized force structures, while direct inheritance of colonial armies leads to more conventional force structures. Subsequently, the level of competition within the regional system influences whether a state can persist in the use of paramilitaries or must transition to a more centralized, conventional force.
Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace? International Intervention and the Duration of Peace After Civil War
This article examines international interventions in the aftermath of civil wars to see whether peace lasts longer when peacekeepers are present than when they are absent. Because peacekeeping is not applied to cases at random, I first address the question of where international personnel tend to be deployed. I then attempt to control for factors that might affect both the likelihood of peacekeepers being sent and the ease or difficulty of maintaining peace so as to avoid spurious findings. I find, in a nutshell, that peacekeeping after civil wars does indeed make an important contribution to the stability of peace.
Making War and Building Peace: United Nations Peace Operations
Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil War
Timely and pathbreaking, Securing the Peace is the first book to explore the complete spectrum of civil war terminations, including negotiated settlements, military victories by governments and rebels, and stalemates and ceasefires. Examining the outcomes of all civil war terminations since 1940, Monica Toft develops a general theory of postwar stability, showing how third-party guarantees may not be the best option. She demonstrates that thorough security-sector reform plays a critical role in establishing peace over the long term. Much of the thinking in this area has centered on third parties presiding over the maintenance of negotiated settlements, but the problem with this focus is that fewer than a quarter of recent civil wars have ended this way. Furthermore, these settlements have been precarious, often resulting in a recurrence of war. Toft finds that military victory, especially victory by rebels, lends itself to a more durable peace. She argues for the importance of the security sector–the police and military–and explains that victories are more stable when governments can maintain order. Toft presents statistical evaluations and in-depth case studies that include El Salvador, Sudan, and Uganda to reveal that where the security sector remains robust, stability and democracy are likely to follow. An original and thoughtful reassessment of civil war terminations, Securing the Peace will interest all those concerned about resolving our world’s most pressing conflicts.
National Design and State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa
This article examines the political geography of state building in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. The absence of interstate war has produced a unique situation for contemporary state builders in Africa; they have inherited states with relatively fixed borders encapsulating a variety of environmental and geographic conditions, compounded by varying distributions of population densities. The author examines the effects of a variety of strategies that African rulers have employed to enhance their state-building efforts given the type of national design they inhabit. These strategies include the allocation of citizenship, interventions in land tenure patterns, and the adoption and management of national currencies. The author tests the effects of these strategies on several dimensions of state capacity in sub-Saharan Africa from 1960 to 2004 using a variety of statistical analyses. The results indicate that the strategies currently adopted by African rulers have generally failed to substantially augment their capacity.
A Tale of Two Types: Rebel Goals and the Onset of Civil Wars
Previous research has implicitly assumed that civil wars represent a coherent category of events, but given the variety of rebel goals that supposition seems tenuous. We split civil wars into those where the rebels simply want to remove the government (replacement) from those where the rebels want to alter the relationship between the state and society (legitimacy). Theoretically, states are most at risk for a civil war of replacement when they extract substantial wealth from society and the government is weak. In contrast, civil wars of legitimacy are more likely to occur in states where the rebels have both grievances and a means to maintain their future viability. An empirical analysis of civil wars of replacement and legitimacy from 1960 to 1999 confirms both our argument about the different types of civil violence and their differing causes.
National Reconciliation After Civil War: The Case of Greece
This article discusses post-conflict reconciliation in Greece following the divisive civil war of the 1940s. Focusing on the elite political discourse and the relationship between reconciliation and democratization, its chief argument is that in Greece continuing disagreement about the civil war did not inhibit a process of reconciliation because it was voiced within a normative framework in which violence had been repudiated as a political tool. Particularly since the fall of the Colonels’ dictatorship in 1974, reconciliation has been linked to a number of distinct political projects, some of which were as divisive as conciliatory in their effect. In each case, reconciliation meant different things to differing shades of political opinion, but the widespread adoption of the term by both the governing and opposition elites, as well as society as a whole, gradually entrapped politicians of all persuasions into accepting that a process of reconciliation had occurred. Reconciliation in Greece has therefore rested not on the establishment of a single agreed narrative representing the truth about the past, but rather on the righting of perceived injustices and the free articulation of differing interpretations of that past by both left and right within a democratic environment.
Give Peace a Chance: Nonviolent Protest and the Creation of Territorial Autonomy Arrangements
This study examines factors that predict the formation of territorial autonomy arrangements for regionally concentrated ethnic communities. Territorial autonomies are institutional arrangements that allow ethnic groups to express their distinct identities while keeping the borders of host states intact. Although an extensive literature has investigated the capacity of autonomy arrangements to manage interethnic disputes, little research has addressed the precise origins of these institutions. The existing literature considers violent tactics as a primary factor that enables ethnic collectivities to attain territorial autonomy. In this study, the reasoning from the extant literature is juxtaposed with the arguments developed in the research on nonviolent opposition. Nonviolent movements enjoy moral advantage vis-a?-vis violent groups. Moreover, peaceful tactics have the advantage of garnering attention for the concerns of ethnic groups without the liability of provoking the animosity or distrust created by violent conflict. Based on the analysis of a dataset representing 168 ethnic groups across 87 states from 1945 to 2000, it is found that the peaceful tactics groups employ when seeking greater self-rule is the single strongest predictor of the formation of autonomy arrangements. In particular, this study concludes that groups that rely on peaceful tactics, such as protests and strikes, and demand territorial autonomy, as opposed to an outright independence, have a greater potential to achieve territorial autonomy in comparison to those groups making extreme demands through the use of violence.
Invoking the Rule of Law in Post-Conflict Rebuilding: A Critical Examination
In Search of Appropriate Peacemaking/Peacebuilding Pradigm in Dealing with Africa’s Intrastate Violent Conflicts: Considering Lederach’s Faith-based Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding Approach
With conditions created by Western colonialism and the dynamics of the Cold War bipolar global rule, the inability of governments to rise beyond corrupt and imbalance political order, and, hence, the resurgence of ethnic, religious, and ideological identity consciousness and identification, Africa has been a bleeding Continent since the end of the colonial era. Contemporary Africa?s conflicts are intrastate, with many protracted. This paper argues that to deal adequately with such conflicts there is a need for an inner-oriented, indigenous-based, organic, and long-term sustainable nonviolent process of conflict transformation and peacebuilding aimed at constructive holistic change. It demonstrates that this is core to the peacebuilding paradigm Lederach develops and so apt for dealing with today?s Africa?s conflicts.
Fostering Peace After Civil War: Commitment Problems and Agreement Design
Pathways to War in Democratic Transitions
How and When Armed Conflicts End: Introducing the UCDP Conflict Termination Dataset
This article presents new data on the start and end dates and the means of termination for armed conflicts, 1946-2005. These data contribute to quantitative research on conflict resolution and recurrence in three important respects: the data cover both interstate and intrastate armed conflicts, the data cover low-intensity conflicts, and the data provide information on a broad range of termination outcomes. In order to disaggregate the UCDP-PRIO Armed Conflict dataset into multiple analytical units, this dataset introduces the concept of conflict episodes, defined as years of continuous use of armed force in a conflict. Using these data, general trends and patterns are presented, showing that conflicts do not exclusively end with decisive outcomes such as victory or peace agreement but more often under unclear circumstances where fighting simply ceases. This pattern is consistent across different types of conflict, as is the finding that victories are more common in conflicts with short duration. The article then examines some factors that have been found to predict civil war recurrence and explores whether using the new dataset produces similar results. This exercise offers a number of interesting new insights and finds that the determinants for civil war recurrence identified in previous research are sensitive to alternate formulations of conflict termination data. The findings suggest that intrastate conflicts are less likely to recur after government victories or after the deployment of peacekeepers. If the previous conflict is fought with rebels aiming for total control over government or if the belligerents mobilized along ethnic lines, the risk of recurrence increases. The discrepancy in findings with previous research indicates the need for further study of conflict resolution and recurrence, for which this dataset will be useful.
Securing Health: Lessons from Nation-Building Missions
We define nation-building as efforts carried out after major combat to underpin a transition to peace and democracy. Nationbuilding involves the deployment of military forces, as well as comprehensive efforts to rebuild the health, security, economic, political, and other sectors. The research we conducted focused on one aspect of nation-building-efforts to rebuild the public health and health care delivery systems after major combat. We looked at seven cases- Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. These are some of the most important cases since World War II in which international institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and countries such as the United States have taken part in efforts to rebuild the health sector. These missions also have important health components. To date, a significant amount of academic and policy-relevant work has been devoted to efforts to rebuild such areas as police and military forces. Little comprehensive work has examined efforts to rebuild public health and health care delivery systems, however. The work that has been done on health tends to focus on immediate humanitarian and relief efforts rather than long-term health reconstruction. The goal of our research was to fill this void.
Australian Peacekeeping: Sixty Years in the Field
Peacekeeping has been a significant part of Australia’s overseas military engagement since the end of the Second World War. Yet it is a part of the country’s history that has been largely neglected until the 1990s, and even since then interest has been slow to develop. In the last sixty years, between 30,000 and 40,000 Australian military personnel and police have served in more than 50 peacekeeping missions in at least 27 different conflicts. This insightful, engaging and superbly-edited volume approaches Australian peacekeeping from four angles: its history, its agencies, some personal reflections, and its future. Contributors discuss the distinction between peacekeeping and war-fighting, the importance of peacekeeping in terms of public policy, the problems of multinational command, and the specialist contributions of the military, civilian police, mine-clearers, weapons inspectors and diplomats.
Building Peace: An Inventory of UN Peace Missions Since the End of the Cold War
After a brief introduction, this contribution comprises a tabular inventory of the 69 UN peace missions since the end of the Cold War. It highlights the structural features of each mission, the background to crisis and the mission’s contributions to security, socio-economic well-being, governance, justice and reconciliation.
Mind the Gap: Documenting and Explaining Violence Against Aid Workers
The brutal murder of 17 national staff members of Action Contre le Faim (ACF) in Sri Lanka in August 2006 and ambushes, kidnappings, and murders of aid workers elsewhere have captured headlines. This article reviews the prevailing explanations, assumptions, and research on why humanitarian actors experience security threats. The scholarly literature on humanitarian action is fecund and abundant, yet no comparative review of the research on humanitarian security and scholarly sources on humanitarian action exists to date. The central argument here is twofold. First, an epistemic gap exists between one stream that focuses primarily on documenting violence against aid workers “a proximate cause approach” while a second literature proposes explanations, or deep causes, often without corresponding empirical evidence. Moreover, the deep cause literature emphasizes external, changing global conditions to the neglect of other possible micro and internal explanations. Both of these have negative implications for our understanding of and therefore strategies to address security threats against aid workers.
From Armed Conflict to War: Ethnic Mobilization and Conflict Intensification
Nonviolent Resistance and Conflict Transformation in Power Asymmetries
This article argues that nonviolent resistance should instead be seen as an integral part of conflict transformation, offering one possible approach to achieving peace and justice, alongside other methods of conflict intervention focusing on dialogue, problem-solving and the restoration of cooperative relationships (e.g. mediation, negotiation, restorative justice, etc.). It is especially relevant for the early transitional stage of latent asymmetric conflicts, as a strategy for empowering grievance groups (oppressed minorities or disempowered majorities) looking for constructive and efficient ways to attain justice, human rights and democracy without recourse to violence. While nonviolent techniques have been widely used by single-interest groups such as trade unions and anti-nuclear, indigenous or environmentalist movements, this article refers primarily to nation-wide campaigns by identity or national groups who are challenging internal oppression or external aggression and occupation, and seeking either self-determination or civil rights in a truly democratic and multicultural state. Although nonviolent action has also been advocated as a national strategy of civilian-based defence and dissuasion against external aggression, this article focuses more specifically on ways it has been applied by non-state actors such as social movements and grassroots organisations.
America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq
The post-World War II occupations of Germany and Japan set standards for postconflict nation-building that have not since been matched. Only in recent years has the United States has felt the need to participate in similar transformations, but it is now facing one of the most challenging prospects since the 1940s: Iraq. The authors review seven case studies – Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan – and seek lessons about what worked well and what did not. Then, they examine the Iraq situation in light of these lessons. Success in Iraq will require an extensive commitment of financial, military, and political resources for a long time. The United States cannot afford to contemplate early exit strategies and cannot afford to leave the job half completed.
American Foreign Policy and Postwar Reconstruction: Comparing Japan and Iraq
On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, President G.W. Bush argued that if setting up democracy in Japan and Germany after WW II was successful, then it should also be successful in Iraq. This book provides a detailed comparison of the reconstruction of Japan from 1945 to 1952 with the current reconstruction of Iraq, evaluating the key factors affecting the success or failure of such projects. The book seeks to understand why American officials believed that extensive social reengineering aiming at seeding democracy and economic development is replicable, through identifying factors explaining the outcome of U.S.-led post-conflict reconstruction projects. The analysis reveals that in addition to the effective use of material resources of power, the outcome of reconstruction projects depends on a variety of other intertwined factors, and Bridoux provides a new analytical framework relying on a Gramscian concept of power to develop a greater understanding of these factors, and the ultimate success or failure of these reconstruction projects.
The West and Contemporary Peace Operations
In recent years, senior UN officials have raised concerns about the decline of Western contributions to UN peace operations. Although this is a worrying trend for supporters of the UN, it does not mean that the West is playing a smaller role in peace operations per se. Instead, the West has increased its contribution to `hybrid’ peace operations and missions that take place outside of the UN system. This article examines the West’s contribution to both UN and non-UN peace operations since the Brahimi Report and assesses whether its contribution has markedly changed and what impact any changes have had on international peace and security. It proceeds in three sections. The first provides a historical overview of the West’s ambivalent relationship with UN peace operations since 1948. The second analyses the West’s contribution to UN, hybrid and non-UN peace operations. The final section explores what Western policies mean for international peace and security by assessing their impact on the UN’s authority, the extent to which they save lives and their contribution to building stable peace. The article concludes that while in the short term the West’s willingness to participate in hybrid operations displays a commitment to finding pragmatic solutions to some difficult problems, over the longer term this approach may weaken the UN’s ability to maintain international peace and security.