Civil Wars

1
Civil Wars

• PLSC 370
• Lecture 9

2
Why Study Civil Wars?

• Civil wars are widespread
• 70 of wars since WWII have been internal
• Becoming more common (although not increasing in
  frequency. How is that possible?)
• Generates suffering
• 1 million dead in the Chinese civil war
• Maybe as many as 500,000 in a short time in
  Rwanda
• Famine
• Blocks economic development
• Often spreads to other states and can undermine
  regional stability
• Engages the interest of distant powers and
  international organizations
• Policy decisions for how states and organizations
  should deal with civil wars are being reassessed

3
What is a Civil War?

• Armed conflict
• At least 1,000 deaths
• Challenges the sovereignty of an internationally
  recognized state
• Occurs within the borders of a state
• The state is an actor
• Rebels are an actor
• 127 events matching this definition occurred
  between 1945 and 2000

4
A Few Trends

• Civil war is primarily the problem of developing
  nations
• The most common region for civil wars is
  Sub-Saharan Africa, followed by Asia (especially
  South-east Asia) and the Middle East (which
  includes North Africa)
• Civil wars tend to last quite a bit longer than
  international wars
• Explanations for the causes of civil wars have
  tended to fall into one of four categories
  economic, rational choice, IR theory, and
  constructivism

5
Economic

• Modernization rapid economic growth leads to
  greater competition for resources
• But
• Greed sometimes the costs of fighting (and
  opportunity costs) can be outweighed by the
  economic gain that civil war can bring. War as a
  business
• Opportunity does the government have the
  resources to stop a civil war?

6
Rational Choice

• Expected utility. Consider 2 cases
• A strong (rich) state. The likelihood you could
  defeat the state is low, but the reward would be
  very high.
• A weak (poor) state. The likelihood you could
  defeat the state is higher, but the reward is
  lower.
• Expected utility balances out the likelihood you
  could win and the rewards that would bring, with
  the likelihood you would lose and the costs that
  would bring.
• In case you forgot
• u(WIN) p(WIN) u(LOSE) p(LOSE) - costs

7
IR Theory

• Neorealism might argue that the distribution of
  power in the system affects civil war (for
  example, you might expect less civil war in a
  bipolar system). Not much evidence here
• Civil war occurs when internal anarchy develops
• The security dilemma
• Liberal theory explains how government
  institutions provide legitimacy
• A democratic civil peace?

8
Constructivism

• Ethnicity primordial or constructed?
• Ethnic entrepreneurs and mobilization

9
New and Old Civil Wars (Kalyvas)

• Old wars
• Cause collective grievances
• Support broad/popular
• Violence controlled
• New Wars
• Cause Private loot
• Support limited support
• Violence Rambo-style

10
Civil War Termination

• Civil Wars last much longer than interstate wars
• Mason and Fett
• E(U)fight lt E(U)settlement
• For all involved parties
• BUT civil wars seem to persist in a state of
  mutual hurting stalemate
• Walter
• Prisoners dilemma
• No total disarming
• Third parties

11
Intervention and Peacekeeping

• We are not very good at this (yet?)
• Somalia ? Rwanda ? Kosovo
• Liberal approach (politics and economics)
• Paris
• Liberal politics and economics are based in
  conflict, and may be a bad idea for post-civil
  war states
• How would realists think about intervention? Can
  you come up with a realist argument FOR
  intervention?