The Logic of Violence in Civil War is a book which challenges the conventional view of violence in civil wars as irrational. The book presents a theory for levels of violence, as well as why selective violence (targeting individuals) and indiscriminate violence (targeting collectives) are at varying times employed in civil wars.[1] He argues that higher levels of violence happen in territory under near-hegemonic rule (one group has overwhelming but incomplete dominance), as opposed to completely fragmented territory (no group has control) or fully controlled territory.[1] He argues that violence will tend towards being indiscriminate in territory under fragmented control but be selective in territory under near-hegemonic control.
The book offers a methodologically individualist account of civil wars that focuses on instrumental action by rational individuals.[1] The book therefore focuses on the micro foundations of war, rather on the macro aspects of civil war that are dominant in the political violence literature.[1]
According to Kalyvas, he struggled to convince political scientists that micro-level violence was a topic worthy of study in political science prior to the publication of the book, as the focus in the existing political science literature on violence was overwhelmingly on collective uses of violence. His early papers were rejected by political science journals.[2]
Contents
The logic behind violence in civil wars
Since at least the French Revolution there has been a record of extremely violent events in the context of civil wars, and such apparent massive irrational behaviour among combatants and civilians (a sort of unexpected Hobbesian disease) has been widely examined by the literature. Previous works tried to insert violence as a phenomenon directly derived from the (military) logic of civil war using anecdotal accounts or cleavage-based analyses, but overlooked the fact that several manifestations of violence can be exogenous to that logic. Civil war can be an exogenous shock onto some societies that can activate invisible networks of grievances and feuds among their individuals.
Kalyvas' book is focused on explaining that this sort of violence common in civil wars, namely that violence that is significant by its number of victims, its ‘barbarism’ (or brutality) and the fact that both victims and executioners have had a peaceful performance in their past interaction (i.e. neighbours). The research tries to be confined to that kind of violence in civil wars, and the work principally provides an explanation to the spatial variance of that dependent variable. Temporal approaches are suggested, but not deeply developed in comparative terms.
As civil wars are frequently battled by means of some sort of irregular warfare by one or both contenders, Kalyvas embodies his explanation in the constraints of irregular wars, specifically the ability of competitors to hide themselves behind civilian population, and the uncertainty around who is an enemy and who is neutral in such an environment. Enemies can be hidden among the apparently supporters of a community, and contenders can only deal with such informational problems in an efficient ways by exercising violence against previously selected defectors. The efficient way of doing so is waiting for spontaneous civilian informers, an action more critical in highly competed areas, where powers are balanced and, consequently, sovereignty is fragmented. On the other hand, the probability of denunciations grows with the level of control that one side has in a given area. The more the control one side has, the risk of retaliation by the other side that informers have to face is less, but the probability of real defection and shifting to the other side is lessened also, compromising the credibility of those numerous and spontaneous informers. Political actors do not search for violence as the first-best option to prevent both shifts and defections, because they generally prefer selective, limited violence (that reduces the probability of shifts and defections by deterrence) to arbitrary, massive violence (that increases the likelihood of those outcomes).
The Logic of Violence in Civil War
The mechanism follows a tree iterating game where political actors decide if they want to use violence, depending on the degree of control over that territory, but they confront an “identification problem”. Then, individuals decide if the benefits of denunciation (old feuds and grievances) are higher than the risks of doing so, given the level of control of the own side in the territory. A group of institutions to make denunciation easier and more anonymous are required to increase the likelihood of that event, but they perform worse in rural areas, where denouncers are more visible. If denunciation and violence take place, the victim's kin can either refrain from retaliating or choose to retaliate, depending on the risks of doing so given the level of control of their side in that given territory. When that level is balanced for both sides, the equilibrium can result in either indiscriminate violence or no violence at all due to mutual deterrence.
This approach to violence as a joint process, where violence only takes place when civilians and political powers cooperate given their interests and cost-benefits calculations, lets the author to develop a model that predicts on one hand the likelihood of violence in a given area; on the other, it clarifies the moral hazard problem political contenders confront because the abundance of informers is inversely proportional to their usefulness, as we saw above. And, to sum up, that parsimonious model surprise readers because it is able to predict levels (variation) of violence from a micro approach.
The evidence
To run a convincing empirical test of that model, the author collected regional data of the Greek Civil War, and next to two thirds of violence variation is successfully predicted by the model. And additionally, to test its validity outside the Greek sample, the model is successfully confronted with a large variety of historical and anecdotal accounts about civil wars around the world.
Those findings, both theoretical and empirical, have several significant implications. One of them is that violence in any civil war is a function of civilians’ previous feuds among them and the distribution and degree of control of the contenders over the territory in conflict. The former is given before the war, but it only takes the shape of violence jointly to the latter, namely when sovereignty is fragmented by competing powers.
These findings also explain why contenders will prefer to use selective to indiscriminate violence, and when the latter will take place. The behavioural microfoundations established in the game-theoretical model, and the principal-agent dilemmas the players confront constantly, let to this work to provide an answer to violent outcomes based on incentives and rational behaviour, instead of on gut reactions and irrational impulses.
Open extensions
Leaving apart those implications, the argument of the manuscript arises some questions that are partially answered by the author, specifically if the model is applicable both to ethnic and non-ethnic violence during civil wars, or if the model is efficient predicting the sort and intensity of violence when some complexity is added, namely more than two players (i.e. Colombian conflict), non-unitary players (adding some proxy of ‘internal cohesion’ to the apparatus of both contenders, since soldiers or militias are at the same time agents of one power and individuals with their own private feuds, grievances and family to defend; and they can commit violence or avoid it even when the rational strategy of the unitary contender is the opposite). Additionally, since the temporal dynamics of the civil war are just roughly outlined, one can ask if frontiers between the five defined categories of controlled areas would be blurred depending on the kind of military strategies that take place. Mutual blitzkriegs and positional wars in a vast, underpopulated territory can make very difficult for players to know the real degree of control that both powers have in any given territory, especially in those considered as “3” in Kalyvas’ categorization (see figure). In other words, trench wars tend to create stable areas, and thus, concentrated violence in disputed regions. The logic of violence in these wars (also called Conventional civil wars) is different from that described by Kalyvas, which applies to Irregular civil wars. Conversely, military strategies that rely in quick movements and constant interchange of lands tend to spread violence across the territory.
Reception
The book was favorably reviewed by Jóhanna Kristín Birnir (of the University of Maryland), who wrote, "this book combines much of the best that comparative politics has to offer: conceptually clear and rigorous theorizing based on insights from extensive field work, and tested in a methodologically solid fashion on a wealth of quantitative and qualitative data. The conclusions constitute a major contribution to our understanding of violence in civil conflict."[3]
Laia Balcells praised the book for its contributions to the political violence and civil war literatures. In criticisms of the book, she argues that Kalyvas's formal model only covers the tactical dimension of civil war, but not the strategic dimension. She also argues that armed groups in full control of territory should have an incentive to gather information about civilians, which should prompt violence.[1]
Related references
Laia Balcells, "Rivalry and Revenge: Violence against Civilians in Conventional Civil Wars," International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 2 (June 2010), pp.291–313.
Laia Balcells, "Continuation of Politics by Two Means: Direct and Indirect Violence in Civil War," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 55, No. 3 (June 2011), pp.397–422.
Ron E. Hassner, "To Halve and to Hold: Conflicts Over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility," Security Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Summer 2003), pp.1–33.
Stathis Kalyvas, The Absence of Suicide Missions (2005). In Diego Gambetta(ed.), Making Sense of Suicide Missions.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 209-232.
Stathis Kalyvas, Warfare in Civil Wars (2005) in Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Jan Angstrom (eds.), Rethinking the Nature of War. Abingdton: Frank Cass, 88-108.
Stathis Kalyvas, Leftist Violence During the Occupation (2000) In Mark Mazower After the War was Over: Reconstructing Family, State, and Nation in Greece, 1944-1960. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 142-183.
Stathis Kalyvas and Laia Balcells, International System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict. American Political Science Review. August 2010 (Vol. 104 No. 3): 415-429.
Ariel Merari, "Terrorism as a Strategy in Insurgency," Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Winter 1993), pp.213–251.
Monica Duffy Toft, The Geography of Ethnic Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), ISBN0-691-12383-7.
Monica Duffy Toft, “Issue Indivisibility and Time Horizons as Rationalist Explanations for War,” Security Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1 (January–March 2006), pp.34–69.
↑ Birnir, Johanna Kristin (2007-09-17). "Book Review: Kalyvas, S. N. (2006). The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press". Comparative Political Studies. 40 (11): 1395–1398. doi:10.1177/0010414007306860. S2CID154205099.
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same state . The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies. The term is a calque of Latin bellum civile which was used to refer to the various civil wars of the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC.
Conventional warfare is a form of warfare conducted by using conventional weapons and battlefield tactics between two or more states in open confrontation. The forces on each side are well-defined and fight by using weapons that target primarily the opponent's military. It is normally fought by using conventional weapons, not chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons.
An ethnic conflict is a conflict between two or more ethnic groups. While the source of the conflict may be political, social, economic or religious, the individuals in conflict must expressly fight for their ethnic group's position within society. This criterion differentiates ethnic conflict from other forms of struggle.
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction. There is significant scholarly disagreement around the definition of ethnic cleansing and which events fall under this classification.
Peacekeeping comprises activities, especially military ones, intended to create conditions that favor lasting peace. Research generally finds that peacekeeping reduces civilian and battlefield deaths, as well as reduces the risk of renewed warfare.
A civilian casualty occurs when a civilian is killed or injured by non-civilians, mostly law enforcement officers, military personnel, rebel group forces, or terrorists. Under the law of war, it refers to civilians who perish or suffer wounds as a result of wartime acts. The term is generally applied to situations in which violence is committed in pursuit of political goals. During periods of armed conflict, there are structures, actors, and processes at a number of levels that affect the likelihood of violence against civilians.
A warlord is a person who exercises military, economic, and political control over a region, often in a country without a strong national government; largely because of coercive control over the armed forces. Warlords have existed throughout much of history, albeit in a variety of different capacities within the political, economic, and social structure of states or ungoverned territories. The term is often applied in the context of China around the end of the Qing Dynasty, especially during the Warlord Era. The term can also be used for any supreme military leader.
Rebellion is a violent uprising against one's government. A rebel is a person who engages in a rebellion.
An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare from primarily rural base areas against a larger authority. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric nature: small irregular forces face a large, well-equipped, regular military force state adversary. Due to this asymmetry, insurgents avoid large-scale direct battles, opting instead to blend in with the civilian population where they gradually expand territorial control and military forces. Insurgency frequently hinges on control of and collaboration with local populations.
Ethnic violence is a form of political violence which is expressly motivated by ethnic hatred and ethnic conflict. Forms of ethnic violence which can be argued to have the characteristics of terrorism may be known as ethnic terrorism or ethnically motivated terrorism. "Racist terrorism" is a form of ethnic violence which is dominated by overt racism and xenophobic reactionism.
Fourth-generation warfare (4GW) is conflict characterized by a blurring of the distinction between war and politics, and of the distinction between combatants and civilians.
Counterinsurgency is "the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces". The Oxford English Dictionary defines counterinsurgency as any "military or political action taken against the activities of guerrillas or revolutionaries" and can be considered war by a state against a non-state adversary. Insurgency and counterinsurgency campaigns have been waged since ancient history. However, modern thinking on counterinsurgency was developed during decolonization.
Grecomans or Graecomans is a pejorative term used in Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Romania, and Albania to characterize Albanian-, Aromanian-, and Slavic-speaking people, who self-identify as ethnic Greeks. The term generally means "pretending to be a Greek" and implies a non-Greek origin. Another meaning of the term is fanatic Greek. The term is considered highly offensive to the Greek people. The "Grecomans" are regarded as ethnic Greeks in Greece, but as members of originally non-Greek, but subsequently Hellenized minorities, in the neighboring countries.
The National Liberation Front, also known as the People's Liberation Front, was a communist political and military organization created by the Slavic Macedonian minority in Greece. The organization operated from 1945–1949, most prominently in the Greek Civil War. As far as its ruling cadres were concerned its participation in the Greek Civil War was nationalist rather than communist, with the goal of secession from Greece.
Political violence is violence which is perpetrated in order to achieve political goals. It can include violence which is used by a state against other states (war), violence which is used by a state against civilians and non-state actors, and violence which is used by violent non-state actors against states and civilians. It can also describe politically motivated violence which is used by violent non-state actors against a state or it can describe violence which is used against other non-state actors and/or civilians. Non-action on the part of a government can also be characterized as a form of political violence, such as refusing to alleviate famine or otherwise denying resources to politically identifiable groups within their territory.
Peace psychology is a subfield of psychology and peace research that deals with the psychological aspects of peace, conflict, violence, and war. Peace psychology can be characterized by four interconnected pillars: (1) research, (2) education, (3) practice, and (4) advocacy. The first pillar, research, is documented most extensively in this article.
Stathis N. Kalyvas is a Greek political scientist who is the Gladstone Professor of Government, at the University of Oxford and a University Academic Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He has held professorial positions at Yale University, as well as the University of Chicago, New York University, and Ohio State University. He has also conducted research at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Kalyvas has written extensively on civil wars, ethnicity, and political violence. He wrote The Logic of Violence in Civil War.
War and genocide studies is an interdisciplinary subject that identifies and analyzes the relationship between war and genocide, as well as the structural foundations of associated conflicts. Disciplines involved may include political science, geography, economics, sociology, international relations, and history.
Red Terror is a term used by some historians to describe incidents of violence against civilians, by EAM from approximately 1942 or 1943 until the end of the Greek Civil War in 1949. In the countryside, operations were conducted by the ELAS; in cities, by the Organization for the Protection of the People's Struggle (OPLA).
Civilian victimization is the intentional use of violence against noncombatants in a conflict. It includes both lethal forms of violence, as well as non-lethal forms of violence such as torture, forced expulsion, and rape.
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