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 < E(U)settlement • For all involved parties • BUT … civil wars seem to persist in a state of “mutual hurting stalemate” • Walter • Prisoner’s 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?