Lecture 10

Question 1

What is a civil war?

Answer 1

• Controversial terminology
• possible ambiguities

Question 2

Definition civil war

Answer 2

“armed combat within the
boundaries of a sovereign
entity between parties subject
to a common authority at the
outset of the hostilities”

Question 3

Components of civil war definition

Answer 3

1. The parties to the conflict:
    are politically and militarily organized
    have publicly stated political goals
2. The main organizations recruit locally
3. Conflict is large-scale
4. Violence is sustained

Question 4

Identifying types of civil war

Answer 4

Individual motives?
Causes of war?
Organization of violence, politics?
Outcomes?

Question 5

Basis of war types

Answer 5

Macro-level cleavage
The principal national-level dispute separating the warring parties
Belligerent war aims
Embodied in macro-level cleavage, but potentially distinct from it;
questions of timing, evolution

Question 6

Archetypes

Answer 6

Ideological
Secessionist
Ethnic
Others
Irredentist wars
“New” wars?

Question 7

Ethnic wars

Answer 7

Definition: civil war between ethnic groups or fought over ethnic
issues
Based on two dimensions (Sambanis 2007)
Parties to the conflict: what is the basis of recruitment and alliance
practices of all organizations involved?
Issues: what are the stated goals of armed groups?

Question 8

Banality of ethnic war

Answer 8

A widespread notion of “ethnic war” claims these wars are
caused by deep-seated “hatred” and feature Hobbesian
violence of “all against all and neighbor against neighbor”
(p.42)
- But, warfare in so-called ethnic wars, like Rwanda and
Yugoslavia, is similar to warfare in non-ethnic wars
Self-interested politicians use small numbers of “armed thugs”
to carry out violence
Ordinary citizens are not involved
- And, the violence itself generates the identity group-based
polarization that the ethnic war notion claims caused the war
 This kind of war can happen anywhere

Question 9

Old wars

Answer 9

Include wars from seventeenth to twentieth centuries & contemporary wars, iterstate, classic civil war (gov vs rebels (organized as a state in waiting)).
Were contests of wills, forcing the opponent to bend to your will.
Grand clashes between 2 or more sides in which battle was the decisive encounter.

Question 10

New wars

Answer 10

Social condition/mutual enterprise, armed group gain more from violence than winning. They gain politically from portraying a group as the other (extremism, secular extremism) and economically through looting, extortion etc.

Question 11

Kalyvas doubts on new vs old wars

Answer 11

The new wars thesis claims that “new”
civil wars are criminal while “old” civil
wars were political
For recent or ongoing civil wars, the
evidence used to support it is “typically
incomplete and biased”
For older civil wars, the evidence used to
support it often ignores “historical
research”
 “profound differences” between socalled new and old civil wars do not
exist