Week 5 - Causes of Conflict

Question 1

rationalizing conflict

Answer 1

“Conflict does not just “happen”. Violence is always premeditated because violence is always purposeful.

Perpetrators aren’t rational
Our assumption is that those who engage in conflict and war are irrational

In our position of peace, we assume that rational beings will not choose violence or war, but choose to mitigate their conflict.

In thinking of violence as irrational, we are also thinking of the perpetrators of violence as irrational and not like us.

Question 2

Arendt (1963) Eichmann in Jerusalem

Answer 2

We are capable of violence if it is rendered as routine (Arendt)

We are capable of violence because of the rationality and logic of violence (Dos Santos)
- Perpetrators of violence are thinking and we need to take this thinking seriously

Perpetrators of violence are thinking and reflecting on their violence and, as a result, we need to take their logic seriously.

Our tendency to study war with the bias of irrational behaviour both downplays the severity of the violence perpetrated by individuals and states and downplays the strength of those who fight to resist such violence.

Question 3

Fuji (2009) Killing Neighbours

Answer 3

Argues that what was sustained in Rwanda – that is, the reason, the rationale for the violence – was the idea of “a script”

Causes of conflict are “tools” in the rational toolbox of violence.

Conflict toolbox: Land, ethnicity, economics, climate change

Question 4

Tool 1: Land

mneumonic: Ma Ma Very Awesome

Answer 4

Before a territory becomes a territory, it is first an imaginary “a social and political construct”. The way a territory is imagined influences how it understands and fight wars

Four ways in which territories have been socially and politically constructed:
1. Mosaic Territoriality
2. Monolithic Territoriality
3. Virulent Territoriality
4. Amorphous Territoriality

Question 5

Mosaic Territoriality

Answer 5

Privileges “clearly demarcated borders”, but, like a mosaic, this kind of Territorality is not interested in homogenizing the individuals that are “inside’ the borders. Land is a divisible good because there is a mishmash of people, but not central state.

Defined strong borders but internally diverse (Canada)

Question 6

Monolithic Territoriality

Answer 6

Involves a penchant for strict borders and a homogenous society. Wars are fought with a focus on territorial integrity.

Border integrity for internal homogeneity. Establishing borders to preserve homogeneity

Question 7

Virulent Territoriality

Answer 7

The state is a virus that needs to constantly grow and remake anything and everything on its way in its own image. Wars of conquest.

Expanding always wants to expand and conquer (Russia)

Question 8

Amorphous Territoriality

Answer 8

The territory is always being remade and reshaped. Wars are a continuous undertaking, which itself can also be carried out through hybrid warfare and gradual encroachments.

No fix boarders, more clan-based

Territory and borders are constantly reshaping

ex: gypsies

Question 9

Tool 2: Ethnicity

Answer 9

Horowitz (1985): “colour, languages religion or some other attribute of common origin”

Chandra 2006: Something that is both visible and impossible to change

Smith (1998): myths, memories, and value-systems associated with ethnic identity

Ethnicity becomes a tool in conflict when it brings the idea of nation and territory together.

Nation implies bringing ethnicity and state together

Ethnic conflict arises as a result from perceived vulnerability in the core principles of the nation state, territorial vulnerability, threats to the state, social homeland, citizenship vulnerability and sovereignty vulnerability.

Bound and unbound characteristics

Question 10

How do we explain the role of ethnicity in conflict:

essentialism

Answer 10

Cannot account for variation why conflict now, but not before?

Ethnic conflict has to fo with new rather than old hostilities

Nations were constructed only in modern times

Question 11

How do we explain the role of ethnicity in conflict:

instrumentalist

Answer 11

Ethnicity is useful for gaining political power or for drawing resources from the state

Criticism:
Cannot explain either why ethnicity is considered a valuable political instrument or why society buys into ethnic propaganda

Question 12

How do we explain the role of ethnicity in conflict:

constructivism

Answer 12

Our ethnic and national identities are constructs of the modern epoch (varshney)

How do we transition from locally or regionally based mass identities to extra local or extra regional identities?

1. Technology: “print capitalism” the arrival of the printing press and capitalism is the basic mechanism through which local identities were transformed into larger national identities
2. Ideational: modernity has introduced to us the notion of dignity, to which all regardless of their rank are entitles
   You are honoured for being your nationality, not your rank.
3. Colonialism: ethnic communities were imagined by colonialists

Modernity has introduced to us the notion of dignity
This pursuit of dignity is dialogical

Question 13

How do we explain the role of ethnicity in conflict:

institutionalism

Answer 13

The designs of political institutions consociational or majoritarian polities, proportional representation or first past the post electoral systems, and federal or unitary governments explain why some multiethnic societies have violence and others peace

Question 14

How do we explain the role of ethnicity in conflict:

realism

Answer 14

State collapse forces the relations among ethnic groups to resemble those between states in the difference between defensive and offensive ethnic mobilization disappears, and neighbors kill neighbors to ensure that they are not possibly killed in the future.

Question 15

What is the Difference Between Ethnicity and Race?

Answer 15

Ethnicity is constructed at the individual level and race is constructed at the state level.

Ethnicity is understood as self-identifying

What is missing from the understanding of most is the relationship that shouldn’t be there, which is the one between ethnicity and the state.

Question 16

Tool 3: Economics

Answer 16

Wealth creates conflict because not only is wealth not usually equally distributed, but the way in which wealth is accumulated is predatory
Poverty is a result of the inability of institutions to generate wealth
The cause of conflict is inequality

Gurr (1970) Why Men Rebel:

Relative deprivation is developed
- Discrepancy between value, expectations and value capabilities
- The difference between what one ought to have and what one does have can raise tensions and these tensions may lead to violence

Study of deprivation is the study of poverty
- Poverty alone does not provide an explanation for conflict

Resource wars refer to conflicts revolving over the p;ursuit or possession of critical materials

Question 17

Geopolitical perspective

Answer 17

Resources are fought over because they ensure the future security or safety of the state

Three types of geopolitical resource wars:
1) Wars over energy, or the productive power of the state
2) Wars over the global environment
3)Wars of strategy

Question 18

Political Economy Perspective

Answer 18

The significance of resources in warts is largely rooted in questions of resource scarcity, abundance or dependence

Three ways resources relate to conflict:
1) Resources have an institutional weakening effect which increases the state’s vulnerability to conflict
2) Resources have a motivational effect, increasing the risk of armed conflict
3) Resources provide financing for belligerent

Question 19

Political Ecology Perspective

Answer 19

Emphasizes contextualizartion, multidimensional power relations, and a broad characterization of resources and their mode of production, circulation and consumption

Two contributions to the literature on resource wars:”

Resources do not just exit in the vacuum, but are part of broader social, economic and political structures

Allow us a deeper analysis of conflict by rejecting a monolithic view of the state.

Question 20

Tool 4: Climate Change

Answer 20

Two potential pathways:
1. Direct physiological and or psychological factors and resource scarcity
2. Indirectly affecting economic outputs and increasing migration flows

Direct pathway: pshycolocial and or psychological factors and resource scarcity
1. Warmer or colder temperatures, by elevating levels of discomfort and aggressiveness, increase hostility and violence
2. Reduced resources increase competition which leads to conflict

Indirect pathways: economic outcomes and migration
- Economic output: an individual’s incentive to rebel rises as individual/household income and economic opportunities decline

Three ways that economic output impacts conflict:
1. Loss of agricultural income= the onset of conflict or loss of national income = impacts duration and intensity of conflict
2. Exacerbate actual or percieved economic inequality in a society
3. Hindering economic growth reducing agriculatural production and triggering food scarcity and or price volatility for staple commodities

Migration:
1. Contest over scarce resources
2. Ethnic tensions

Research is inconclusive on whether adverse climate conditions are THE cause of conflict
Causes of conflict are tools in the rational toolbox of violence

Question 21

Climate Change and Conflict by Vally Koubi

Answer 21

National security used to be synonymous with the protection of the territorial integrity and political sovereignty of the state from external military aggression but after the end of the Cold War, this conception of security was expanded to include resources, environmental and demographic issues.

Climate change could become a major contributing factor to conflicts by exacerbating the scarcity of important natural resources.

The expectation should be that loss of agricultural income could trigger the onset of conflict, while loss of national income due to climate would be associated with the duration and intensity of conflict

The influx of environmental migrants is also likely to burden economic and resource bases in the receiving areas, thus promoting contests over scarce resources

Question 22

Economic and resource causes of conflicts by Philippe le Billon

Answer 22

Two major paradigms relate wealth or poverty to conflict
1. The first is that wealth represents the outcome of relations between production and exchange activities over predation and conflict ones
2. The second is that poverty reflects the absence of institutions capable of promoting the accumulation of wealth through controlled violence

Liberal peace theory argues that commerce is pacifying and economically interdependent countries would be less likely to go to war

War is most likely in poorer countries due to the high costs of conflict increasing poverty and how poverty weakens the capacity of the state to resolve conflict and curtail an escalation of violence

3 main arguments about resources: An institutional weakening effect increases vulnerability to conflict, a motivational effect increases the risk of armed conflict, and an opportunity effect associated with resources financing belligerents.

Economic growth can nevertheless prove a double-edged sword, especially when pursued through resource exploitation that often provides one of the main export-driven growth options for poor countries

THE MAJOR policy implication is that economic development efforts should focus on the poorest countries to reduce the risk of negative shocks in the resource sectors especially

Question 23

Ethnicity and ethnic conflict by Ashutosh Varshney

Answer 23

Since the end of the Cold War, the rise of ethnicity has coincided with the weakening of the customary left-right ideological axis in politics the world over, both in the developed and developing world.

Existing arguments about ethnic identity and/ or ethnic conflict can be divided into five traditions of inquiry: essentialism, instrumentalism, constructivism, institutionalism, and realism

Three sacrosanct principles of the nation-state system, thus, become vulnerable: territoriality, citizenship, and sovereignty
- The most widespread collective violence is typically divided into three forms: riots, pogroms, and civil wars

Essentialism in this form had three primary weaknesses:
1. Variations
- If ethnic antagonisms were so deep-rooted, why did ethnic violence rise and fall at different times?

2. A lot of ethnic conflict in the world had nothing to do with old hostilities at all
   - Older inhabitants of the land clash with a relatively new migrant group, with little or no long history of contact
3. Constructivist school
   - To talk about nations having primordial animosities, the constructivists argued, was wrong. In arguments that over time shook the foundations of essentialism and became mainstream wisdom, constructivists argued that nations were constructed only in modern times

Instrumentalism
- The core idea is that ethnicity is neither inherent in human nature nor intrinsically valuable
- Seen this way, ethnicity could serve as a “focal point,” and ethnic mobilization would simply require coordination of expectations

Constructivism
- The new conventional wisdom in the field of ethnicity and nationalism
- Its central idea is that our ethnic and national identities are constructs of the modern epoch
- Constructivism accounts for identity formation well, but it does not do a good job of explaining ethnic conflict
- According to instrumentalist reasoning, ethnic identity is not valuable in and of itself; it is a mask for a core of ‘real’ interests, political or economic. As interests change, masks also do, making ethnic groups “fluid”

Institutionalism
- Ethnic pluralism, is argued, requires political institutions distinct from those that are suitable for ethnically undivided societies

Question 24

A Tale of Two Countries by Burak Kadercan

Answer 24

Article about Germany post-WW2

Territorial ideas neither were limited to Germany nor merely existed on the margins of society, only to be discussed by philosophers

Research on armed conflict points toward a distinct trend: of all issues that are associated with war, territorial issues stand out
- The relationship between territory and armed conflict is not unidirectional: just as different territorial ideas affect wars in different ways, wars themselves can also shape and transform the dominant territorial ideas in a given geography

Mosaic territoriality
- Is built on two tenets. First unlike fluid, ambiguous, and overlapping boundaries and frontiers. It privileges clearly demarcated borders. Second, mosaic territoriality is not about standardizing or homogenizing the ways in which the society defines its attachment to state territories

Nationalism is not merely about the people, it is also about the relationship between the people and a specific territory, often designated as a homeland

Virulent territoriality
- This vision conceptualizes the state space as if it is a virus that needs to constantly grow and remake anything and everything on its way in its own image. Virulent territoriality recognizes no strict boundaries, as it seeks to expand almost indefinitely

• It is more about the relationship between the socially constructed nature of territories and armed conflict than it is about Germany and can be expressed through:
  1. Territories are essentially social and political constructs the meaning of which can show great variations across time
  2. Different territorial ideas are associated with different ways to fight over territory
  3. Wars themselves can also exert a transformative effect on the dominant territorial ideas in a given geography, sometimes reshaping them in radical ways

The postwar settlements established a stark paradox for non-western geographies: while the principle of “self-determination” was continuously emphasized

The territory should be thought of as more than just lines on a map… they are social and political constructs, fueled by particular ideas about the relationship between society, space, and politics… territory is, and has always been, what states and societies make of it.