The Logic of Violence in Civil War

by Stathis N. Kalyvas

• ISBN13: 9780521670043
• ISBN10: 0521670047
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-05-01
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

By analytically decoupling war and violence, this book explores the causes and dynamics of violence in civil war. Against the prevailing view that such violence is an instance of impenetrable madness, the book demonstrates that there is logic to it and that it has much less to do with collective emotions, ideologies, and cultures than currently believed. Kalyvas specifies a novel theory of selective violence: it is jointly produced by political actors seeking information and individual civilians trying to avoid the worst but also grabbing what opportunities their predicament affords them. Violence, he finds, is never a simple reflection of the optimal strategy of its users; its profoundly interactive character defeats simple maximization logics while producing surprising outcomes, such as relative nonviolence in the 'frontlines' of civil war.

Author Biography

Stathis N. Kalyvas is Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science at Yale, where he directs the Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures	xii
Acknowledgments	xv
List of Abbreviations	xvii
INTRODUCTION	1	(329)
I.1. Four Puzzles	1	(4)
I.2. Goals	5	(2)
I.3. Road Map	7	(7)
I.4. A Note on the History of the Project	14	(2)
1 CONCEPTS	16	(16)
1.1. Civil War	16	(3)
1.2. Violence	19	(4)
1.3. Scope Conditions	23	(8)
1.4. Conclusion	31	(1)
2 PATHOLOGIES	32	(20)
2.1. Madness and "Bloodless Convention"	32	(3)
2.2. Partisan Bias	35	(3)
2.3. Political Bias	38	(1)
2.4. Urban Bias	38	(10)
2.5. Selection Bias	48	(1)
2.6. Overaggregation Bias and Data Problems	48	(3)
2.7. Conclusion	51	(1)
3 BARBARISM	52	(35)
3.1. Barbarism and Civil War	52	(3)
3.2. Breakdown	55	(7)
3.3. Transgression	62	(2)
3.4. Polarization	64	(2)
3.5. The Technology of Warfare	66	(4)
3.6. Assessment	70	(15)
3.7. Conclusion	85	(2)
4 A THEORY OF IRREGULAR WAR I: COLLABORATION	87	(24)
4.1. Sovereignty in Civil War	87	(2)
4.2. The Identification Problem	89	(2)
4.3. Support	91	(13)
4.4. Forms of Collaboration and Defection	104	(2)
4.5. The Institutional Setting of Collaboration	106	(4)
4.6. Conclusion	110	(1)
5 A THEORY OF IRREGULAR WAR II: CONTROL	111	(35)
5.1. The Allocation of Collaboration	111	(5)
5.2. Survival	116	(2)
5.3. How Control Shapes Collaboration	118	(6)
5.4. Causal Paths from Control to Collaboration	124	(8)
5.5. The Distribution of Control	132	(6)
5.6. Constraints on Military Options	138	(3)
5.7. Violence and Discrimination	141	(4)
5.8. Conclusion	145	(1)
6 A LOGIC OF INDISCRIMINATE VIOLENCE	146	(27)
6.1. The Incidence of Indiscriminate Violence	147	(1)
6.2. Information and Indiscriminate Violence	148	(1)
6.3. Deterrence and Indiscriminate Violence	149	(2)
6.4. Counterproductive Effects of Indiscriminate Violence	151	(9)
6.5. Why Does Indiscriminate Violence Occur?	160	(7)
6.6. Accounting for the Puzzle	167	(4)
6.7. Conclusion	171	(2)
7 A THEORY OF SELECTIVE VIOLENCE	173	(37)
7.1. Information	174	(2)
7.2. Denunciation	176	(5)
7.3. Denunciation in Ethnic Civil Wars	181	(2)
7.4. Is Selective Violence Possible?	183	(9)
7.5. A Political Economy of Denunciation	192	(3)
7.6. A Model of Selective Violence in Civil War	195	(12)
7.7. Caveats	207	(1)
7.8. Conclusion	208	(2)
8 EMPIRICS I: COMPARATIVE EVIDENCE	210	(36)
8.1. Measuring Control	210	(3)
8.2. How Control Shifts	213	(5)
8.3. Full Control (Zones 1 and 5)	218	(4)
8.4. No Control (Zones 1 and 5)	222	(2)
8.5. Contestation (Zones 2, 3, and 4)	224	(19)
8.6. Conclusion	243	(3)
9 EMPIRICS II: MICROCOMPARATIVE EVIDENCE	246	(84)
9.1. Research Design	247	(1)
9.2. The Greek Civil War	248	(1)
9.3. The Argolid: Political, Social, and Economic Background	249	(5)
9.4. The Civil War in the Argolid	254	(11)
9.5. After the End of the Occupation	265	(1)
9.6. Violence: Descriptive Statistics	266	(9)
9.7. Control: Descriptive Statistics	275	(3)
9.8. Quantitative Evidence	278	(12)
9.9. Qualitative Evidence	290	(9)
9.10. Return to Manesi and Gerbesi	299	(3)
9.11. Mispredictions	302	(8)
9.12. A Replication: Almopia	310	(4)
9.13. Out-of-Sample Tests in Greece	314	(14)
9.14. Conclusion	328	(2)
10 INTIMACY	330	(34)
10.1. Intimate Violence	333	(3)
10.2. Why Denounce? A Sociology of Denunciation	336	(7)
10.3. The Range of Malicious Denunciation	343	(8)
10.4. The Dark Face of Social Capital: The Social Basis of Malicious Denunciation	351	(7)
10.5. Varying the Institutional Setting of Denunciation	358	(4)
10.6. Conclusion	362	(2)
11 CLEAVAGE AND AGENCY	364	(24)
11.1. Center and Periphery	365	(11)
11.2. Kto Novo? The Locus of Agency	376	(5)
11.3. Alliance	381	(5)
11.4. Conclusion	386	(2)
CONCLUSION	388	(5)
Appendix A: Data Sources	393	(19)
Appendix B: Coding Protocols	412	(11)
Appendix C: Timeline of Conflicts	423	(4)
References	427	(52)
Index	479