Browsing by Subject "Peace"

Civil wars in the last three decades have produced staggering death tolls, unleashed huge waves of human migration through refugee flows, and generated incalculable human suffering. Understanding the dynamics of civil conflicts -- how they are fought, how they end, and their legacies on the societies that survive them -- is of critical importance, perhaps now more than ever. In this dissertation I explore three central dimensions of civil war dynamics, using the case study of the Colombian civil war as an empirical context with which to evaluate my theory-building. Chapter 2 analyzes how the electoral process shapes patterns of violence in countries experiencing conflict. I combine statistical models with fine-grained data on the timing of local elections and the prevalence of violence during three decades of Colombian history to show that insurgents respond to the electoral process and wield violence to achieve electoral goals. The results raise caution about the prospect of democratization as a palliative to conflict. Chapter 3 explores how attempts to mitigate conflict by promoting economic growth can backfire. I argue that in contexts where the state is weak, the expansion of land-intensive industries can incentivize land-grabbing and the displacement of civilians. I collect original data on the rapid expansion of the palm-oil industry in early 21st century Colombia to show that growth in this industry was associated with mass civilian displacement. The findings warn against intuition that economic growth necessarily reduces violence and instead suggests that actors can take advantage of ongoing conflict for private gain. Finally, Chapter 4 focuses on the challenge of generating public support for conflict-termination in deeply divided societies. I conceptualize the broad points over which state and insurgent actors have to agree to reach settlement, and draw testable hypotheses for how different kinds of settlements will move public opinion. I use novel survey experiments fielded during the 2016 Colombian peace process to demonstrate that normative questions bearing on punishment deeply divided citizens. I derive implications for policymakers seeking to construct peace agreements with broad bases of public support.

This dissertation approaches the problem of war in Christian ethics through the lens of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Drawing upon memoirs, letters, sermons, and fieldwork, it shifts the focus of moral inquiry from theoretical positions on war (e.g., just war theory and pacifism) to the domain of everyday life and the ways that local Christians theologically frame and practically reason through conflict. I explore the 1996-1997 Rwandan refugee crisis through the voice of a Catholic survivor, Marie Béatrice Umutesi, and consider how her narrative challenges both just war interpretations of this violence and "bare life" readings of refugee experience. I then examine how the Catholic Church endured rebel occupation in the eastern city of Bukavu from 1998-2000, looking specifically at how Archbishop Emmanuel Kataliko's Christological reading of the situation transformed the experience of suffering into a form of agency and galvanized the Church into collective action. I go on to explore how residents of the town of Nyankunde in northeastern Congo are constructing alternatives to the war economy and re-weaving ordinary life out of the ruins of their former lives. In showing how local narratives help us reframe the problem of war in Christian ethics, I argue that description is not a preliminary stage to moral judgment; description is moral judgment.