Browsing by Subject "Political violence"
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Item Open Access Essays on State-Building and Sectarian Violence(2016) Daugherty, Jared Fergus\abstract
This dissertation seeks to explain the role of governmental and non-governmental actors in increasing/reducing the emergence of intergroup conflict after war, when group differences have been a salient aspect of group mobilization. This question emerges from several interrelated branches of scholarship on self-enforcing institutions and power-sharing arrangements, group fragmentation and demographic change, collective mobilization for collectively-targeted violence, and conflict termination and the post-conflict quality of peace. This question is investigated through quantitative analyses performed at the sub-national, national, and cross-national level on the effect of elite competition on the likelihood of violence committed on the basis of group difference after war. These quantitative analyses are each accompanied by qualitative, case study analyses drawn from the American Reconstruction South, Iraq, and Cote d'Ivoire that illustrate and clarify the mechanisms evaluated through quantitative analysis.
Shared findings suggest the correlation of reduced political competition with the increased likelihood of violence committed on the basis of group difference. Separate findings shed light on how covariates related to control over rent extraction and armed forces, decentralization, and citizenship can lead to a reduction in violence. However, these same quantitative analyses and case study analysis suggest that the control of the state can be perceived as a threat after the end of conflict. Further, together these findings suggest the political nature of violence committed on the basis of group difference as opposed to ethnic identity or resource scarcity alone.
Together, these combined analyses shed light on how and why political identities are formed and mobilized for the purpose of committing political violence after war. In this sense, they shed light on the factors that constrain post-conflict violence in deeply divided societies, and contribute to relevant academic, policy, and normative questions.
Item Open Access Good Arms and Good Laws: Machiavelli, Regime-Type, and Violent Oppression(2014) Wittels, William DavidThe problem of violent oppression is a persistent one. Every regime - autocratic or democratic - has an obligation to prevent the violent oppression of its citizens. My dissertation "Good Arms and Good Laws: Machiavelli, Regime-Type, and Violent Oppression" uses Machiavelli's understanding of different regime-types and their political dynamics to explore the means by which democracies and autocracies alike can prevent violent oppression within their borders. My exploration produces a standard for praiseworthy political regimes and action, based on what Machiavelli identifies as the people's desire "not to be oppressed."
Machiavelli's analysis of this problem of political violence leads to the conclusion that all types of regimes are united in needing an interdependent, yet competitive political relationship between their leading political figure(s) and the people at large. Different kinds of regimes vary, however, in the roles that their primary political classes must play in order to prevent oppression within their borders. After using the Florentine Histories to identify the lines of thinking central to Machiavelli's work, in chapter 1 I turn to Machiavelli's discussion of the citizen-militia in The Art of War. In chapters 2 and 3, I detail Machiavelli's recommendations for praiseworthy principalities in the Prince, where Machiavelli actually exhorts princes to arm their people (chapter 2) while simultaneously crafting for them the political ethics for which the text is notorious (chapter 3). In Chapters 4 and 5, I detail Machiavelli's recommendations for praiseworthy republics in the Discourses on Livy, where Machiavelli charges the people with policing the elites that would engage in projects of oppression if left to their own devices (chapter 4) while simultaneously praising elites who help to create and maintain mechanisms of violence (chapter 5). Machiavelli's analysis compels us to recognize that it is the particulars of these interdependent, yet competitive relationships between the people and their leading political figure(s) that define a regime and that our praise of that regime ought not depend categorically on whether the people rule, but rather whether the a regime's political classes effectively cooperate to prevent violent oppression.
Item Open Access Three Essays on the Dynamics of Conflict in Civil Wars(2019) Tellez, Juan FernandoCivil 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.