Continuation of Politics by Two Means: Direct and Indirect Violence in Civil War

Abstract

This article distinguishes between ‘‘direct’’ and ‘‘indirect’’ violence during civil wars. These two types differ in their forms of production: while indirect violence is unilaterally perpetrated by an armed group, direct violence is jointly produced by an armed group and civilians, and it hinges on local collaboration. These differences have consequences for the spatial variation of each of these types: in conventional civil wars, indirect violence is hypothesized to be positively associated with levels of prewar support for the enemy group; in contrast, direct violence is hypothesized to increase with the level of political parity between factions in a locality. The predictions are tested with a novel dataset of 1,710 municipalities in Catalonia and Aragon during the Spanish civil war (1936—1939).