Varieties of post-civil war violence

Daniel Odin Shaw,Enrique Wedgwood Young

doi:10.1177/26330024211039864

Daniel Odin Shaw, Enrique Wedgwood Young

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/26330024211039864

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Journal: Violence: An International Journal	Publication Date: Oct 1, 2021
Citations: 1	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Glasgow

Abstract

Quantitative research on the “durability” of peace following civil wars typically captures the breakdown or survival of “peace” in a binary manner, equating it with the presence or absence of civil war recurrence. In the datasets that underpin such studies, years that do not experience full-scale civil war are implicitly coded as “peaceful.” Yet, post-civil war environments may remain free from war recurrence, while nevertheless experiencing endemic violent crime, state repression, low-intensity political violence, and systematic violence against marginalized groups, all of which are incongruent with the concept of peace. Approaches to assessing post-civil war outcomes which focus exclusively on civil war recurrence risk overestimating the “durability” of peace, implicitly designating as “peaceful” a range of environments which may be anything but. In this article, we discuss the heterogeneity of violent post-civil war outcomes and develop a typology of “varieties of post-civil war violence.” Our typology contributes to the study of post-civil war peace durability, by serving as the basis for an alternative, categorical conceptualization of “peace years” in conflict datasets.

Highlights

Most quantitative studies that examine the varying “durability” of peace following civil war essentially equate “peace” with the absence of civil war recurrence (Florea, 2012).Violence: An International Journal 0(0)The durability of peace is measured in a binary fashion, as whether a civil war “recurs” within a specified time frame, or as the time until civil war recurs
To operationalize our concept of “peace durability,” we first provide an overview of the different varieties of organized violence that can emerge in the aftermath of civil war, and outline a typology for classifying these using three dimensions
We argue that when assessing the durability of post-civil war peace, it is important to distinguish between civil war recurrence and a subsequent civil war breaking out, not least because the causes of each may be different

Summary

Introduction

Most quantitative studies that examine the varying “durability” of peace following civil war essentially equate “peace” with the absence of civil war recurrence (Florea, 2012).Violence: An International Journal 0(0)The durability of peace is measured in a binary fashion, as whether a civil war “recurs” within a specified time frame, or as the time until civil war recurs. Most quantitative studies that examine the varying “durability” of peace following civil war essentially equate “peace” with the absence of civil war recurrence (Florea, 2012). The aftermath of civil war is often characterized by uncertain and contested political authority (Florea, 2018a), weak state capacity (DeRouen et al, 2010), and economic devastation (Licklider, 1993), all of which can make for a febrile environment in which society is vulnerable to multiple forms of organized violence, which may undermine the “durability” of peace. The post-Qadhafi landscape in Libya continues to be dominated by hundreds of small, competing armed groups in a country that since 2011 “has lacked a central authority worthy of that name, and strong national political or military forces, as well as stable local authorities” (Lacher, 2020: 1)

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