Civil Violence Research Articles

The Potentials and Limitations of Agent-Based Models for Urban Digital Twins: Insights From a Surveillance and Behavioral Nudging Simulation

Although urban digital twins are still at an embryonic stage of development, their use cases are multiple, ranging from big data aggregation to simulations. Additionally, predictions can be rendered and quickly implemented using actuators to transform physical environments and influence urban life. In this article, we investigate the potential of an agent-based model in a smart city setting to predict emergent behavior in relation to the suppression of civil violence by implementing crowd management practices. To this end, we designed a simulation environment that includes cameras in public spaces and wearable sensors, and considers nudging and self-nudging processes supported by a surveillance apparatus. Building on Epstein’s threshold-based model of civil violence, the proposed simulation is informed by surveillance theories and contemplates methods for crowd monitoring and social control. The experiments’ results provide insights into how specific measures and combined actions may influence the suppression of civil violence in public spaces and can be useful to inform crowd management activities and policymaking. Moreover, we use the simulation to reflect upon the potentials and limitations of integrating agent-based models into urban digital twins and emphasize the imminent risks for individuals and democratic societies of employing a ubiquitous surveillance apparatus endowed with the autonomy to trigger actuators.

Tracing the Footsteps of Peace: Examining the Locations of UN Peacekeeping Patrols1

Recent studies have shown that United Nations (UN) peacekeepers are deployed to active conflict zones and are effective in reducing violence against civilians and between armed actors. Yet, while existing research has explored where peacekeepers are initially deployed, we know less about where peacekeepers patrol after deployment in which existing evidence remains largely anecdotal. We contend that UN peacekeeping patrols are generally conducted in areas where they are most needed in areas of armed violence and where civilians are targeted as UN peacekeepers are mandated to anticipate and respond to violence. We assess this argument using unique, geocoded mission report data compiled by the Joint Mission Analysis Center (JMAC) on UNAMID patrols across Darfur between January 2008 and April 2009. We find that, while UN patrols often stayed closer to the base, many patrols did venture far from base into the “sea of instability,” in locations with armed clashes and civilian violence.

Does economic globalization promote civil peace in developing countries?

This study questions the widely supported claim that economic globalization benefits developing countries by enhancing their prospects for civil peace. Drawing on ideas from across the social sciences, this study questions the nature of causation between economic globalization and civil peace and how it should be conceptualized and modeled. Instead of assuming a straightforward and static relationship whereby economic globalization directly increases the likelihood of civil peace, a range of alternative hypotheses are considered, including those about reverse and reciprocal causation and about dynamic and path-dependent effects. Using dynamic panel regression and vector autoregression, the study empirically examines how trade openness and foreign direct investment affect civil violence in a sample of all countries classified by the United Nations as developing. The results find positive links between economic globalization and civil peace, as much of the literature predicts, but show that this relationship mainly arises from complex patterns of causation rather than from the pacifying effects of economic globalization. These results are robust to various model specifications and sampling strategies. The study ends by considering whether economic globalization may indirectly promote civil peace by fostering long-term economic development.

Connecting the dots – poverty, marginality, and the production of aggression and violence in post-war Sierra Leone

ABSTRACT A good collection of existing literature provides limited reflection on classifying post-conflict countries as being ‘peaceful’. This is especially so, as the period following the end of a civil war is normally characterised, as a period of ‘peace’, thereby equating peace to the silence of the guns. Such an understanding of what constitutes peace in post-conflict settings is problematic. This is because, societies in transition, are usually plagued with a plethora of challenges, with the legacies of war normally shaping the resurgence of violence in other forms. Additionally, complex transitions of violence and aggression, which reflect the socio-economic and political gyrations of a society redefining itself, and reconstructing its values are seen in most post-conflict contexts. Thus, using the case of Sierra Leone, this paper argues that some post-conflict settings experience negative peace, and diverse forms of violence that usually render communities unsafe, insecure and not peaceful. Thus, boxing societies in a bracket of being peaceful, because of the end of a violent civil war, limits what peace means in a specific contextual sense. It even undermines the potential for a broader approach towards understanding how the emerging forms of violence and aggression could be addressed.

Understanding the Implications of Ethnic Diversity in the Nigerian Civil Service

Ethnicity differentiated societies are often regarded as dysfunctional with poor violent civil conflict. This is because, Nigeria’s multi ethnicity suggests a tendency to show favoritisms to individual because of ethnicity. This paper examines the implications of ethnic diversity in the Nigerian civil service to undermine the consideration of merit principles in the recruitment process. The paper relies on the Weberian bureaucratic model prescription to guide the Nigerian civil service commission out of the recruitment process bedeviled by the factors sentiments. Among other things, the paper recommends strict measure on the prevailing principles that promotes mediocrity as against old philosophy of excellence, competence and qualification that facilitate improved implementation of government policies and programmes in the Nigeria civil service commission.

Economic decline, ethnonationalism and civil war onset

AbstractWithin the scholarship on the causes of civil wars, GDP per capita represents a strong and robust variable. Less attention, however, is paid to the role of economic decline. When it is included at all, scholars tend to consider it only in the period just prior to the onset of war. This paper argues that the impact of economic decline has been underestimated, for in addition to its short‐term effects, evidence from case studies reveals that a particular pattern is often evident during periods of sharp economic decline, in which ethnonationalist actors ascend in political power while scapegoating minority populations. The resulting increase in interethnic tensions raises the risk of large‐scale civil violence even many years after a major recession. The cases of Yugoslavia, Ivory Coast and India show the long‐term effects of a common exogenous shock‐ the global recession of the late 1970s‐ in the form of rising ethnonationalist political actors, setting the stage for large‐scale interethnic civil violence long after the initial economic shock.

Human Needs and Civilian Violence in United Nations Peace Keeping Operations: A Case of MONUSCO in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Citizens’ protests against UN Peacekeepers in Africa are on the increase. This article draws from MONUSCO's experience in DRC to address one crucial question: Why are local populations launching violent demonstrations against UN Peacekeepers in DRC? The study utilises human needs theory to reveal that unfulfilled civilian security needs manifest in violent mass protests against peacekeepers. This article argues that while civilian protection remains UN’s priority, violent demonstrations against MONUSCO in the DRC and emerging protests elsewhere in Africa put UN’s peacekeeping role into question. The study anticipates continued citizens’ protests unless there is a change in UN’s strategies to enhance the capability of peacekeeping operations. The article utilises qualitative data from key informant interviews and evidence from documentary sources. The analysis indicates that the Congolese population is frustrated with MONUSCO’s failure to protect them from a series of attacks by armed rebels. Consequently, citizens have launched violent demonstrations against peacekeepers to voice their concerns for meeting their security needs. This calls UN to review the peacekeeping strategy to ensure the relevance of peacekeeping operations for the long-term and effective protection of civilians.

Reimagining spatiality in South Asian Diasporic Literature: a Lefebvrian Reading of Jhumpa Lahiri’s the Lowland

ABSTRACT The examination of power, space, and identity formation within diasporic literature has garnered significant attention due to the escalating global mobility of migrants across the world. This article studies the complex integration of spatial hierarchy, civil violence, and gendered responses to power representations in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Lowland (2013). We utilise Henri Lefebvre’s theories to dissect the spatial dynamics of the novel across three dimensions: representations of space and conceived space, spatial practice and perceived space, and representational space and lived space. Lefebvre’s framework is instrumental in understanding how physical and conceptual spaces can simultaneously serve as tools for domination and sites for transformative resistance. The novel weaves distinct spatial realms, such as the exclusive Tolly Club and the diminishing lowland, to symbolise postcolonialism and state control. The findings highlight how conceived space is portrayed as a postcolonial realm marked by violence and gendered spatial injustice, reflecting male dominance and societal norms that suppress female subjectivity. However, the study also reveals that this conformity is not static but showcases the agency of female characters like Gauri and Bijoli in resisting and renegotiating spatial constraints.

Beyond fallacies: violent conflicts globally and in muslim countries

This article explores the relationship between key economic development indicators and the occurrence of violent civil conflicts. It examines public policy failures and mistakes which link with onset of conflicts. Two sets of 160 countries are included to empirically analyse the determinants of conflicts. This analysis extends to two distinctive subsets of Muslim countries. The paper establishes that the classification procedure of violent conflicts matters—varying classifications offer dissimilar values to similar predictors. Here, our conclusions are contrary to the much emphasized ‘greed motivation’ to rebel, which dismisses strong linkages of ‘grievances’ like low income, economic development failures and political repression with intrastate violent conflicts. The paper also infers limitations in country level data—which cross-country studies employ—income and unemployment data are non-reflective of conflict regions and of horizontal inequalities. We stress region and country specific research.

‘a revolt within a revolt’: feminist political ideas in Chile’s social uprising

This article analyses the role of feminist activists and feminist political ideas in Chile during the 2019 popular revolt. In the last months of 2019, a popular anti-neoliberal revolt was marked by social protests, violent and nonviolent civil disobedience and political upheaval. Feminists, specifically from the collective Coordinadora Feminista 8 de Marzo (C8M), became central during this period. They not only participated in the organisation of protests and artistic interventions but also helped to install and advance feminist ideas in mainstream public debate. Based on qualitative interviews with feminist activists, conducted between February and April 2021, this article identifies three strands of feminist political ideas that were predominant during and after the popular revolt: 1) autonomism as anti-neoliberal organising; 2) the resurgence of the idea of political-sexual violence; and 3) the link between neoliberalism and the precariousness of life. Following these three strands, this article argues that what occurred in Chile was a feminist revolt, understood as the potencia to transit from concept-building to demand-making in order to push forward feminist horizons as a central political idea.

Structural Position in the Global Economy and Major Episodes of Civil Violence, 1970 to 2018

This study draws on world-systems theory to generate new explanations for the uneven patterns of civil violence found in the world today. A large and well-developed literature shows that low-income countries with stagnant economies and undemocratic political systems are the most susceptible to outbreaks of civil violence. This literature, however, fails to consider how countries are positioned relative to the structures of global capitalism. By contrast, world-systems theory has long emphasized that a country’s position within the international division of labor shapes many of its domestic outcomes, including those related to development and democratization. Combining these two literatures suggests that “world-system position” has direct and indirect effects on civil violence, with the indirect effects being mediated by development, democratization, and related factors. Drawing on a sample of 152 countries observed from 1970 to 2018 and using high-quality data on major incidences of civil violence around the world, the study finds compelling evidence that non-core countries are considerably more prone to civil violence than core countries and that this gap is widening, not narrowing, over time. These results are robust to alternative measures of world-system position and various model specifications.

Navigating polycrisis: long-run socio-cultural factors shape response to changing climate.

Climate variability and natural hazards like floods and earthquakes can act as environmental shocks or socioecological stressors leading to instability and suffering throughout human history. Yet, societies experience a wide range of outcomes when facing such challenges: some suffer from social unrest, civil violence or complete collapse; others prove more resilient and maintain key social functions. We currently lack a clear, generally agreed-upon conceptual framework and evidentiary base to explore what causes these divergent outcomes. Here, we discuss efforts to develop such a framework through the Crisis Database (CrisisDB) programme. We illustrate that the impact of environmental stressors is mediated through extant cultural, political and economic structures that evolve over extended timescales (decades to centuries). These structures can generate high resilience to major shocks, facilitate positive adaptation, or, alternatively, undermine collective action and lead to unrest, violence and even societal collapse. By exposing the ways that different societies have reacted to crises over their lifetime, this framework can help identify the factors and complex social-ecological interactions that either bolster or undermine resilience to contemporary climate shocks. This article is part of the theme issue 'Climate change adaptation needs a science of culture'.

The Effects of Violent Civil Conflicts on Household Security and Government Responses in East Wallaga Zone, Oromia Regional State

This article provides a qualitative analysis of the impacts of violent armed conflicts on households and government responses. The study identifies direct effects such as deaths and forced migration, and indirect effects such as long-term losses in social capital, social networks, and infrastructure. These conflicts also harm institutions in the social, political, and economic spheres. The study recommends two policy suggestions at national and international levels: policies to rebuild household and community cohesiveness, and policies to aid recovery, such as income-generating activities and peacebuilding. Overall, the article highlights the need for comprehensive and coordinated efforts to address the effects of violent conflicts on households and communities.

Introducing digital health information systems in post-conflict Mozambique: a historical perspective

ABSTRACT The institutional dynamics around digital Health Information Systems implementations are subject to influences from the technological artefacts themselves or contextual conditions from the setting. These not always obvious and easily visible, appearing intrinsically hidden, may only be made perceptible through analysing patterns across a historical timeframe. Recognizing history’s potential, both as a tool and a means for enabling this analysis, we seek to build a situated understanding of the technology adoption and institutionalization processes, valuable to support future implementation efforts. This analysis is conducted as a historical study based on implementing a digital platform for public health management in Mozambique, a low- and middle-income country recovering from the aftermath of colonial rule and violent civil war. While the overall study spans twenty years since 2000, this paper focuses on the first seven years to identify institutional contradictions and how these shaped the adoption and evolution of digitally based systems processes.

Pro-Syrian Regime Versus Anti Regime Outlets: A Comparative Critical Discourse Analysis

The Syrian conflict that erupted in 2011 became a global crisis and attracted the international social media attention, leading to the engagement of international superpowers. Based on the assumption that social media discourse is not neutral and impacted by social, political, and economic contexts [1], this paper employs van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach to investigate the role of social media discourse in protracting the Syrian conflict. It analyzes two main local, anti-, and pro-regime, social media outlets’ posts, and tweets to expose their discursive strategies and embedded ideologies. This article exposes the manipulation practices on the discoursal and linguistic level. It conducts a complex analysis to uncover hidden messages and manipulation techniques that has been delivered and utilized by conflicting parties in Syria, influencing people’s minds, increasing their polarity, altering the Syrian revolution’s conception, and protracting the tragedy. The findings indicate that social media discourse vis-à-vis the Syrian context is biased. Syrian conflicting parties, especially pro-regimes outlets, manipulate discourse with the aim of influencing people’s understandings and beliefs and hence actions. Anti-government actors are always stereotyped as foreign backed, extremists, and terrorists. International outlets, impacted by the local outlets, have contributed to altering the perception of the Syrian conflict, from a popular social movement to a violent civil war.

Findings From the World Mental Health Surveys of Civil Violence Exposure and Its Association With Subsequent Onset and Persistence of Mental Disorders

Understanding the association of civil violence with mental disorders is important for developing effective postconflict recovery policies. To estimate the association between exposure to civil violence and the subsequent onset and persistence of common mental disorders (in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition [DSM-IV]) in representative surveys of civilians from countries that have experienced civil violence since World War II. This study used data from cross-sectional World Health Organization World Mental Health (WMH) surveys administered to households between February 5, 2001, and January 5, 2022, in 7 countries that experienced periods of civil violence after World War II (Argentina, Colombia, Lebanon, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Peru, and South Africa). Data from respondents in other WMH surveys who immigrated from countries with civil violence in Africa and Latin America were also included. Representative samples comprised adults (aged ≥18 years) from eligible countries. Data analysis was performed from February 10 to 13, 2023. Exposure was defined as a self-report of having been a civilian in a war zone or region of terror. Related stressors (being displaced, witnessing atrocities, or being a combatant) were also assessed. Exposures occurred a median of 21 (IQR, 12-30) years before the interview. The main outcome was the retrospectively reported lifetime prevalence and 12-month persistence (estimated by calculating 12-month prevalence among lifetime cases) of DSM-IV anxiety, mood, and externalizing (alcohol use, illicit drug use, or intermittent explosive) disorders. This study included 18 212 respondents from 7 countries. Of these individuals, 2096 reported that they were exposed to civil violence (56.5% were men; median age, 40 [IQR, 30-52] years) and 16 116 were not exposed (45.2% were men; median age, 35 [IQR, 26-48] years). Respondents who reported being exposed to civil violence had a significantly elevated onset risk of anxiety (risk ratio [RR], 1.8 [95% CI, 1.5-2.1]), mood (RR, 1.5 [95% CI, 1.3-1.7]), and externalizing (RR, 1.6 [95% CI, 1.3-1.9]) disorders. Combatants additionally had a significantly elevated onset risk of anxiety disorders (RR, 2.0 [95% CI, 1.3-3.1]) and refugees had an increased onset risk of mood (RR, 1.5 [95% CI, 1.1-2.0]) and externalizing (RR, 1.6 [95% CI, 1.0-2.4]) disorders. Elevated disorder onset risks persisted for more than 2 decades if conflicts persisted but not after either termination of hostilities or emigration. Persistence (ie, 12-month prevalence among respondents with lifetime prevalence of the disorder), in comparison, was generally not associated with exposure. In this survey study of exposure to civil violence, exposure was associated with an elevated risk of mental disorders among civilians for many years after initial exposure. These findings suggest that policy makers should recognize these associations when projecting future mental disorder treatment needs in countries experiencing civil violence and among affected migrants.

The Hudson River Valley Loyalists in British North America: Connection, Community, and Continuity

The American Revolutionary War brought tremendous pain and suffering to Loyalists in New York's Hudson River Valley. They endured violence, persecution, and dislocation. When the war ended, thousands of Loyalists chose to leave their homes for a new life in British North America (Canada). As a civil war, the Revolution attempted to dissolve existing community bonds. But the Hudson Valley Loyalists show that many relationships endured despite the conflict, and that instead these social webs remained central to how they found their way in the postwar British Empire. They settled near one another in exile, assisted each other when applying for postwar compensation, shared similar political philosophies in provincial politics, maintained contact with family in New York, and even intermarried. Individual relationships and community were central to how the Hudson Valley Loyalists rebuilt their lives after a violent civil war. In exile, they created a social web consisting of Loyalists, their children, American citizens, and Late Loyalists, that bound them for several generations.

Porous Penality and the Myth of Liberal Punishment: Lessons from South Africa

Abstract Drawing on Walter Benjamin, this paper discusses the relationships between law, violence, and punishment. The main argument I make is that state punishment is BOTH a violent and logically contradictory practice and that the state’s legal right to punish often spills over into extralegal penal violence, perpetrated by a range of actors against the racialized poor. I use the term penal violence to refer to all forms of violence which are aimed at enforcing law or punishing a perceived transgression of law or norms. The paper focuses on the infliction of penal violence in South Africa on/in three different scales and jurisdictions: Makwanyane and violence in prisons; police and prosecutorial violence; and extralegal civilian violence.

Micoahumado, Tarso and Mogotes: From the non violent civil resistance to the construction of territorial peace in Colombia

Este artículo reivindica el valor epistemológico y político de tres procesos comunitarios gestados en el seno del conflicto armado colombiano, que son ejercicios de resistencia civil no violenta al involucrar actores civiles colectivos que utilizaron medios pacíficos para responder a las afectaciones generadas por los actores armados y a las condiciones injustas de exclusión a las que habían sido sometidas a causa de la ausencia o indiferencia del Estado. En esas condiciones de vulnerabilidad, las comunidades de Micoahumado (Bolívar), Mogotes (Santander) y Tarso (Antioquia) negociaron con los grupos armados garantías de seguridad y exigieron a las autoridades el cumplimiento de sus funciones esenciales apersonándose de la planificación del desarrollo territorial, fortaleciendo los lazos de solidaridad y fomentando una cultura de paz.

Managing complexity: addressing the civil conflict component of international-civil militarized conflicts (I-CMCs)

PurposeThe purpuse of this study is to answer the following two questions. Do conflict management efforts mitigate the recurrence and severity of civil conflict? If so, how? Do some conflict management strategies fare better than others in these tasks? This study theorizes about the connection between the costliness of a conflict management strategy – with respect to both the disputants and third parties – and civil conflict outcomes. This theory produces two contradictory predictions: that more costly strategies either increase or decrease violence. This study not only adjudicates between these two possibilities but also incorporates the role of timing. The early use of more costly strategies, for example, may encourage disputants to reduce violence in civil conflicts.Design/methodology/approachTo evaluate the predications that the authors derive from their theoretical argument, the authors quantitatively analyze the effect of conflict management strategies’ relative cost on various measures of civil conflict recurrence and severity. The authors first identify the set of international–civil militarized conflicts (I-CMCs) during the period 1946–2010. I-CMCs contain two dimensions – interstate and intrastate – making them the most complex and dangerous form of militarized conflict. To each I-CMC, the authors then link all third-party attempts to manage the I-CMC’s civil conflict dimension. Finally, after developing quantitative indicators, a series of regression equations explore the relationships of primary interest.FindingsTwo main findings emerge. First, when third parties use a relatively more costly conflict management strategy to manage a civil conflict (e.g. a peace operation or military intervention, as opposed to mediation), the severity of the conflict increases, while conflict recurrence rates remain unchanged. Second, this study uncovers a trade-off. The early use of a relatively more costly management strategy lowers a civil conflict’s severity in the short-term. It also, however, increases the likelihood – and speed with which – civil conflict recurs. The timing of certain conflict management strategies matters.Originality/valueScholars typically isolate conflict management strategies in number (i.e. consider efforts as independent of one another, even those within the same conflict) and kind (i.e. examine mediation but not peace operations). This study, in contrast, includes the following: the full menu of conflict management strategies available to third parties – negotiation, mediation, adjudication/arbitration, peace operations, sanctions and military intervention – over a lengthy time period (1946–2010); theorizes about the relative merits of these strategies; and considers the timing of certain conflict management efforts. In so doing, it highlights a policy trade-off and proposes promising areas for future research.