Civil wars: What we don't know

Global Governance

Volumn 9, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 247-260

  Wood, Elisabeth Jean ^a  

^a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0038277054     PISSN: 10752846     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/19426720-00902011     Document Type: Review

References (52)

1. Barbara F. Walter, Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 5-6.
2. For a recent extended review of the literature on the political economy of civil war, see Macartan Humphries, "Economics and Violent Conflict" (manuscript, Harvard University, 2002).
3. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, "Greed and Grievance in Civil War" (manuscript, World Bank, 2001).
4. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War" (manuscript, Stanford University, 2002). For a discussion of the different datasets and methods, see Nicholas Sambanis, "Defining and Measuring Civil War: Conceptual and Empirical Complexities," Journal of Defense Economics, forthcoming.
5. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War" (manuscript, Stanford University, 2002). For a discussion of the different datasets and methods, see Nicholas Sambanis, "Defining and Measuring Civil War: Conceptual and Empirical Complexities," Journal of Defense Economics, forthcoming.
6. Stathis Kalyvas, "'New' and 'Old' Civil Wars: A Valid Distinction?" World Politics 54, no. 1 (2001): 99-118.
7. Michael Ross, "Oil, Drugs, and Diamonds: How Do Natural Resources Vary in Their Impact on Civil War?" paper prepared for the International Peace Academy project, Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, 2002.
8. Philippe Le Billon, "The Political Ecology of War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflict," Political Geography 20, no. 5 (spring 2001): 561-584.
9. Charles T. Call, "Crime and Peace: Why Successful Peace Processes Produce the World's Most Violent Countries," paper presented at the annual conference of the International Studies Association, Washington D.C., February 1999.
10. The emergence of spoilers even in the case of illicit diamond production may not be as dire as the literature often implies. Paul Richards, in Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1996), found that the marketing of alluvial diamonds in Sierra Leone was highly organized through networks controlled by local and national elites. While securing the agreement of a sufficient number of those who control networks may be difficult, it is less so than if those networks were more dispersed.
11. Elisabeth J. Wood, Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
12. Elisabeth J. Wood, "Distributional Settlements and Civil War Resolution: Stakes, Expectations, and Optimal Agreements," manuscript under revision for resubmission to the Journal of Conflict Resolution.
13. It may further the cause of peace, if not of justice, if we distinguish between opportunistic spoilers, whose defection from a potential settlement is essentially driven by material self-interest and whose acquiescence might be secured via side payments (thereby running the risk of motivating such defections), and what we might term "principled spoilers," whose defection is driven by reasons of principle that must be otherwise addressed. As always, distinguishing between the two will not be easy in any specific case. Further, the emergence of factions whose intent is to spoil may not always undermine negotiations, as the defection of extremists may enable moderates to settle and unexpectedly carry the day.
14. David T. Mason and Patrick J. Fett, "How Civil Wars End: A Rational Choice Approach," Journal of Conflict Resolution 40, no. 4 (fall 1996): 546-568.
15. Roy Licklider, "The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars, 1945-1993," American Political Science Review 89, no. 3 (summer 1995): 681-690.
16. Walter, Committing to Peace, pp. 78, 81-82.
17. Collier and Hoeffler, "Greed and Grievance in Civil War."
18. James Fearon, "Commitment Problems and the Spread of Ethnic Conflict," in David Lake and Donald Rothchild, eds. The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 107-127.
19. Andrew Mack, "Civil War: Academic Research and the Policy Community," Journal of Peace Research 39, no. 5 (2002): pp. 515-525.
20. Fearon and Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War."
21. See, for example, Walter, Committing to Peace; Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, "International Peacebuilding: A Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis," American Political Science Review 94, no. 4 (2000): 779-801.
22. See, for example, Walter, Committing to Peace; Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, "International Peacebuilding: A Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis," American Political Science Review 94, no. 4 (2000): 779-801.
23. Daniel Posner and David Laitin, in Kanchan Chandra, ed., "Symposium: Cumulative Findings in the Study of Ethnic Politics," APSA-CP Newsletter (winter 2001).
24. Nicholas Sambanis,. "A Note on the Death Threshold in Coding Civil War Events," Conflict Processes Newsletter (June 2001), available online at http://mailer.fsu.edu/&Tild;whmoore/cps/newsletter/june 2001/.
25. Francis Stewart and Valpay Fitzgerald, eds., War and Underdevelopment, vol. 1: The Economics and Social Consequences of Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). See also Humphries, "Economics and Violent Conflict."
26. Francis Stewart and Valpay Fitzgerald, eds., War and Underdevelopment, vol. 1: The Economics and Social Consequences of Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). See also Humphries, "Economics and Violent Conflict."
27. Mats Berdal and David M. Malone, Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 2000).
28. Wood, Forging Democracy from Below.
29. William I. Zartman, Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
30. Peyton H. Young, Individual Strategy and Social Structure (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998). See Wood, "Distributional Settlements and Civil War Resolution" for an application to civil war resolution.
31. Peyton H. Young, Individual Strategy and Social Structure (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998). See Wood, "Distributional Settlements and Civil War Resolution" for an application to civil war resolution.
32. Stathis Kalyvas, "The Logic of Violence in Civil War" (book manuscript).
33. Ibid.; Victoria Sanford, "Contesting Displacement: 'Bare Life' and Citizenship in Colombian Peace Communities," paper presented at the Postwar Symposium in Charlottesville, Va.: February 28-March 3, 2002.
34. Ibid.; Victoria Sanford, "Contesting Displacement: 'Bare Life' and Citizenship in Colombian Peace Communities," paper presented at the Postwar Symposium in Charlottesville, Va.: February 28-March 3, 2002.
35. Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
36. Kalyvas, "'New' and 'Old' Civil Wars."
37. Elisabeth J. Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, May 2003).
38. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence.
39. Fearon and Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War."
40. James Ron, Frontier or Ghetto? (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming).
41. Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); David Lan, Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
42. Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); David Lan, Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
43. Kalyvas, "'New' and 'Old' Civil Wars."
44. Two exceptions are Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador and Roger Petersen, Explaining Ethnic Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
45. For an example of a formal modeling approach, see Fearon, "Commitment Problems and the Spread of Ethnic Conflict." For an example of an agent-based modeling approach, see Joshua M. Epstein, John D. Steinbruner, and Miles T. Parker, "Modeling Civil Violence: An Agent-Based Computational Approach," Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, Working Paper No. 20, Brookings Institution and Johns Hopkins University, 2001.
46. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence.
47. Fearon and Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War."
48. Nicholas Sambanis, "Do Ethnic and Non-Ethnic Civil Wars Have the Same Causes? A Theoretical and Empirical Inquiry (Part 1)," Journal of Conflict Resolution 45, no. 3 (summer 2001): 259-282.
49. James D. Fearon, "Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer than Others?" (manuscript, Stanford University, 2002).
50. See also Fearon, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War."
51. An example is the research by Michael Ross, "Oil, Drugs, and Diamonds: How Do Natural Resources Vary in Their Impact on Civil War?" (Other studies exist but many of them are unpublished and their findings are not yet well disciplined by scholarly assessment of their arguments and evidence.) Humphries in "Economics and Violent Conflict" makes a similar call for a focus on causal mechanisms.
52. Walter, Committing to Peace.