CDSn4001:
Conflict
Analysis
Causes of civil war
November 20, 2023
Miriam Matejova, PhD
Agenda
• Defining civil war
• Causes: grievances vs resources
• Ethnicity and ethnic conflict
Defining civil war
• A conflict between organized groups within a
nation-state.
– International war is between like actors; civil war is
usually between a state and non-state opponents who
adopt insurgent or terrorist tactics.
• Why is accurate definition crucial?
• Is there always a sharp distinction between
internal and international war?
• What distinguishes a civil war from other types of
internal contentious politics?
Civil war: causes
• Rationalist vs symbolic explanations
• Grievances
– Reasons people rebel
• Resources
– Economic factors as a source of conflict and as a
constraint on state’s ability to resist rebellion
Grievances
• Grievance: a feeling of being wronged
• Can be political, economic, religious,
territorial, ethnic, etc. but often overlap
– Political: seeking to overthrow the government or
reform
– Economic: seeking to force the government to
adopt a different economic policy or address an
economic grievance
– Territorial: fight for autonomy or independence
Why does wealth affect the likelihood of
civil war occurrence?
• Poorer governments have lesser ability to
address grievances and combat violent
movements.
• Poorer individuals are more likely to join
violent movements, because they have
economically less to lose.
• People are more likely to rebel when their
level of wealth departs significantly from their
expectations.
Ethnicity
• Primordial school: ethnicity is deeply
ingrained in human history and experience; it
is a fact of life in the relations between
individuals and groups
• Instrumentalists: elites use ethnicity to
manipulate and mobilize followers in the
pursuit of interests like physical security,
economic gains, or political power
• Suggests that ethnic identities are fluid
Constructivist understanding of
ethnicity
• Ethnosymbolism: emphasis on ethnic group
bound together by myths and symbols
– Ethnic group as population sharing common myths
about its origins, historical memories, and cultural
features (also associated with a territory and has a
sense of solidarity)
• Political exploitation of ethnicity is constrained by
pre-existing cultural context
• Emotions (not rational calculations) motivate
people to act