Violence & security. Paradigms and debates (73220041FY)
Institution
Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
Lecture notes for Violence and Security, slides copied down, combined with Lecturer explanations (borderline word for word transcript) for the Midterm on the April 26th 2023
Violence & security. Paradigms and debates (73220041FY)
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Lecture 1
Introduction and overview
Conceptualising Violence:
● Johan Galtung (1969)
○ norwegian, recognised as the father of peace studies
○ provides a compelling way to think about violence and peace.
● 2 types of violence:
○ Direct violence: Behaviors carried out by a clearly identifiable agent
with the intent to inflict bodily harm.
■ ex.: stabbing, shooting
○ Structural violence: Violence as present when humans systematically
cannot fulfill their physical and mental potential. Violence does not
require intent and does not require a clear agent.
■ ex.: before there was a cure for tuberculosis and people were
dying - not structural violence; if the cure is available, but
people cannot access it so they are dying - that is structural
violence
Course Focus
● We focus on direct violence in this course, focusing on forms of political
violence.
● Political violence occurs in wartime (conflicts where there as 1000+ battle-
related deaths in a given year) and in times of “peace” (e.g. electoral
violence, ethnic riots)
Conceptualizing Peace
● Johan Galtung (1969)
○ wrote during the cold war, which is can be characterized by negative
piece, but not positive piece (bc of the looming threat of nuclear war)
● typology of peace:
○ Negative peace: The absence of direct violence
○ Positive peace: A self-sustaining condition that protects the human
security of a population
■ peace requires more than a simple maintenance of a non-
violent order
What do we mean by ‘paradigms’?
● The idea of paradigms comes from Thomas Kuhn (1962)
● Paradigms or theoretical frameworks are lenses through which we see the
world
● They contain assumptions about:
○ The most important actors, as well as their behaviors and motivations
○ What leads to war and violence
, ○ What allows for peace and security
Paradigms and Approaches to Violence and Security
1. Approaches to interstate conflict
a. Realism
● Waltz
● Actors: The state is the principal actor of international politics
● Nature of the State:
○ The state is a unitary and rational actor seeking to
maximize its own interests
○ National security is a first order preference (i.e. it trumps
all)
● Understanding of Conflict/Order:
○ The international system is characterized by anarchy,
which means that security is not guaranteed.
○ Power (generally defined as material capabilities) is a
central concern to realism, because it is key to security.
○ The likelihood of war is shaped by the distribution of
power in the international system
b. Liberalism
● Actors: State and non-state actors are important.
○ E.g. Transnational advocacy networks (Margaret Keck
and Kathryn Sikkink 1998)
● Nature of the State: State preferences are an aggregate of
preferences of a wide range of state and societal actors.
○ Preferences not necessarily opposing
○ National security not always the most important
consideration
● Understanding of conflict/order:
○ Conflict is not inevitable; cooperation and mutual gains
are possible.
○ Order is possible through:
1. Economic interdependence and free trade
2. International institutions (UN, EU)
3. Democratic institutions
c. Constructivism
● Actors: Actors and the interests that drive them are socially
constructed.
● Assumptions about agent behavior:
○ Political action is shaped by identities and interests.
○ Who the actor is shapes what they view as appropriate
action
, ○ Conflict and peace are therefore shaped by the content
of identities and interests, which is why norms are so
important to social constructivism.
2. Approaches to intrastate conflict
a. Instrumentalism
● Elites as the primary explanatory variable for the
presence/absence of conflict
● Assumptions of instrumentalism:
○ Elites seek to maximize political power and other
material gains and will foment violence to meet their
interests.
b. Institutionalism
● Institutionalism is an approach that seeks to understand how
political struggles are mediated by the institutional setting in
which they take place.
c. Constructivism
● Groups as socially constructed and groups are not unitary
actors.
● Violence as a means of delineating and asserting group
boundaries
Lecture 2
Violence and state formation
What are the effects of violence? what does that mean for us? lead us to think
about?
what states we live in shapes our lived experiences. Specifically state strength
shapes many parts of our lives:
● strong states are able to implement economic policies that encourage
development because they are able to tax, redistribute resources, invest in
infrastructure
● the importance of state strength has recently been amplified; especially
when we think about the vaccine distribution during the pandemic:
○ weaker states had trouble deciding which groups to vaccinate first,
○ didn’t have the infrastructure and means to transport the vaccination
as often, so they had to figure out refrigeration for long periods
● security: people living in stronger states are less likely to experience civil war
○ if you’re living in a stronger state it will be better able to repress the
revolution, or accommodate it’s demands
○ when it comes to state capacity, it can crush an uprising
○ it has the bureaucratic and administrative capacity, as well as
coherent political institutions to distribute resources to a rebellious
region or grant autonomy rights in a particular way → this mitigates
political grievances that often animate many of these conflicts
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