Violence & security. Paradigms and debates (73220041FY)
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Summary Violence & Security (V&S) of all the lectures (1-10)
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Violence & security. Paradigms and debates (73220041FY)
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Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
A very extensive summary of all the lectures of the Violence & Security course. This contains everything that was discussed in the lectures and at the same time incorporates the literature. I completed Violence & Security with an 8.5 average and everything you need to know is in the summary. Good l...
Violence & security. Paradigms and debates (73220041FY)
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Gehele samenvatting V&S
Lecture 1 V&S
Introduction and Overview
Conceptualizing violence
Johan Galtung (1969) provides a compelling way to think about violence and peace.
• Two types of violence:
o Direct violence: Behaviors carried out by a clearly identifiable agent with the
intent to inflict bodily harm.
▪ There is a perpetrator: a clear actor that is performing violence
▪ There is a role of intent: if you trip and hurt someone then it is not direct
violence, then it will be considered an accident
o 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.
▪ Violence can be psychological, violence can be threats
▪ It can also be about the systematic conditions of human life → that’s why
it is called structural violence → there are conditions that compromise the
ability of humans to live a healthy life, both physically and mentally
▪ Example: Before there was a cure for tuberculosis and people die → it is
not violence, when people die of tuberculosis when there IS a cure but they
don’t have access → structural violence
▪ Also in America there are a lot of bicycle deaths, while in the Netherlands
this almost doesn’t happen because of separate bike lanes → structural
violence, because we know there is a way to make cycling more safe.
• In this course there is a focus on direct violence, focusing on forms of political violence.
• Political violence occurs in wartime (conflict 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’s (1969) typology of peace:
• Negative peace: The absence of direct violence
• Positive peace: A self-sustaining condition that protects the human security of a
population
o Not just physical security, but also psychological security → creating a place
where humans can thrive
, ➢ Post WWII, missing a part of intrastate
war
➢ A spike of civil war happening in the
1990s
➢ Also more recently, caused by Syria
➢ Non-state conflicts: conflict between
two non-state armed groups, it is not
one-sided as in civil war, where you
have the strong government
➢ There is a rise in these type of conflicts
➢ The more recent spike is because of IS
What doe 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
o Paradigms can obscure some
parts of the picture, and they can highlight other parts of the picture
• They contain assumptions about:
o The most important actors, as well as their behaviors and motivations
o What leads to war and violence
o What allows for peace and security
Paradigms and Approaches to Violence and Security
1. Approaches to interstate war
2. Approaches to intrastate war
Realism
Realists began to theorize by looking at WWII and the Cold War
• Actors: The state is the principal actor of international politics
• Nature of the State:
o The state is a unitary and rational actor seeking to maximize its own interests
o National security is a first order preference (i.e. it trumps all)
• For example: It doesn’t matter what is going on in a country, it doesn’t matter who is the
leader of a state → they will still have the same foreign policy approach → the state acts
as a unitary actor and acts according to its best interest, particularly in concern with its
national security
,Understanding of conflict/order:
• The international system is characterized by anarchy, which means that security is not
guaranteed.
o Anarchy: life without a government, in the absence of a sovereign there is no one
to enforce peace, the risk of war is always there, security is not guaranteed
o Kenneth Waltz (1954): “all states must constantly be ready either to counter force
with force or to pay the cost of weakness.”
• 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
Liberalism
• Actors: State and non-state actors are important
o E.g. Transnational advocacy networks (Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink 1998)
→ NGOs lobbied International Organizations (IO’s) and governments and this had
a significant impact on international politics
• Nature of the State: State preferences are an aggregate of preferences of a wide range of
state and societal actors.
o Bureaucracy, army, cabinet, political parties: outcome of state preferences is the
outcome of interaction between these different bodies within the state itself
o Example: the decision to go to war doesn’t have to be a rational decision of the
state
o Preferences not necessarily opposing
o 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: realized through for example free trade
agreements of the World Bank
2. International institutions: reduces costs for cooperation, more of this in the lecture on the
UN
3. Democratic institutions: the world would be much more peaceful if every country is
democracy, more on this in the lecture on democracy
Constructivism
• Actors: Actors and the interests that drive them are socially constructed
o States, like in realism, are not naturally occurring entities, but they are socially
constructed → because actors are socially constructed, so are their identities →
what there preferences are can change, and thus is not necessarily national security
, • 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.
How would realists explain the Russian state’s decision to invade Ukraine?
• Balance-off power: to create a greater state to be a bigger threat against NATO
• To protect national security
• Deterrence: mutually assured destruction
How would liberalists explain the Russian state’s decision to invade Ukraine?
• The invaders live in an autocratic system: so maybe the domestic actors have less of an
impact, there were significant protests happening in Russia against the war.
• Liberalists would say: let’s look at how the government is structured, and how does it
give power to certain parts of the leadership: like Putin. In what segments of
society/segments of leadership might be disempowered by that?
How would constructivists explain the Russian state’s decision to invade Ukraine?
• There is a sense of nationalism within Russia and their ideology shapes their
interests/preferences (the importance of ideas and values)
• There is a particular conception of Russia → this is our identity and this is what our
territory should look like → Putin’s understanding of what Russia and its borders should
look like is what drives his decision to go to war
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