Summary IRO Bachelor Project #113: Civil Wars in Theory and Practice (J. Schulhofer-Wohl) Notes on *SOME* Readings
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IRO Bachelor Project #113 (6443HBPY)
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Universiteit Leiden (UL)
Summary of *SOME* the reading materials for the IRO Bachelor Project #113 (Semester II, 2024): Civil Wars in Theory and Practice (J. Schulhofer-Wohl). INCLUDES notes from (Total: 29 pages):
Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl’s review essay (2018) “Syria, Productive Antinomy, and the Study of Civil War”...
Summary of *SOME* the reading materials for the IRO Bachelor Project (Semester II, 2024) - 113:
Civil Wars in Theory and Practice (J. Schulhofer-Wohl). INCLUDES notes from (Total: 10 pages):
● Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl’s review essay (2018) “Syria, Productive Antinomy, and the Study of
Civil War”, pp. 1085-1091.
● Nicholas Sambanis’ article (2004) “What is Civil War? Conceptual and Empirical Complexities
of an Operational Definition”, pp. 814-858.
● Stathis N. Kalyvas’s book (2012) “The Logic of Violence in Civil War”, Chapter “1. Concepts”
(pp. 16-31).
● George Modelski’s chapter (1964) “Chapter 2: The International Relations of Internal War”
(pp. 14-44) in James N. Rosenau’s book (1964) “International Aspects of Civil Strife”.
● Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl’s book (2019) “Quagmire in Civil War”, chapter 1 (pp. 1-26).
● Stathis N. Kalyvas’ book (2006) “The Logical of Violence in Civil War”, chapters 6 (pp.
146-172) and 7 (pp. 173-209).
IRO Bachelor Project - 113: Civil Wars in Theory and Practice (J.
Schulhofer-Wohl) Notes on *SOME* Readings
Table of Contents
Schulhofer-Wohl’s Review Essay: “Syria, Productive Antinomy, and the Study of Civil War”1
“What is Civil War? Conceptual and Empirical Complexities of an Operational Definition” 2
“The Logic of Violence in Civil War” 6
1. Concepts 6
“International Aspects of Civil Strife” 10
Chapter 2: The International Relations of Internal War 10
“Quagmire in Civil War” 15
1. Introduction 15
“The Logical of Violence in Civil War” 19
6. A Logic of Indiscriminate Violence 19
7. A Logic of Indiscriminate Violence 23
, 1
Schulhofer-Wohl’s Review Essay: “Syria, Productive Antinomy, and
the Study of Civil War”
Model of “mobilization through deliberation” = 3 factors enabling enabled the mass protests in the
Syrian Civil War:
1. The opportunity that the “Arab Spring” context afforded Syrians to discuss & generate
meaning surrounding anticipated anti-regime actions.
2. The narrowing effect of regime repression on protestors’ options, paradoxically reinforced
continued participation.
3. The ability to coordinate using varied modes of communication:
● The Internet.
● Strong face-to-face ties facilitated by imprisonment or shared participation in risky
protest activity).
Civil War (Baczko, Dorronsoro & Quesnay): “the coexistence on the same national territory of
competing social orders engaged in a violent relationship.”
➔ NOT inherently problematic, HOWEVER, it:
◆ Is unclear whether the authors’ definition provides additional analytic traction.
◆ Introduces the danger that studies based on it will discuss past research following
the standard paradigm.
, 2
“What is Civil War? Conceptual and Empirical Complexities of an
Operational Definition”
The empirical literature on civil war has seen tremendous growth because of the compiled data
sets, BUT there is NO consensus on its measurement.
FINDINGS = it is NOT possible to arrive at an operational definition of civil war, without adopting
some ad hoc way of distinguishing it from other forms of armed conflict.
How would we know a civil war if we saw one?
Civil War (Small & Singer): Any armed conflict that involves (a) military action internal to the
metropole; (b) the active participation of the national government & (c) the effective resistance by
both sides.
➔ The main distinction drawn between civil (internal or intrastate) war & interstate or
extrastate (colonial & imperial) war was the:
◆ Internality of the war to the territory of a sovereign state.
◆ Participation of the government as a combatant.
◆ Requirement that state violence in a civil war should be sustained & reciprocated,
exceeding a certain death threshold (typically 1,000+).
➔ Existing coding rules used to measure civil war are somewhat ad hoc & that the problem is
often exacerbated by the low quality of data on deaths due to armed conflict.
FINDINGS = it is difficult to develop an operational definition of civil war without adopting some ad
hoc coding rules to distinguish them from other forms of political violence. This because:
1. It is difficult to distinguish extrastate from intrastate wars.
2. It is unclear what degree of organisation is required of the parties to distinguish a civil war
from one-sided, state-sponsored violence.
3. If focusing on a numerical threshold of deaths to identify wars, how do we deal with the
problem of unreliable reporting & incomplete data?
4. Given that violence during civil war is typically intermittent, how do we determine when an
old war stops & a new one starts?
Another source of conceptual confusion is the lack of clarity on the death threshold used to
distinguish civil war from other violence. This cumulative death criterion introduces some problems:
1. It is harder to know when to code the war’s start & end.
➔ Coding the 1st year the killing begins, makes studying the violence escalation
difficult, as outbreaks of minor violence will be subsumed in the period of “civil
war”.
➔ Coding the war’s end when violence drops below 1,000 deaths creates the opposite
problem → coding too many war starts in what is essentially the same conflict (if
violence levels fluctuate widely).
➔ Potential solution = stop trying to code & analyse civil war as a distinct phenomenon
& instead, code levels of violence along a continuum.
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