Violence, Conflict & Development

3. Trends & Estimates

  What happened?
 Categorisation – what is a war?
 Measuring – deaths, length

 Presenting – trends, static

Knowing
 Why? – what does this info tell us
 Correlation
about
 Causation
war
 Other explanations

 who says….
 Researcher
Chooses to study conflict: observer
Uncertainty- willing to be surprised.
Chooses/changes political stance
Consideration of a variety of means of
addressing conflict
Knowing No necessary direct experience of violence
about
Violence analysed on a theoretical level
Deliberate inclusion of different sources of
information
war Rationality is paramount: used to analyse action
Ethical judgement challenged or suspended
Psychological judgement (madness) challenged
or suspended
Truth: possibility of multiple truths, relativism
and uncertainty
Agency and victimisation are two perspectives;
used to examine moral behaviour and
environment
Regards info and analysis as part of process
Reason to kill (personally): self defence
Important: originality, interest and analytical
contribution of research
Flies out afterwards
Combatant
Lives in conflict zone, choices restricted;
participant
Certainty- conviction (?? varying range of
psychological states)
Belief in the efficacy/ legitimacy of violence
Experience of violence on a number of levels
Violence exploited on a practical level
Constriction and selectivity of sources of
information
(Some sort of) justice is paramount: used to
justify actions. Religion may be important
Ethical judgement crucial
Psychological judgement crucial
Truth: unequivocal and unassailable
Strategic/ subconscious attribution of agency:
nothing bad in self, nothing good in other
Regards info and analysis as true or false
Reason to kill: retribution, fear, defence of self/
family, gain, &c &c
Important: survival/ strategy
Lives with consequences
 “The probability that any particular country is
The affected by conflict is lower than any time since the
Liberal early 1950s”
Peace (Journal of Peace Research, Sept 2004)

“the general magnitude of global warfare has

decreased by over fifty percent since peaking
in the mid-1980s, falling by the end of 2002
to its lowest level since the early 1960s”
(Peace and Conflict, 2003)
Trends in civil wars

Fukuyama: “The End of History and the

last man” 1992
– thesis that liberal democracy had won out against
all other ideologies
 
“What we are witnessing is not just the end of
the Cold War, or a passing of a particular
period of postwar history, but the end of history
as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s
ideological evolution and the universalization
of Western liberal democracy as the final form
of human government.”
Kaplan “Tyranny is nothing new in Sierra Leone or in
the rest of West Africa. But it is now part
: and parcel of an increasing lawlessness that
The is far more significant than any coup, rebel
Coming incursion, or episodic experiment in
democracy. Crime was what my friend--a
Anarchy top-ranking African official…--really
wanted to talk about. Crime is what makes
West Africa a natural point of departure for
my report on what the political character of
our planet is likely to be in the twenty-first
century.”
What was happening?

 What were political inclinations of

authors? – who were they trying to
convince and why?

 Was war changing (new wars thesis, no

war no peace)?

 Were they looking at different events or

different processes?
UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset v4-2009

http://www.prio.no/CSCW/Datasets/Armed-Conflict/UCDP-PRIO/
Categorising war
 Scale: how many people die? How do
they die? What proportion of the
population are they?

 Type: territorial, conquest, ethnic,

religious, genocide, resources,
ideological, historical reasons.

 Who it is between: intra-state, inter-

state, extra-systemic, regional,
international dimensions, societal
violence, infanticide
Documented civilian deaths from violence

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
Source: www.iraqbodycount.org
What do numbers reveal?

http://www.un.org/News/dh/sudan/com_inq_darfur.pdf
 Methodological problems in
studying violence
 Categorisation of phenomena
 Reliability of data collection
 Political aspirations of researcher
 Comparability over time
 Comparability with other contexts
 Post-WWII wars
 What do the graphs describe/show?
graphs  What do the graphs obscure/exclude?

 Compare the strengths and

weaknesses of the categorisation and
presentation
 Compare the contexts and
implications of the graphs
 What further data would you need to
confirm/refute your reading of the
graphs?
Trends in civil wars

minor

intermediate

war

Journal of Peace Research 5/2002

Trends in civil wars

http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/UCDP/graphs/type_reg.gif
Trends in civil wars

http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/UCDP/graphs/reg_year46.gif
Trends in civil wars

http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/UCDP/graphs/type_year.gif
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Digital-Library/Articles/Detail/?lng=en&id=156350
Trends in civil wars

World Bank 2003

International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO)
Centre for Systemic Peace
http://www.systemicpeace.org/CTfig03.htm
Centre for Systemic Peace
http://www.systemicpeace.org/CTfig03.htm
International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO)
Centre for Systemic Peace http://www.systemicpeace.org/conflict.htm