Notes de cours
MIDTERM NOTES Violence and Security: Paradigms and debate
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Extensive notes from all classes until the midterm for violence and security. Includes partial readings notes.
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05/04/23 IntroductionReadings Notes
Pettersson (2021): Organized violence 1989-2020, with a special emphasis on Syria
● This article reports on the trends in organized violence based on the UCDP data.
There has been an increase in fatalities stemming from organized violence,
COVID-19 did not lead to the desired ceasefire. Non-State conflict (fighting between
non-state groups) also increased compared to 2019. There have been 56
state-based conflicts including 8 wars. Most conflicts took place in Africa.
Lecture notes
Focus on the causes of war and peace
Conceptualizing violence
Johan Galtung (1969): 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
○ Intent: you can foreseeably see these actions causing harm, and carrying
them out is a deliberate choice. Consequently, accidents are not necessarily
direct violence
● 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, i.e. the threat of hurt, it does not have to be
physical and it can also be about systemic conditions of human life.
Course focus is on direct violence, in particular political violence.
Political violence occurs in wartime (conflicts where there are 1000+ battle-related deaths
in a given year) and in times of “peace” (i.e. electoral violence, ethnic riots)
Conceptualizing Peace
Johan Galtung (1969, “father” of peace studies) typology of peace:
● Negative peace: the absence of direct violence
● Positive peace: a self-sustaining condition that protects the human security of a
population
What do we mean by “paradigms”?
Idea comes from Thomas Kuhn (1962)
Paradigms or theoretical frameworks: lenses through which see the world
They contain assumptions about:
● The most important actors + 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
2. Approaches to INTRAstate conflict
,Realism
Originated after the 2 world wars and especially the cold war
Actors: the state is the principal actor of international politics
Nature of the state:
● A unitary and rational actor seeking to maximize its own interest
● National security is a first order preference (trumps all, comes always first)
○ Consequently, domestic security is akin to a black box. What happens is not
relevant nor discussed.
Realist understanding of conflict/order:
● The international system is characterized by anarchy, which means that security is
not guaranteed
● Power (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 (what makes war more likely and what makes peace more likely?)
Liberalism
Actors: state and non-state actors are important (I.E. Transnational advocacy networks)
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 is not always the most important consideration
Liberal understanding of conflict/order: conflict is not inevitable, cooperation and mutual
gains are possible
Order is possible through:
1. Economic interdependence and free trade (trade generates economic
interdependence which in turn causes peace because of the interplay of interests,
This belief dates back to Adam Smith)
2. International institutions (Facilitate information sharing and transparency)
3. Democratic institutions
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 context of identities and interests,
which is why norms are so important to social constructivism
Groups as socially constructed and groups are not unitary actors
Violence as a means of delineating and asserting group boundaries
Instrumentalism
Elites as the primary explanatory variable for the presence or absence of conflict
Assumptions of instrumentalism:
● Elites seek to maximize political power and other material gains and will foment
violence to meet their interests
, Institutionalism
Institutionalism is an approach that seeks to understand how political struggles are mediated
by the institutional setting in which they take place
Recent trends in violence and security (UCDP)
For most of the 20th century, civil wars were the dominant conflict, with a spike in the 1990s
and more recently Syria. War is comparatively quite rare and only recently we have seen
more intrastate war (Russia-Ukraine)
Non-State actors in war and their role: conflicts that involve armed groups that are not
states. Of course this applies because the predominant form of conflict is civil war,
consequently they are the most prominent groups.
The geographical distribution focuses on the middle east .central africa, south east asia and
latin america (2021, so not updated to the russian conflict)
06/04/2023 Violence and State Formation
Reading Notes
Tilly (1985): War making and State Making as Organized Crime
● War making and State making are quintessential protection rackets with “the
advantage of legitimacy”: they are the largest example of organized crime. This
needs to be understood as an analogy, rather than an accusation of all statesmen as
murderers or thieves.
● The paper focuses on the European Experience and opposes other alternative
interpretations of state formation such as social contract, open markets, or ideology
● Someone who produces both the danger and (at a price) the shield against it is a
RACKETEER. Someone who creates a threat and then charges for its reduction.
Governments continuously fabricate, simulate or stimulate, threats of external war.
The real threat to the livelihoods of the citizens is only the government’s repressive
and extractive (taxation) activities. The only difference between them and racketeers
is the sanctity of governments.
● The authority of racketeer governments stems from the monopoly of violence (both
narrowly and broadly understood). This makes the government’s claim of providing
protection more credible and more difficult to resist. This does NOT mean that
governmental authority relies only on the threat of violence, nor is the government’s
only service protection.
● Argument summary: coercive exploitation played a large part in the creation of
European states. Popular resistance to coercive exploitation forced power-holders to
concede protection and constraints on their own action. Power holders pursuing war
made them involved in the extraction of resources for war making from the
populations over which they had control, and involved in the promotion of capital
accumulation by those who could help them borrow and buy (capitalist class). Power
holders did not intend to create national states (centralized, differentiated,
autonomous, extensive political organizations) nor did they foresee that their actions
(war making, extraction, capital accumulation) would generate such entities.
○ Power holders (those with violence) care more about other power-holders
(also called authorities) than those over whom authority is exercised.
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