Violence and Security: Paradigms and Debates (73220041FY)
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Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
This is a summary that can be used to study for both the midterm and final exams of Violence and Security: Paradigms and Debates.
It contains lecture notes, as well as notes for each reading which are mostly organised according to the readings questions asked by the professor.
Violence and Security: Paradigms and Debates (73220041FY)
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LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION
LECTURE NOTES:
Conceptualising violence and peace
Johan Galtung (1969): 2 types of violence
• Direct violence: Behaviour carried out by a clearly identifiable agent with the intent
to inflict bodily harm
o Perpetrator
o Role of intent
• Structural violence: Violence as present when humans systematically canot fulfil
their physical and mental potential. Violence does not require intent and does not
require a clear agent.
Political violence occurs in wartime and in times of peace (ethnic riots, electoral violence).
Galtung conceptualises peace as:
• Negative peace = absence of direct violence
• Positive peace: a self-sustaining condition that protects the human security of a
population.
o Physical and psychological security
Rise Civil wars in post ww2 era.
What do we mean by paradigms?
= lenses through which we see the world.
They contain assumptions about:
• The most important actors, as well as their behaviours and motivations.
• What leads to war and violence.
• What allows for peace and security.
Realism:
• Actors: the state is the principal actors of international politics
• Nature of the state:
o The state is a unitary and rational actor seeking to maximise its own interests.
o National security is a first order preference.
• Understanding of conflict/order:
o The international system is characterised by anarchy, which means that
security is not guaranteed.
o Power (material capabilities) is a central concern to realism, because it is key
to security.
, o 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 Transnational advocacy networks.
• Nature of the state: state preferences are an aggregate of preferences of a wide
range of state and societal actors.
o Preferences not necessarily opposing.
o National security is not always the most important consideration.
• Understanding of conflict/order:
o Conflict is not inevitable, cooperation ad mutual gain are possible.
o Order is possible through:
▪ Economic interdependence and free trade
▪ International institutions
▪ Democratic institutions
Constructivism
• Actors: Actors and the interests that drive them are socially constructed.
• Assumptions about agent behavior:
o Political action is shaped by identities and interests.
o Who the actor is shapes what they view as appropriate action
o Conflict and peace are therefore shaped by the content 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/absence of conflict.
• Assumptions to instrumentalism:
o Elites seek to maximise political power and other material gains and will
foment violence to meet their interests
Institutionalism
• Institutionalism is an approach seeks to understand how political struggles are
mediated by the institutional setting in which they take place.
, LECTURE 2: VIOLENCE AND STATE FORMATION
LECTURE NOTES:
The strength of the state matters when it comes to security
• People who live in strong states are less likely to go to war → states can actually
implement institutions and redistribute allocations and resources.
What is the relationship between violence and state formation?
Does war make strong states?
Key concepts
State: the organisation that has a monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force within
a given territory in the enforcement of its order (Weber): state uses coercion and force of
the threat to develop.
• Tilly: organised crime.
State formation: the long-term processes leading to the centralisation of political power
within a sovereign territory.
State capacity: the ability of states to accomplish their goals.
• Often measured by a states’ military power and its bureaucratic/administrative
capacity.
• Ability to collect taxes = crucial indicator of state capacity/strength
TILLY
Bellicist approach to state formation: “War made the state and the state made war” - Tilly.
War/interest in wars produces states with stronger military and strong institutional capacity
to extract from society.
States go to war to accomplish whatever claim (check the power of rivals, for resources etc).
• War is expensive → figure out a way to pay → bigger extraction from their citizens
(difficult).
• So increased bureaucratic capacity = ability to bring a strong state = the security
apparatus is getting stronger = increase in military capacities.
War ——> Strong state.
European state formation tends to be the norm.
STUBBS 1999
The Cold War context helped several Asian states build their military and bureaucratic
capacity.
• There was a historical foundation for these states’ strength.
However, US aid was key.
, War had an important role in understanding the increase in capacity over this period.
• The threat of war was crucial for the development of strong states in East Asia.
• Created states able to exercise their will over society.
⇒ NE Asia was weaker (compared to European states) but still strong vis-a-vis societies (civil
conflicts).
Role of US makes a difference when it comes to state formation in East Asia.
• Was pouring a lot of money and military aid into these states.
• Support of an external actor supported the strengthening of military, institutions and
bureaucratic capacities.
CENTENO 2002
War in Latin America did not lead to state building.
No incentive for governments to extract (tax more) from the population:
• Other revenue sources. But also right for East Asia, no real difference.
• Scale of war was not “total” ⇒ says that it’s not just war that makes states, but rather
the threat of total war.
The Spanish colonial state meant that the bureaucratic apparatus was very weak.
Alternative explanations to state formation
Trade/capitalism makes states, not war. Economic changes (end of the feudal period) led to
the emergence of states. New economic class that required institutions.
The state is less predatory => more of an agreement between the ruler and subjects.
The modern state originates in ideological change.
Ideas about people/individuals shifted on a collective level ⇒ changes the relationship with
the ruler and allows for different ideas about possible political organisations.
Intrastate conflict and state formation
Are the impacts of intrastate war on state capacity similar to the effects of interstate war?
⇒ Less of a consensus!
Under some circumstances, even internal war can strengthen the state, but it can also weak
formal taxation and therefore weaken the state.
Malaysia and Singapour
• The Malayan Emergency: when Singapour and Malaysia were still one political entity.
guerilla between the armed forces of the Malay Communist Party, and the British
colonial forces.
• Internal conflict strengthened the state.
Can also weaken the state: Guatemalan Civil War
• Government fighting leftist groups.
• Civil war weakened states because made it more likely for elites to undermine pre-
existing states’ constitutions for the sake of security. Civil war weakened the
extractive capacity of the Guatemalans (Schwartz 2020).
o More room for ambiguity in institutions ⇒ emergence of illicit activities and
the undermining of control over these activities.
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