Root Causes: Breakdown of Societies

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Root Causes Breakdown of Societies
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Topics Last Week

• WHEN AND HOW TO INTERVENE? (SOVEREIGNTY IN
  INTRA-STATE CONFLICTS)
• CONTINUUM DEBATE LINKING RELIEF, REHABILITATION
  AND DEVELOPMENT
• DECLINING RESOURCES, DISPARITIES IN ALLOCATION
• MANAGEMENT
• INTER-ORGANIZATIONAL
• INTRA-ORGANIZATIONAL

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TOPICS

• Management of International Organizations (we
  didnt finish last week)
• Web resources BBs for this course
• Sources of Conflict
• Continuation of Conflict

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NOTE

• No mono-causal pathway exists (unique situations)
• Different levels of analysis (remember
• level mix, e.g.,
• individual
• (nation) state
• international system
• issue mix, and
• actor mix)
• Realist theories of state power are now less
  useful
• Societal level theories deserve more attention
  (historical, cultural, and so on)

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Sources of Conflict

• Structural Sources
• demise of empire
• failed states/weak states
• Social and Psychological Sources of Identity
• ethnicity
• religion
• Environmental sources
• Economic sources
• Military Technology
• Individuals?
• Development Cooperation

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Structural sources

• Collapsed empires (e.g., collapse of the Soviet
  Union end of the Cold War)
• divide and rule from before the collapse!
• demise of central power gt less restraint on
  rivalry
• split-up of territory (SU, Yugoslavia Africa)
• conflict over (arbitrarily drawn) borders
• role of ethnicity religion desire for
  self-determination
• new elites are not necessarily more democratic
  gt replicate old imperial order
• A need for new empires? Or UN as alternative?

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Structural sources

• Failed States (empirical statehood vs state
  sovereignty)
• non-democratic regimes
• fear of democratization by (corrupt) elites
• weak state, authoritarianism, and corruption
• state power as access to resources
• social exclusion structural violence
• breakdown of two state-monopolies
• monetary (tax, monetary system gt internal
  regulation)
• violence (policing internally, army externally)
• breakdown of civil society
• role of ethnicity religion desire for
  self-determination and/or participation

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Structural sources

• Failed States (empirical statehood vs state
  sovereignty)
• tension between human rights consolidation of
  state power?
• ill-conceived international support
• withdrawal of super power support
• Remember state-building is always slow through
  modern state, educational system, media (promote
  1 language homogeneous culture).
  Think of
  the Basks, Corsica, Quebec, Aborigines.

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Social and Psychological Sources of Identity

• Ethnicity
• ethnopolitical trend started in the 60s, became
  visible in the 90s
• Cultural identity is a cross-class/gender/age
  basis for mobilization. It is a cultural bond not
  an associational one.
• Redressing trauma or other grievances
• But ethnicity is malleable (clans in Somalia,
  rasta in the UK). Nations ethnic groups are
  also imagined communities not everybody knows
  each other directly!
• Ethnicity can lead to internal inclusion and
  external exclusion (the other)

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Social and Psychological Sources of Identity

• Religion
• Huntingtons Clash of Civilizations
• Double nature
• emphasis on love and tolerance
• absolute truths
• Roughly 4 different forms
• Violent intolerance (Ayodhya, kill the infidels)
• Civic intolerance (ballots instead of bullets,
  but not more freedom for religious minorities)

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Social and Psychological Sources of Identity

• Non-violent tolerance
• The Dalai Lama welcomes, rather than evades, his
  enemiesgrateful for the threat and conflict they
  represent because their presence provides the
  occasion to practice the self-restraint essential
  to final self conquest tolerance can be learned
  only from an enemy it cannot be learned from
  your guru.

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Social and Psychological Sources of Identity

• Non-violent tolerance (continuation)
• Violence is in reality not militant enough. It
  simply does not effectively protect or secure
  religious identity, but, on the contrary,
  destroys it.
• Civic tolerance
• Compromise of other three violence destroys
  religious identity, but force may be necessary to
  establish system of law and governance that
  protects religious freedom

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Environmental Sources

• Resource scarcity (and wealth at times!)
• fight for resources, such as oil, diamonds
  water
• environmental degradation
• deforestation
• rising sea levels
• desertification and drought
• decreasing biodiversity
• Population pressures
• Pollution

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Environmental Sources

• Coping mechanisms, like migration and
  urbanization, can spell misery, but do not
  necessarily lead to conflict
• hard to distinguish environmental and economic
  refugees
• help to victims
• individual suffering
• demise of native cultures (Amazon indians)

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Environmental Sources

• Evidence is inconclusive
• Threshold values slow onset. Hard to determine
  when problem is intense enough
• Problem in short- or long term
• People first use alternatives, such as migration,
  seasonal labor, or split up families inside and
  outside the refugee camp
• Closely related to economic factors
• The interaction with the socio-political system
  is crucial

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Economic Sources

• Asset transfer
• once asset transfer becomes systemic, it is
  possible to speak of the political economy of
  conflict
• Development cooperation humanitarian
  intervention often fail to address this asset
  transfer (winners losers). According to
  Duffield they (involuntarily) integrate into this
  political economy, e.g, through exchanging
  currency, local transactions, and diversion of
  food aid.

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Military Technology

• Chicken-and-egg affair what came first violent
  conflict or the use of arms?
• Pessimists all new weapons have been used sooner
  or later
• Optimists deterrence works
• However,
• if 5 of the population wants a war, there will
  be a war
• proliferation of cheap, small arms has fed cycles
  of conflict

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Military Technology

• However,
• landmines have long-lasting effects (also after
  peace accords
• terrorism is poor mans war
• Especially important is the breakdown of the
  monopoly of violence by state or colonial power
• if the environment is unstable history of
  conflict, then new weaponry can be a catalyst for
  war, but in system of peaceful dialogue fear of
  casualties, new weapons can prevent conflict

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Individual

• Two different types of theory
• Human nature instincts
• Homo homini lupus brings a need for a social
  contract
• Leadership
• age-old debate in history
• Hitler Germany?, Milosevic Serbia?
• An American President and the genocide on the
  native Americans?

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Development Cooperation

• Aiding Violence The Development Enterprise in
  Rwanda
• Development cooperation is a political act, it is
  not just a technocratic, value-free exercise!
• Insufficient understanding of local context
  (structural violence and corruption)
• Insufficient attention to the consequences of
  aid
• bad use of evaluation
• occupation of land
• forced cooperation

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Development Cooperation

• closing eyes for mounting societal problems
• negative consequences of structural adjustment
• non-democratic civil society
• inciting hate
• did not protest colonial legacy (difference
  between hutus and tutsis)
• own ineffectiveness contribution to societal
  problems

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Continuation of Conflict

• War economy
• top-down
• bottom-up
• role of international political economy
• Myths of struggle, warrior myths
• (Unresolved) Trauma
• Brain drain
• Capital flight
• Humanitarian Intervention

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Continuation of Conflict

• Conflict often means a continuation
  intensification of root causes
• States loose income sources, become weaker and
  cannot withstand warring factions or fulfil
  claims of the population, e.g., providing social
  services (and loose even more legitimacy)

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Conclusions

• Root causes always have political element. Try to
  break political down into components be specific
  about problems and their root causes
• They continue and intensify during civil conflict
• Under which conditions does conflict arise?
• Short-term and long-term differences
• Direct and indirect effects
• Possibility of alternative coping mechanisms
  capacities of the local population
• Interaction of several sources of conflict
• Quality of the socio-political system is crucial

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Conclusions

• Different Perspectives/value judgments on war and
  its root causes
• Cold War model with two opposing sides
• Chaos anarchy
• Wars negative consequences war is bad
• Understanding the war economy political context
  (war as an end in itself)
• There are even more sources of conflict than
  mentioned in this lecture
• More research is necessary, e.g., relationship
  between structural violence and social exclusion
• Root causes persist after peace agreement need
  to link relief and development in a politically
  informed manner!

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TOPICS

• Sources of Conflict
• Continuation of Conflict