This is a rare edited volume: thematically coherent and actually worth buying. Its goal is to explain when and where violence breaks out, the mechanisms driving violence, and the consequences of different forms of violence (and nonviolence). Erica Chenoweth and Adria Lawrence's excellent Introduction lays out a “balance of power approach” (p. 14) to violence, which de-emphasizes group-level attributes like ethnic identity in favor of a focus on the fluid, complex calculations of political actors amid uncertainty. Violence does not emerge seamlessly from political conflict, but instead from shifts in the balance of power and interests between contending forces. Moreover, some types of violence and indeed nonviolence may be more effective at shifting this balance than others.
Although it is impossible to do justice to the individual essays, here I outline the core argument of each chapter and then reflect on the research agenda that Rethinking Violence represents.
The volume is divided into two parts—the first on the use of state violence and the second on the use of nonstate violence and nonviolence. Part I, on the state, emphasizes how shifts in the international system can trigger different state policies toward internal minorities. Harris Mylonas shows how alliance relationships between states shape the ways that central governments approach their minority populations. His chapter moves beyond the “violence/no violence” binary by exploring policies of assimilation and accommodation, in addition to exclusion (p. 87). Zeynep Bulutgil suggests that shifts in the sponsorship of internal minorities by external states can impel more radical policies among both minorities and the state, explaining variation over time that is unaccounted for by a focus on structural, group-level variables like nationalist identity (pp. 59–60). Erin Jenne's chapter critically assesses the claim that population exchanges underpin peace by examining the exchanges in the Balkans. She argues that state geopolitical interests shaped the endurance and breakdown of political relations, not local security dilemmas (p. 120).
Bulutgil, Jenne, and Mylonas all use the historical record of Central and Eastern Europe as a comparative laboratory for tracing out the roots of violence, and they agree on the importance of interstate relations in shaping intrastate conflicts. They would all benefit from a richer conception of “the state” because state apparatuses tend to be characterized by internal divisions and cleavages that may affect how they perceive both their interests and their minorities. These authors' claims about geopolitics are also embedded in assumptions about the mobilization of identity and violence in a very specific context. How well these arguments travel across time and space is difficult to assess, given this particular regional-temporal focus.
Part II involves a noticeable shift in emphasis as the volume shifts to nonstate violence. Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham and Emily Beaulieu use quantitative events data from Western Europe and a case study of Northern Ireland to explore how inconsistencies in state repression can muddle the normal substitution of violent for nonviolent tactics (and vice versa) that activists would otherwise pursue, and indeed increase the likelihood of violence (p. 194). This chapter raises interesting questions, even if the causal mechanisms underlying the bias toward greater violence are unclear. Wendy Pearlman's chapter delves inside the political life of an insurgent movement, revealing how fissures and divisions within the Palestinian community during the British Mandate led to suboptimal outcomes; as she plausibly argues, “we must also rethink the nature of the agents” (p. 198).
In Kristin Bakke's chapter, we are shown how the political links between central governments and regional actors can shape when and how separatist violence arises with illustrations from the Indian Punjab and Chechnya. Bakke's account is more political than many theories of civil war onset, though its complexities can become somewhat daunting. The argument advanced by Lawrence is that violence is not simply a natural extension of nationalist politics, but instead may have distinctive origins and dynamics. Using cases from the French Empire, she critiques existing conventional wisdoms. She then points to her other research to explain when violence breaks out. The chapter is a useful corrective but can feel more like a preview than a self-contained answer (p. 170).
The chapters by Alexander Downes and Kathryn McNabb Cochran and by Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, though in different parts of the volume, share a focus on the consequences of violence and nonviolence rather, than its causes. Downes and Cochran explore whether targeting civilians in war pays for states. They find that, on average, civilian victimization has contributed to military victory but crucially note that this effect has declined over time and that in a number of cases, the correlation is not actually causal (p. 47). Chenoweth and Stephan trace out a set of theoretical hypotheses that identify mechanisms through which nonviolence can be more effective than violence in coercing changes from states. This is a valuably provocative pair of essays, though that of Chenoweth and Stephan leaves the reader wanting more research.
This excellent edited volume is state of the art in the field, making it useful as an opportunity to reflect on the broader research agenda represented by the book. There are three issues that echo broader challenges facing the civil war subfield.
First, there is a tension in the book between the macro-level world of state elites and geopolitics (Part I) and the micro-level realm of local conflicts and nonstate calculations (Part II). It is clear that both local- and elite-level dynamics are important in civil conflicts, but this is now the accepted conventional wisdom rather than a new insight. The next task is to persuasively integrate these distinct but overlapping spheres of mobilization and violence. Finding ways of bridging the local and the national, the masses and the elites, remains a goal that has not yet been achieved.
Second, the editors focus on explaining the same set of dependent variables—patterns of violence and conflict outcomes—as in most of the recent research on civil war. These are obviously important, but building new concepts and identifying novel outcomes of interest is critical for the field to move forward. The book does not deal much, for instance, with how violence is linked to the institutions and bargains that underpin authority in areas of conflict or with the consequences of violence beyond victory and defeat. The field needs to seek out innovative new questions, in addition to refining our understanding of existing puzzles.
Finally, the emergence of a mature civil-conflict subfield should not lead to intellectual self-encapsulation. The footnotes might lead an observer to believe that the serious literature on civil conflict began only in the early 2000s. Older research on internal conflict has many flaws, but also enduringly powerful arguments that deserve closer attention. Moreover, rich, relevant literatures on state formation, institutions, social mobilization, militaries, and resource extraction in other subfields and disciplines should be better incorporated into research on civil war.
Despite these cautions, Rethinking Violence outlines an ambitious research agenda, one that scholars should use to explore even newer terrain in creative ways.
