Symbolic Politics or Rational Choice? Testing Theories of Extreme Ethnic Violence

Abstract

Rational choice theories claim that extreme ethnic violence (war and genocide) can be explained either as the result of information failures and commitment problems or as the utility-maximizing strategy of predatory elites. Symbolic politics theory asserts that such violence is driven by hostile ethnic myths and an emotionally driven symbolic politics based on those myths that popularizes predatory policies. Tests of these models in the cases of Sudan's civil war and Rwanda's genocide show that the rationalist models are incorrect: neither case can be understood as resulting from information failures, commitment problems, or rational power-conserving elite strategies. Rather, in both cases ethnic mythologies and fears made predatory policies so popular that leaders had little choice but to embrace them by playing up associated ethnic symbols, even though these policies led to the leaders' downfalls. Ethnic security dilemmas in such cases are driven not by uncertainty but by predatory leaders engaged in symbolic politics.

Peace building after Civil War: A Critical Survey of the Literature and Avenues for Future Research

“…A large number of studies since the 1990s have argued that ethnic based civil wars are more difficult to resolve than others and thus more likely to lead to post-conflict relapse (Sambanis, 2001;Ross, 2000;Kaufman, 2001Kaufman, , 2006Horowitz, 1985). Here, the central claim is that because ethnicity is a major determinant of a group's security, status, material well-being and access to political power (Ostby, 2013), it is likely to have identifiable characteristics that allow outsiders to be excluded from public goods and a mobilising agent that can lead to political violence (Fearon and Laitin, 1996;Edward Miguel and Mary Kay Gugerty, 2005;Miguel and Blattman, 2010).…”

Why do conflicts over scarce renewable resources turn violent? A qualitative comparative analysis

“…The importance of collective identities for the use of violence by conflict parties (Frö hlich, 2012;Kaufman, 2006) as well as the stability of such identities over time (Jabri, 1996) is well known. Identities can be understood as collective social constructs which define who are the members of a given social group, what attributes and goals they share, and how they relate to other groups (Abdelal et al, 2006).…”

“…But it has been shown that the construction of another group (a) as an aggressor or existential threat to the Self and/or (b) as much lower in value/legitimacy than the Self usually provides motivation and legitimacy for the use of violence in intergroup conflicts (e.g. Bar-Tal, 1998;Buzan et al, 1998;Kaufman, 2006). When conditions of resource scarcity and perceived aggressive intentions by other groups combine, they potentially produce a strong climate of insecurity in which preliminary attacks to capture resources or weaken the opponent are likely to happen (Kahl, 2006: 46f;Scheffran et al, 2014).…”

L’historiographie québécoise et le terrorisme : une historicité à définir pour un objet encore fuyant

“…Pas de trace des nombreuses grilles d'analyses proposées en études de sécurité pour comprendre la radicalisation des acteurs qui conduit au déclenchement des conflits civils et du terrorisme, par exemple du greed and grievance avancé par Paul Collier et Anke Hoeffler (2004). En outre, il n'y a pas de trace du lexique employé pour décrire les différents aspects de la contention, comme les catégories de l'ethnonationalisme ou l'ethnoséparatisme (Brubaker, 2002 ;Kaufmann, 2005 ;Kaufman, 2006) D'autre part, il n'y a que peu de traces de l'influence qu'auraient pu exercer leurs collègues historiens de l'étranger qui se sont appliqués à faire l'exposé des principaux moments du terrorisme contemporain à partir de ses origines jusqu'à nos jours. À cet égard, une des théories diachroniques les plus influentes est celle des « vagues du terrorisme » développée par l'historien culturaliste David Rapoport (2004) qui suggère que le terrorisme contemporain connaît des vagues qui se succèdent à un rythme variable et qui se distinguent les unes des autres sur la base de la récurrence de caractéristiques spécifiques.…”