Why We Kill: The Political Science of Political Violence against Civilians

Abstract

This article reviews the political science literature on political violence against civilians, including genocide, mass killing, and terrorism. Early work on these subjects tended to portray this kind of violence as irrational, random, or the result of ancient hatreds between ethnic groups. Most scholars studying political violence today, however, understand it to be primarily, if not exclusively, instrumental and orchestrated by powerful actors seeking to achieve tangible political or military objectives. Scholars continue to disagree, however, about the specific motives that drive belligerents to target civilians or the conditions under which large-scale violence against civilians is most likely.

What Drives State-Sponsored Violence?: Evidence from Extreme Bounds Analysis and Ensemble Learning Models

“…Second, the post-Cold War years are correlated with lower levels of government violence. Indeed, this finding is in line with several studies that point to a general decline in violence over the last decades, including riots, civil wars, and urban crime (Pinker 2011;Straus 2012b;Valentino 2014). The third robust variable is the squared term of the Polity IV political regime index.…”

Dynamics and Logics of Civil War

“…Based on this definition, it is clear that civil war needs to be distinguished from civilian victimization, such as terrorism, state terror, mass killings, and genocide, although these types of political violence may occur during civil wars (Valentino 2014). Furthermore, "non-state violence," such as riots and communal violence have to be excluded from the definition since in such cases the state does not participate directly in combat.…”

Chronicle of a Survival Foretold: How Protest Behavior Against Armed Actors Influenced Violence in the Colombian Civil War, 1988–2005

“…Repression helps them to quickly amass large amounts of resources and cuts off funding siphoned toward the opposition. Using violence, intimidation, and other fear-inducing strategies, combatants punish those who support the enemy, sever their loyalty to the other side, and tilt the balance of power in their own favor (Ron 2001;Azam and Hoeffler 2002;Metelits 2010;Valentino 2014).…”