Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-7g5wt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-15T14:00:53.265Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

International System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2010

STATHIS N. KALYVAS  and
LAIA BALCELLS
STATHIS N. KALYVAS*
Affiliation:
Yale University
LAIA BALCELLS*
Affiliation:
Institute for Economic Analysis, CSIC
*
Stathis N. Kalyvas is Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science, Yale University, 201 Rosenkranz Hall, 115 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06520-8301 ([email protected]).
Laia Balcells is Researcher, Institute for Economic Analysis, Spanish Higher Council for Scientific Research, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain ([email protected]).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Because they are chiefly domestic conflicts, civil wars have been studied primarily from a perspective stressing domestic factors. We ask, instead, whether (and how) the international system shapes civil wars; we find that it does shape the way in which they are fought—their “technology of rebellion.” After disaggregating civil wars into irregular wars (or insurgencies), conventional wars, and symmetric nonconventional wars, we report a striking decline of irregular wars following the end of the Cold War, a remarkable transformation of internal conflict. Our analysis brings the international system back into the study of internal conflict. It specifies the connection between system polarity and the Cold War on the one hand and domestic warfare on the other hand. It also demonstrates that irregular war is not the paradigmatic mode of civil war as widely believed, but rather is closely associated with the structural characteristics of the Cold War.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 104 , Issue 3 , August 2010 , pp. 415 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Andrew, Christopher, and Mitrokhin, Vassili. 2005. The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Arreguín-Toft, Ivan. 2005. How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayres, R. William. 2000. “A World Flying Apart? Violent Nationalist Conflict and the End of the Cold War.” Journal of Peace Research 37 (1): 105–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balcells, Laia. 2010. Behind the Frontlines: Identity, Competition, and Violence in Civil Wars. Ph.D. diss. Yale University.Google Scholar
Beckett, Ian F. W. 2001. Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies: Guerrillas and Their Opponents since 1750. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berschinski, Robert, Bradley, Josh, Frick, John, and Groves, Bryan. 2007. “Back from Battle: Student Veterans’ Perspectives on the Iraq War.” Yale Journal of International Affairs 2 (2): 134–42.Google Scholar
Brown, Michael E. 1996. “Introduction.” In The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict, ed. Brown, Michael E.. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1–31.Google Scholar
Buhaug, Halvard, and Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede. 2008. “Contagion or Confusion? Why Conflicts Cluster in Space.” International Studies Quarterly 52 (2): 215–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byman, Daniel, Chalk, Peter, Hoffman, Bruce, Rosenau, William, and Brannan, David. 2001. Trends in Outside Support for Insurgent Movements. Santa Monica, CA: Rand.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castañeda, Jorge. 1993. Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Chernick, Marc W. 1996. “Peacemaking and Violence in Latin America.” In The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict, ed. Brown, Michael E.. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 267–307.Google Scholar
Chester, Crocker A. 1992. High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Clapham, Christopher S. 1996. Africa and the International System: The Politics of State Survival. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, Paul. 2007. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Collier, Paul, Elliott, V. L., Hegre, Havard, Hoeffler, Anke, Reynal-Querol, Marta, and Sambanis, Nicholas. 2003. Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy. Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Collier, Paul, and Hoeffler, Anke. 2004. “Greed and Grievance in Civil War.” Oxford Economic Papers 56 (4): 563–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dzhirkvelov, Ilya. 1989. “Political and Psychological Operations in the Soviet Promotion of National Liberation Movements.” In Guerrilla Warfare and Counterinsurgency: U.S.–Soviet Policy in the Third World, eds. Shultz, Richard H. Jr., Pfaltzgraff, Robert L. Jr., Ra'anan, Uri, Olson, William J., and Lukes, Igor. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 269–75.Google Scholar
Earle, Timothy. 1997. How Chiefs Come to Power: The Political Economy in Prehistory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eck, Kristine. 2010. Raising Rebels: Participation and Recruitment in Civil War. Ph.D. diss. Uppsala University.Google Scholar
Ellingsen, Tanja. 2000. “Colorful Community or Ethnic Witches’ Brew? Multiethnicity and Domestic Conflict during and after the Cold War.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 44 (2): 228–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evangelista, Matthew. 1996. “Historical Legacies and the Politics of Intervention in the Former Soviet Union.” In The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict, ed. Brown, Michael E.. Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press, 107–40.Google Scholar
Fearon, James. 2004. “Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer Than Others?” Journal of Peace Research 41 (3): 275–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fearon, James, and Laitin, David. 2003. “Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War.” American Political Science Review 97 (1): 75–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Findlay, Trevor. 1996. “Turning the Corner in Southeast Asia.” In The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict, ed. Brown, Michael E.. Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press, 173–204.Google Scholar
Gaddis, John Lewis. 1997. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Galula, David. 1964. Counterinsurgency Warfare; Theory and Practice. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Goldgeier, James M., and McFaul, Michael. 1992. “A Tale of Two Worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post−Cold War Era.” International Organization 46 (2): 467–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutiérrez Sanín, Francisco. 2004. “Criminal Rebels? A Discussion of Civil War and Criminality from the Colombian Experience.” Politics & Society 32 (2): 257–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hale, William, and Kienle, Eberhard. 1997. “Introduction.” In After the Cold War: Security and Democracy in Africa and Asia, eds. Hale, William and Kienle, Eberhard. London: I.B.Tauris, 1–12.Google Scholar
Harbom, Lotta, and Wallensteen, Peter. 2009. Armed Conflicts, 1946–2008. Journal of Peace Research 46 (4): 577–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harkavy, Robert E., and Neuman, Stephanie G.. 2001. Warfare and the Third World. New York: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hegre, Havard, Ellingsen, Tanja, Gates, Scott, and Gleditsch, Nils P.. 2001. “Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816–1992.” American Political Science Review 95 (1): 33–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hegre, Havard, and Sambanis, Nicholas. 2006. “Sensitivity Analysis of Empirical Results on Civil War Onset.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50 (4): 508–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herbst, Jeffrey. 2000. States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Herbst, Jeffrey. 2004. “African Militaries and Rebellion: The Political Economy of Threat and Combat Effectiveness.” Journal of Peace Research 41 (3): 357–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heston, Alan, Summers, Robert, and Aten, Bettina. 2006. Penn World Table Version 6.2. Center for International Comparisons of Production, Income and Prices at the University of Pennsylvania (CICUP). September 2006. http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu (Accessed July 19, 2010).Google Scholar
Hironaka, Ann. 2005. Neverending Wars: The International Community, Weak States, and the Perpetuation of Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hirshleifer, Jack. 2001. The Dark Side of the Force: Economic Foundations of Conflict Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric. 1996. The Age of the Extremes: A History of the Third World, 1914–1991. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Human Security Centre, The University of British Columbia, Canada. 2005. Human Security Report 2005: War and Peace in the 21st Century. New York: Oxford University Press. www.humansecurityreport.info (Accessed July 19, 2010).Google Scholar
Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. “If Not Civilizations, What? Paradigms of the Post–Cold War World.” Foreign Affairs 72 (5): 186–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jervis, Robert. 1994. “Leadership, Post−Cold War Politics, and Psychology.” Political Psychology 15 (4): 769–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jung, Dietrich, Schlichte, Klaus, and Seigelberg, Jens. 2000. “Afterword: Warfare in 1995.” In Warfare since the Second World War, eds. Gantzel, Klaus Jürgen and Schwinghammer, Torsten. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 169–79.Google Scholar
Kaldor, Mary. 1999. New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2005. “Warfare in Civil Wars.” In Rethinking the Nature of War, eds. Duyvesteyn, Isabelle and Angstrom, Jan. Abingdon: Frank Cass, 88–108.Google Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis N., and Balcells, Laia. 2009. “Consequences of Warfare in Civil Wars: An Empirical Analysis.” Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Toronto.Google Scholar
Kanet, Roger E. 2006. “The Superpower Quest for Empire: The Cold War and Soviet Support for ‘Wars of National Liberation’.” Cold War History 6 (3): 331–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, Robert D. 1994. “The Coming Anarchy: How Scarcity, Crime, Overpopulation, and Disease Are Rapidly Destroying the Social Fabric of Our Planet.” Atlantic Monthly 273 (2): 44–76.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, Chaim. 1996. “Intervention in Ethnic and Ideological Civil Wars: Why One Can Be Done and the Other Can't.” Security Studies 6 (1): 62–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirkpatrick, Jeanne. 1989. “Protracted Conflict and U.S. Policy.” In Guerrilla Warfare and Counterinsurgency.U.S.–Soviet Policy in the Third World, eds. Shultz, Richard H. Jr., Pfaltzgraff, Robert L. Jr., Ra'anan, Uri, Olson, William J., and Lukes, Igor. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 5–11.Google Scholar
Laidi, Zaki. 1994. “Rethinking Post−Cold War.” Economic and Political Weekly 29 (32): 2067–69.Google Scholar
Lake, David A., and Rothchild, Donald. 1996. “Containing Fear: The Origins and Management of Ethnic Conflict.” International Security 21 (2): 41–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lebow, Richard Ned. 1994. “The Long Peace, the End of the Cold War, and the Failure of Realism.” International Organization 48 (2): 249–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leites, Nathan, and Wolf, Charles Jr. 1970. Rebellion and Authority: An Analytic Essay on Insurgent Conflicts. Chicago: Markham.Google Scholar
Lockyer, Adam. 2008. Foreign Intervention and Warfare in Civil Wars: The Effect of Exogenous Resources on the Course and Nature of the Angolan and Afghan Conflicts. Ph.D. diss. University of Sydney.Google Scholar
Lyall, Jason, and Wilson, Isaiah III. 2009. “Rage against the Machines: Explaining Outcomes in Counterinsurgency Wars.” International Organization 63: 67–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mearsheimer, John J. 1990. “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War.” International Security 15 (1): 5–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mott, William H. IV. 2001. Soviet Military Assistance: An Empirical Perspective. Westport, CT: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Mueller, John. 2004. The Remnants of War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Münkler, Herfried. 2005. The New Wars. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Olson, William. 1989. “U.S. Objectives and Constraints: An Overview.” In Guerrilla Warfare and Counterinsurgency. U.S.–Soviet Policy in the Third World, eds. Shultz, Richard H. Jr., Pfaltzgraff, Robert L. Jr., Ra'anan, Uri, Olson, William J., and Lukes, Igor. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 13–42.Google Scholar
Prunier, Gérard. 2009. Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Przeworski, Adam. 1991. Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reno, William. 1999. Warlord Politics and African States. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Salehyan, Idean, and Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede. 2006. “Refugees and the Spread of Civil War.” International Organization 60 (2): 335–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sambanis, Nicholas. 2001. “Do Ethnic and Nonethnic Civil Wars Have the Same Causes? A Theoretical and Empirical Inquiry (Part 1).” Journal of Conflict Resolution 45 (3): 259–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sambanis, Nicholas. 2004. “What Is Civil War?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 48 (6): 814–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmitt, Carl. [1963] 2007. Theory of the Partisan. New York: Telos.Google Scholar
Simons, Anna. 1999. “War: Back to the Future.” Annual Reviews of Anthropology 28: 73–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singer, J. David, Bremer, Stuart, and Stuckey, John. 1972. “Capability Distribution, Uncertainty, and Major Power War, 1820–1965.” In Peace, War, and Numbers, ed. Russett, Bruce. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 19–48.Google Scholar
Stedman, Stephen John. 1996. “Conflict and Conciliation in Sub-Saharan Africa.” In The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict, ed. Brown, Michael E.. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 235–65.Google Scholar
Stein, Arthur A., and Lobell, Steven E.. 1997. “Geostructuralism and International Politics: The End of the Cold War and the Regionalization of International Security.” In Regional Orders: Building Security in a New World, eds. Lake, David A. and Morgan, Patrick M.. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 101–22.Google Scholar
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). 2008. SIPRI Yearbook 2008: Armaments, Disarmament, and International Security. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Trinquier, Roger. 1964. Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
United Nations Development Office for Somalia. 1998. Study on Governance in Gedo Region. Nairobi: United Nations Development Program.Google Scholar
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). 2009. Overseas Loans and Grants: Obligations and Loan Authorizations, July 1, 1945–September 30, 2008. CONG-R-01015. http://qesdb.usaid.gov/gbk (Accessed July 19, 2010).Google Scholar
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. 2002. Balkan Battlegrounds: A Military History of the Yugoslav Conflict, 1990–1995. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Russian and European Analysis.Google Scholar
Wallensteen, Peter, and Axell, Karin. 1993. “Armed Conflict at the End of the Cold War, 1989−92.” Journal of Peace Research 30 (3): 331–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westad, Odd Arne. 1992. “Rethinking Revolutions: The Cold War in the Third World.” Journal of Peace Research 29 (4): 455–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westad, Odd Arne. 2005. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimmer, Andreas, Cederman, Lars-Erik, and Min, Brian. 2009. “Ethnic Politics and Armed Conflict: A Configurational Analysis of a New Global Dataset.” American Sociological Review 74 (2): 316–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolin, Sheldon. 1973. “The Politics of the Study of Revolution.” Comparative Politics 5 (3): 343–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
World Bank, International Economics Department, Development Data Group. 2007. World Development Indicators 2006 [CD-ROM]. Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Yengo, Patrice. 2006. La guerre civile du Congo-Brazzaville 1993–2002. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Yergin, Daniel. 1977. Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Young, Crawford. 2006. “The Heart of the African Conflict Zone: Democratization, Ethnicity, Civil Conflict, and the Great Lake Crisis.” Annual Reviews of Political Science 9: 301–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zürcher, Christoph. 2007. The Post-Soviet Wars: Rebellion, Ethnic Conflict, and Nationhood in the Caucasus. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Kalyvas Supplementary Material

Appendix.doc

Download Kalyvas Supplementary Material(File)
File 225.8 KB
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.