Violence and security lecture notes
Lecture 1
Introduction and overview
Conceptualizing Violence
- Johan Galtung (1969) provides a compelling way to think about violence and peace.
- 2 types of violence:
• Direct violence: Behaviors carried out by a clearly identifiable agent with the intent to
inflict bodily harm.
• Structural violence: Violence as present when humans systematically cannot fulfil
their physical and mental potential. Violence does not require intent and does not
require a clear agent.
- During this course focus on direct violence, especially political violence
• Political violence occurs in wartime (conflicts where there as 1000+ battle-related
deaths in a given year) and in times of “peace” (e.g. electoral violence, ethnic riots)
Conceptualizing Peace
- Johan Galtung’s (1969) typology of peace:
• Negative peace: The absence of direct violence
• Positive peace: A self-sustaining condition that protects the human security of a
population
What do we mean by ‘paradigms’?
- The idea of paradigms comes from Thomas Kuhn (1962)
- Paradigms or theoretical frameworks are lenses through which we see the world
- They contain assumptions about:
• The most important actors, as well as their behaviors and motivations.
• What leads to war and violence
• What allows for peace and security
Paradigms and Approaches to Violence and Security
1. International Relations
2. Comparative Politics
Paradigms
Realism
- Actors: The state is the principal actor of international politics
- Nature of the State:
• The state is a unitary and rational actor seeking to maximize its own interests
• National security is a first order preference (i.e. it trumps all)
- Understanding of Conflict/Order:
• The international system is characterized by anarchy, which means that security is
not guaranteed.
• Power (generally defined as material capabilities) is a central concern to realism,
because it is key to security.
• The likelihood of war is shaped by the distribution of power in the international
system
,Liberalism
- Actors: State and non-state actors are important.
• E.g. Transnational advocacy networks (Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink 1998)
- Nature of the State: State preferences are an aggregate of preferences of a wide range of
state and societal actors.
• Preferences not necessarily opposing
• National security not always the most important consideration
- Understanding of conflict/order:
• Conflict is not inevitable; cooperation and mutual gains are possible.
• Order is possible through:
1. Economic interdependence and free trade
2. International institutions
3. Democratic institutions
Constructivism
- Actors: Actors and the interests that drive them are socially constructed.
- Assumptions about agent behavior:
• Political action is shaped by identities and interests.
• Who the actor is shapes what they view as appropriate action
• Conflict and peace are therefore shaped by the content of identities and interests,
which is why norms are so important to social constructivism.
Approaches
Instrumentalism
- Elites as the primary explanatory variable for the presence/absence of conflict
- Assumptions of instrumentalism:
• Elites seek to maximize political power and other material gains and will foment
violence to meet their interests.
Institutionalism
- Institutionalism is an approach seeks to understand how political struggles are
mediated by the institutional setting in which they take place.
Constructivism
- Groups as socially constructed and groups are not unitary actors.
- Violence as a means of delineating and asserting group boundaries
Lecture 2
Violence and state formation
What is the relationship between violence and state formation?
Does war make strong states?
Key Concepts
- State: The organization that has a monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force
within a given territory in the enforcement of its order (Weber).
- State Formation: The long-term processes leading to the centralization of political power
within a sovereign territory.
- State capacity: The ability of states to accomplish their goals.
, • Often measured by a state’s military power and its bureaucratic/administrative
capacity (e.g. taxes)
The Bellicist Approach to State Formation
State Formation according to Tilly
- ‘‘War made the state, and the state made war” – Tilly
• States go to war
• War is expansive → extraction (e.g. taxation)
• Extraction is difficult → state building (e.g. better bureaucracy)
• State building and extraction → state has more money → better protection
- War → strong states
The Cold War and State Making in East Asia
- Stubbs 1999
• The Cold War context helped several Asian states build their military and
bureaucratic capacity
o Threat of war in for example Japan and South Korea created strong states,
war in Vietnam didn’t create strong state → threat of war creates strong
states
• But US aid was key
o External funding → no state building needed, but because of threat of war
still happened
War and State Making in Latin America
- Centeno (2002)
• War in Latin America did not lead to state building
• No incentive for governments to extract from population:
o Other revenue sources
o Scale of war was not ‘total’
• The Spanish colonial state meant that the bureaucratic apparatus was very weak
Alternative Explanations to State Formation
- Trade makes the state
• Capitalism makes states
• People need institutions for trade → state building
• No predatory state and social contract
- The modern state originates in ideological change
• State created out of ideas
• (Is about conditions that make creation of state possible)
, Intrastate Conflict and State Formation
- Are the impacts of intrastate war on state capacity similar to the effects of interstate
war?
- What is the impact of civil war on state building?
- Mixed results
• Malaysia and Singapore: ‘the Emergency’ lead to strong states
• Guatemala: civil war weakened the extractive capacity of the state (Schwartz 2020)
Conclusion
- Interstate war can lead to the strengthening of the state
- There is less consensus over the state strengthening effects of intra-state conflict.
- State capacity is itself a factor that shapes the likelihood of political violence.
Lecture 3
Nuclear Weapons
Empirical overview
Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)
- WMDs refer to nuclear, biological, chemical, and occasionally radiological weapons.
- Nuclear weapons are considered especially lethal and has been the focus of a lot of
international efforts to limit their proliferation and use.
History of nuclear weapons
- WW2: Manhattan Project → Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- After WW2: also Russia, UK, France, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea
- BUT no warfare with nuclear weapons, only threats (e.g. Cuban missile crisis)
- Treaties → decline in nuclear arsenals
Why have nuclear weapons not been used in conflict since 1945?
Nuclear Deterrence
- Deterrence: The action of convincing actual or potential adversaries not to attack
because the costs of damage incurred would outweigh the gains.
- The possession of nuclear weapons alone is not enough to deter.
- Components of effective nuclear deterrence:
• Credible commitment to use nuclear weapons
• Second strike capabilities
o Capability to shoot your own nuclear weapons, after being hit by enemy’s
nuclear weapons
o Made possible by placing nuclear weapons in different places instead of all
at one spot (e.g. US rockets in Turkey, or Russia’s rockets all over the country)
Challenges to Nuclear Deterrence
- The credibility of extended deterrence
- Technological advances challenging the preservation of second strike capability (Lieber
and Press 2017)
• An aging arsenal
Lecture 1
Introduction and overview
Conceptualizing Violence
- Johan Galtung (1969) provides a compelling way to think about violence and peace.
- 2 types of violence:
• Direct violence: Behaviors carried out by a clearly identifiable agent with the intent to
inflict bodily harm.
• Structural violence: Violence as present when humans systematically cannot fulfil
their physical and mental potential. Violence does not require intent and does not
require a clear agent.
- During this course focus on direct violence, especially political violence
• Political violence occurs in wartime (conflicts where there as 1000+ battle-related
deaths in a given year) and in times of “peace” (e.g. electoral violence, ethnic riots)
Conceptualizing Peace
- Johan Galtung’s (1969) typology of peace:
• Negative peace: The absence of direct violence
• Positive peace: A self-sustaining condition that protects the human security of a
population
What do we mean by ‘paradigms’?
- The idea of paradigms comes from Thomas Kuhn (1962)
- Paradigms or theoretical frameworks are lenses through which we see the world
- They contain assumptions about:
• The most important actors, as well as their behaviors and motivations.
• What leads to war and violence
• What allows for peace and security
Paradigms and Approaches to Violence and Security
1. International Relations
2. Comparative Politics
Paradigms
Realism
- Actors: The state is the principal actor of international politics
- Nature of the State:
• The state is a unitary and rational actor seeking to maximize its own interests
• National security is a first order preference (i.e. it trumps all)
- Understanding of Conflict/Order:
• The international system is characterized by anarchy, which means that security is
not guaranteed.
• Power (generally defined as material capabilities) is a central concern to realism,
because it is key to security.
• The likelihood of war is shaped by the distribution of power in the international
system
,Liberalism
- Actors: State and non-state actors are important.
• E.g. Transnational advocacy networks (Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink 1998)
- Nature of the State: State preferences are an aggregate of preferences of a wide range of
state and societal actors.
• Preferences not necessarily opposing
• National security not always the most important consideration
- Understanding of conflict/order:
• Conflict is not inevitable; cooperation and mutual gains are possible.
• Order is possible through:
1. Economic interdependence and free trade
2. International institutions
3. Democratic institutions
Constructivism
- Actors: Actors and the interests that drive them are socially constructed.
- Assumptions about agent behavior:
• Political action is shaped by identities and interests.
• Who the actor is shapes what they view as appropriate action
• Conflict and peace are therefore shaped by the content of identities and interests,
which is why norms are so important to social constructivism.
Approaches
Instrumentalism
- Elites as the primary explanatory variable for the presence/absence of conflict
- Assumptions of instrumentalism:
• Elites seek to maximize political power and other material gains and will foment
violence to meet their interests.
Institutionalism
- Institutionalism is an approach seeks to understand how political struggles are
mediated by the institutional setting in which they take place.
Constructivism
- Groups as socially constructed and groups are not unitary actors.
- Violence as a means of delineating and asserting group boundaries
Lecture 2
Violence and state formation
What is the relationship between violence and state formation?
Does war make strong states?
Key Concepts
- State: The organization that has a monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force
within a given territory in the enforcement of its order (Weber).
- State Formation: The long-term processes leading to the centralization of political power
within a sovereign territory.
- State capacity: The ability of states to accomplish their goals.
, • Often measured by a state’s military power and its bureaucratic/administrative
capacity (e.g. taxes)
The Bellicist Approach to State Formation
State Formation according to Tilly
- ‘‘War made the state, and the state made war” – Tilly
• States go to war
• War is expansive → extraction (e.g. taxation)
• Extraction is difficult → state building (e.g. better bureaucracy)
• State building and extraction → state has more money → better protection
- War → strong states
The Cold War and State Making in East Asia
- Stubbs 1999
• The Cold War context helped several Asian states build their military and
bureaucratic capacity
o Threat of war in for example Japan and South Korea created strong states,
war in Vietnam didn’t create strong state → threat of war creates strong
states
• But US aid was key
o External funding → no state building needed, but because of threat of war
still happened
War and State Making in Latin America
- Centeno (2002)
• War in Latin America did not lead to state building
• No incentive for governments to extract from population:
o Other revenue sources
o Scale of war was not ‘total’
• The Spanish colonial state meant that the bureaucratic apparatus was very weak
Alternative Explanations to State Formation
- Trade makes the state
• Capitalism makes states
• People need institutions for trade → state building
• No predatory state and social contract
- The modern state originates in ideological change
• State created out of ideas
• (Is about conditions that make creation of state possible)
, Intrastate Conflict and State Formation
- Are the impacts of intrastate war on state capacity similar to the effects of interstate
war?
- What is the impact of civil war on state building?
- Mixed results
• Malaysia and Singapore: ‘the Emergency’ lead to strong states
• Guatemala: civil war weakened the extractive capacity of the state (Schwartz 2020)
Conclusion
- Interstate war can lead to the strengthening of the state
- There is less consensus over the state strengthening effects of intra-state conflict.
- State capacity is itself a factor that shapes the likelihood of political violence.
Lecture 3
Nuclear Weapons
Empirical overview
Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)
- WMDs refer to nuclear, biological, chemical, and occasionally radiological weapons.
- Nuclear weapons are considered especially lethal and has been the focus of a lot of
international efforts to limit their proliferation and use.
History of nuclear weapons
- WW2: Manhattan Project → Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- After WW2: also Russia, UK, France, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea
- BUT no warfare with nuclear weapons, only threats (e.g. Cuban missile crisis)
- Treaties → decline in nuclear arsenals
Why have nuclear weapons not been used in conflict since 1945?
Nuclear Deterrence
- Deterrence: The action of convincing actual or potential adversaries not to attack
because the costs of damage incurred would outweigh the gains.
- The possession of nuclear weapons alone is not enough to deter.
- Components of effective nuclear deterrence:
• Credible commitment to use nuclear weapons
• Second strike capabilities
o Capability to shoot your own nuclear weapons, after being hit by enemy’s
nuclear weapons
o Made possible by placing nuclear weapons in different places instead of all
at one spot (e.g. US rockets in Turkey, or Russia’s rockets all over the country)
Challenges to Nuclear Deterrence
- The credibility of extended deterrence
- Technological advances challenging the preservation of second strike capability (Lieber
and Press 2017)
• An aging arsenal
