Saudi Arabia
1.2.3. Theories for the Onset of Civil War
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reasons behind the relative quiet situation. However, there were another explanation:
the terrible experience from 1954 independence war and 1991 civil war still haunted in Algerians’ minds and hence prevented the comprehensive mobilization among people. As a result, Bouteflika regime was only in face of relatively weak and divided opposition (Zoubir and Aghrout).
Volpi explains why Algeria avoided vital challenge during the Arab Spring by three factors. First, being pseudo-democracy, the Bouteflika regime can not only co-opt and divide the opposition but also receive international recognition. Second, the regime use oil wealth to buy off their people. Last, the regime has both intention and capabilities to repression people.
In sum, some literatures on single case still make some cases comparisons, including literature on Libya (Lacher 141; Ahmida 75); Syria (Haddad, “Syria’s Stalemate” 88); Yemen (Fattah 81); Jordan (Seeley 32); Morocco (Maddy-Weitzman,
“Is Morocco”); Saudi Arabia (Al-Rasheed 21; Lacroix 25); Oman (Worral 108);
Algeria (Zoubir and Aghrout 66, 69-70). However, they are not comprehensive and systematic enough. As a result, in this study I decide to conduct comparison among cases within the frameworks of theory.
1.2.3. Theories for the Onset of Civil War
With the help of the concise literature review by Levy and Thompson, I can have a basic understanding about the bulky body of literature on civil war within a limited period. This helpful article included two main parts: the first part briefly reviews the process of debating on civil war; the second part presents the recent development of civil war study.
There are mainly three stages for the debate on civil war theory. Analytical attention paid on civil war started between1960s and 1980s, but, at that time, most scholars dealt with issues about civil wars within the framework of explaining political violence/mobilization in general. In the next stage, some scholars thought it is greed, for example, making money from diamond during wartime, that initiates civil wars, but other scholars argues it is grievance, such as socioeconomic inequality and ethnic discrimination, that fuels civil wars. Finding that: it is hard to tell greed from the intention to acquire financial source for maintaining resistance against governments, and grievance is too widespread to predict the onset of civil war, in the
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third stage, scholars transferred their attention from motivation, including greed and grievance, to opportunity, that is, preconditions making rebels more possible.
Among the theories on civil war, my study selects three theories under discussion, including: Boix, F-L (Fearon and Laitin), and C-H (Collier and Hoeffler) (“Ethnicity”; “Greed”). Though all the three articles took sides between motivation, by Boix, and opportunity, by F-L and C-H, they still put the other side into consideration.
Concerning the reasons why I choose these three theories, there are mainly two reasons. First, all of them have importance to the academia. There were widespread debates and intensive reference following the publishing of F-L and C-H. And the importance of Boix lays on its effort to appeal academic focus from opportunities to motivations behind civil war. Second, each of them represented a typical interpretation of civil war. F-L is prone to emphasize viable opportunity while C-h tends to suggest the importance of profitable opportunity. As to Boix, it tries to capture the elusive motivation.
There are three other representative theories worthy to be noted here, including theories by Stewart, Reno, and Ayoob. However, I will not include them for further discussion.
According to Stewart, horizontal inequality might be the main factor leading to the onset of civil war.5 Simply speaking, horizontal inequality means the inequality among different groups defined by different group identities, such region, ethnicity, class, or religion, while vertical inequality refers to unfair distribution of individual’s income. The sources of horizontal inequality come from inequality in political, economic, social, and cultural aspects.6
The reason why horizontal inequality is the main cause of civil war rests on that civil war is a kind of organized group activity, and those group identities are so powerful in group mobilization. Although the group identity might be a ideal tool to invoke the passion of population within a specific group, it might be insufficient to
5 Actually, in Stewart’s study conflicts caused by horizontal inequality include several types of serious violence with political objectives, that is, not only civil war but also separatist conflict and communal conflicts (conflicts without involvement of the incumbent government as a significant party), see Stewart, “Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict” 18.
6 This is the newer typology of horizontal inequality’s sources, see Stewart, “Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict” 13. The old one includes political participation, economic assets, incomes and employment, and social aspects, see Stewart, “Horizontal Inequalities as a Source of Conflict” 110-111.
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mobilize people to take part in so risky an activity like rebellion without the common dissatisfaction about the wide difference between their group and other group.7
Reno points out an economically motivated causal path to the onset of civil war occurring in so-called “shadow state”. “Shadow state” is “a concept that explains the relationship between corruption and politics” (Reno 45). A typical example for this might be Somalia, which superficially bears de jure sovereignty just like other states but cannot practically govern its people and territory due to its weak formal institution. With weak institution, “shadow state” cannot protect productive population, so that the latter cannot serve as regime’s taxable bases. In contrast, dependency on foreign supports and/or valuable natural resources (and the foreign enclave investment incurred by the natural resources) is the main reason why
“shadow state” can be sustained.
Under such a situation, the political leader conducts political control through the networks of personal ties. With foreign supports and/or natural resources as his governing bases, the leader has little incentive to enhance the legitimacy and strength of its institution. Instead, he conserves resources and acquires people’s royalty by providing payouts, including material, that is, bestowing subsidies or privileges and/
or discretionary exercise of power, that is, selective exemption form regulations. To assure the viability of such political controls, the leader tends to make population less secure and more materially poor for creating a situation that each individual pursues his personal favor to escape from the miserable life caused deliberately by the leader.
The leader eliminate institutions providing public goods which may threat his own rein and sells private protection to favored societal frictions.
According to Reno, civil war tends to happened in “shadow state” when its leader “fails to control free-riding risks” and then lose “the loyalty of followers who comply in return for payouts” (48). Without the provision of public goods, not only state’s agent but also challengers to the state tend to maximize the use of violence in pursuit of their private economic interest (54-55).
Ayoob tries to explain why it is so frequently for us to observe that domestic conflicts bother the Third World. Unsuccessful process of state making, namely, building a political authority with enough legitimacy, might be the main cause behind those conflicts. The aims of state making are within specific territory: (1)
7 In other words, what Stewart means is self-perceived inequalities. However, when practically measuring, Stewart still focused on observed inequalities because of the assumption that perception broadly reflect the observed reality, see Stewart, “Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict” 18.
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consolidating political authority; (2) extracting resources; (3) maintaining political order. Most important, the monopoly on violence instruments serves as the precondition for the above three aims, and, drawing experience from the state making in Western Europe and North America, the process of monopoly usually brings large costs, including high death toll, forceful expropriation, etc. It takes a large amount of time and needs some coercive means for completing state making.
For states in the Third World, the environment for state making is even more rigorous. States in the Third World, as the late-comers of the international community, have endured pressure from state system during the period of state making. During the Cold War, superpower intensively intervened the Third World through financial provision, arm transfers, and even military interfering. In the post-Cold War, the influence of the existed international norms enhanced, especially the norms about human rights, ethno-national self-determination, and judicial sovereignty. On the one hand, norms on human rights, protecting individual civil and political right, limited the choices of means for state making, especially coercive power. On the other hand, self-determination inspired ethnic separation within states, particularly those with weak capability and legitimacy. Furthermore, emphasizing on judicial sovereignty made the boundary and existence of a state nearly unchangeable, even for one with serious internal incongruity.
A variety of difficulties waiting on the road to state making usually led to state failure. A collapsing state naturally results in internal conflicts, and in turn continuous conflicts weaken the capability and the legitimacy of this state once again.
The reason why I decide not to include Stewart, Reno, and Ayoob for discussion below is out of operational difficulties. For Reno and Ayoob, their theories are not specific enough. For example, Reno does not provide detailed and measurable concept for his “shadow state” and “the moment when the leader in shadow state lose control”; Ayoob presents causal factors too abstract to be measured, such as the legitimacy of a state and the effect from international norms, which will be the obstacle for me to observe the variant between cases in the two aspects. As to Stewart, though horizontal inequality has a detailed definition for measurement, the data requested is too detailed to be collected, especially for states in MENA with opaque economy (Mancini, Stewart, and Brown). Though the literature on civil war is so comprehensive, in below I will focus on three chosen theories of this study, that is, C-H, F-L, and Boix.