Civil Wars

Taught: S22, W24, W25

Graduate
Published

December 26, 2023

Modified

December 30, 2024

Course information

Juan Tellez (pronounced: “Teh-yes”)

jftellez@ucdavis.edu

Thu, 12:10 PM - 03:00 PM

Kerr Hall 593

Course description

This course is a graduate seminar on the study of civil wars and other forms of political violence. The course is designed to prepare graduate students to do research on these topics. Each week, we will cover a mix of “foundational” and new research in one of the key active research agendas in the study of civil wars. The weekly readings are primarily how students will: a) develop the basics of the literature; b) figure out which topic areas might drive their dissertation work.

Assignments

  • Participation (10%). I will grade you on the quality of your participation in seminar. Being unprepared, not having done the readings, being absent, etc., will hurt your participation.

  • Weekly comments (10%). Each week you will post one bullet point comment per reading. The goal of your comment is to motivate discussion among your peers. You can raise questions about theory, method, point out conflicts between readings, develop links with previous weeks’ readings, whatever. Due by 5pm before each class.

  • Article review (20%): You will write one three-page (double-spaced) article review. Your review should eschew summary in favor of critically evaluating the paper (a good guide here). The goal is to make a recommendation to an editor (in this case: me) as to whether or not the paper should be published. If your recommendation is to “revise and resubmit” assume that implies a high probability of publication. Due January 24th, 5PM.

  • Guest lecture (20%): You will prepare a lecture on an armed conflict and present for 30-40 minutes. The lecture should be aimed at an upper division undergraduate audience. Guidelines here. See the signup sheet for dates.

  • Replication (20%): You will replicate the primary findings of a paper of your choosing and then extend the paper in some interesting way. Guidelines here. Due EOD Feb 23rd.

  • Research design (20%): 8-10 pages. Guidelines here. Due EOD March 20th. I encourage you to meet with me about your idea at least a few weeks before the deadline.

Course policies

  • Late assignments will be penalized by a letter grade per day. After one day late, the assignment will receive a zero.
  • You are responsible for following university-prescribed guidelines on plagiarism, cheating, and use of AI. Note that any use of AI-generated content is considered academic misconduct. Do not turn in AI-generated writing as if it were your own

Schedule

Note: the schedule is subject to change.

Week 1 – Jan 9 : What is civil war?

Required

  • Stathis N Kalyvas and Laia Balcells, “International System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict,” American Political Science Review 104, no. 3 (2010): 415–429.
  • Nicholas Sambanis, “What Is Civil War?: Conceptual and Empirical Complexities of an Operational Definition,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 48, no. 6 (2004): 814–858.
  • Stathis Kalyvas, “The Ontology of ‘Political Violence’: Action and Identity in Civil Wars,” Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 3 (2003): 475–494.
  • James D. Fearon, “Civil War & the Current International System,” Dædalus 146, no. 4 (2017): 18–32.
  • Michael D. Ward, Brian D. Greenhill, and Kristin M. Bakke, “The Perils of Policy by p-Value: Predicting Civil Conflicts,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 4 (2010): 363–375.
  • Christopher Blattman and Edward Miguel, “Civil War,” Journal of Economic Literature 48, no. 1 (2010): 3–57.
  • Stathis Kalyvas and Scott Straus, “Stathis Kalyvas on 20 Years of Studying Political Violence,” Violence: An International Journal 1, no. 2 (2020): 389–407.
  • Laia Balcells and Jessica A. Stanton, “Violence Against Civilians During Armed Conflict: Moving Beyond the Macro- and Micro-Level Divide,” Annual Review of Political Science 24, no. 1 (2021): 45–69, doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-041719-102229.
  • Cyrus Samii, “Causal Empiricism in Quantitative Research,” The Journal of Politics 78, no. 3 (2016): 941–955.

Week 2 – Jan 16 : Causes of civil war: grievances

Required

  • Chapter 1 in Elisabeth J. Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
  • Mark Irving Lichbach, “What Makes Rational Peasants Revolutionary? Dilemma, Paradox, and Irony in Peasant Collective Action,” World Politics 46, no. 3 (1994): 383–418.
  • Johan Brosché and Ralph Sundberg, “What They Are Fighting For – Introducing the UCDP Conflict Issues Dataset,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 68, no. 10 (2024): 2128–2157, doi:10.1177/00220027231218633.
  • Ron E. Hassner, “Blasphemy and Violence,” International Studies Quarterly 55, no. 1 (2011): 23–45, doi:10.1111/j.1468-2478.2010.00634.x.
  • Janet I. Lewis, “Rebel Group Formation in Africa: Evidence from a New Dataset,” World Development 170 (2023): 106207, doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2023.106207.
  • Monica Duffy Toft, “Getting Religion Right in Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 65, no. 9 (2021): 1607–1634, doi:10.1177/0022002721997895.
  • Michael C. Horowitz, “Long Time Going: Religion and the Duration of Crusading,” International Security 34, no. 2 (2009): 162–193, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40389216.
  • Patricia Justino, “Poverty and Violent Conflict: A Micro-Level Perspective on the Causes and Duration of Warfare,” Journal of Peace Research 46, no. 3 (2009): 315–333, doi:10.1177/0022343309102655.
Warning

Article review due: January 24th, 5PM

Week 3 – Jan 23 : Causes of war: ethnicity

Required

  • Barry R. Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” Survival 35, no. 1 (1993): 27–47, doi:10.1080/00396339308442672.
  • David B. Carter, Andrew C. Shaver, and Austin L. Wright, “Places to Hide: Terrain, Ethnicity, and Civil Conflict,” The Journal of Politics 81, no. 4 (2019): 1446–1465.
  • Lars-Erik Cederman, Nils B Weidmann, and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, “Horizontal Inequalities and Ethnonationalist Civil War: A Global Comparison,” American Political Science Review 105, no. 3 (2011): 478–495.
  • Chapters 1 and 2 in Roger Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
  • Nicholas Sambanis and Moses Shayo, “Social Identification and Ethnic Conflict,” American Political Science Review 107, no. 2 (2013): 294–325.
  • Chapter 2 in Fotini Christia, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
  • Joan Esteban and Debraj Ray, “Polarization, Fractionalization and Conflict,” Journal of Peace Research 45, no. 2 (2008): 163–182.
  • Joan Esteban and Debraj Ray, “On the Salience of Ethnic Conflict,” American Economic Review 98, no. 5 (2008): 2185–2202.
  • Elaine K. Denny and Barbara F. Walter, “Ethnicity and Civil War,” Journal of Peace Research 51, no. 2 (2014): 199–212.
  • Jack Paine, “Ethnic Violence in Africa: Destructive Legacies of Pre-Colonial States,” International Organization 73, no. 3 (2019): 645–683.

Week 4 – Jan 30 : Causes of war: resources

Required

  • Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” Oxford Economic Papers 56 (2004): 563–595.
  • Richard Snyder, “Does Lootable Wealth Breed Disorder? A Political Economy of Extraction Framework,” Comparative Political Studies 39, no. 8 (2006): 943–968.
  • Oeindrila Dube and Juan F Vargas, “Commodity Price Shocks and Civil Conflict: Evidence from Colombia,” The Review of Economic Studies 80, no. 4 (2013): 1384–1421.
  • Jack Paine, “Rethinking the Conflict ‘Resource Curse’: How Oil Wealth Prevents Center-Seeking Civil Wars,” International Organization 70, no. 4 (2016): 727–761.
  • Revisiting the Effect of Food Aid on Conflict: A Methodological Caution
  • Michael L. Ross, “Replication Data for: Does Taxation Lead to Representation?” 2004.
  • Jean-Paul Azam and Anke Hoeffler, “Violence Against Civilians in Civil Wars: Looting or Terror?” Journal of Peace Research 39, no. 4 (2002): 461–485.
  • Ernesto Dal Bó and Pedro Dal Bó, “Workers, Warriors, and Criminals: Social Conflict in General Equilibrium,” Journal of the European Economic Association 9, no. 4 (2011): 646–677.
  • Raúl Sánchez De La Sierra, “On the Origins of the State: Stationary Bandits and Taxation in Eastern Congo,” Journal of Political Economy 128, no. 1 (2020): 32–74.
  • Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, “US Food Aid and Civil Conflict,” American Economic Review 104, no. 6 (2014): 1630–66.
  • Saumitra Jha and Moses Shayo, “Valuing Peace: The Effects of Financial Market Exposure on Votes and Political Attitudes,” Econometrica 87, no. 5 (2019): 1561–1588, doi:10.3982/ECTA16385.

Week 5 – Feb 6 : Rebel groups as organizations

Required

  • E. Benmelech and C. Berrebi, “Human Capital and the Productivity of Suicide Bombers,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 21, no. 3 (2007): 223–238.
  • J. M. Weinstein, “Resources and the Information Problem in Rebel Recruitment,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 4 (2005): 598–624.
  • David A. Siegel, “When Does Repression Work?: Collective Action in Social Networks,” Journal of Politics 73, no. 4 (2011): 993–1010.
  • Francisco Gutiérrez-Sanín and Elisabeth Jean Wood, “Ideology in Civil War: Instrumental Adoption and Beyond,” Journal of Peace Research 51, no. 2 (2014): 213–226.
  • Jeremy M. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
  • Jacob N Shapiro and David A. Siegel, “Moral Hazard, Discipline, and the Management of Terrorist Organizations,” World Politics 64, no. 1 (2012): 39–78.
  • P. Staniland, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Insurgent Fratricide, Ethnic Defection, and the Rise of Pro-State Paramilitaries,” Journal of Conflict Resolution (2012).
  • Sarah Elizabeth Parkinson, “Organizing Rebellion: Rethinking High-Risk Mobilization and Social Networks in War,” American Political Science Review 107, no. 3 (2013): 418–432.
  • Henning Tamm, “Rebel Leaders, Internal Rivals, and External Resources: How State Sponsors Affect Insurgent Cohesion,” International Studies Quarterly 60, no. 4 (2016): 599–610.
  • Laia Balcells, Juan F. Tellez, and Villamil Francisco, “Identity, Media and Mass Polarization in Spain” (2022).
  • Jacob N. Shapiro and David A. Siegel, “Underfunding in Terrorist Organizations,” International Studies Quarterly 51, no. 2 (2007): 405–429.
  • Paul Staniland, “Organizing Insurgency: Networks, Resources, and Rebellion in South Asia,” International Security 37, no. 1 (2012): 142–177.
  • Efraim Benmelech, Claude Berrebi, and Esteban F. Klor, “Economic Conditions and the Quality of Suicide Terrorism,” The Journal of Politics 74, no. 1 (2012): 113–128, doi:10.1017/S0022381611001101.

Week 6 – Feb 13 : Insurgency

Required

  • Chapters 4, 5, 6 in Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
  • Michael C. Horowitz, “Nonstate Actors and the Diffusion of Innovations: The Case of Suicide Terrorism,” International Organization 64, no. 1 (2010): 33–64, doi:10.1017/S0020818309990233.
  • Dara Kay Cohen, “Explaining Rape During Civil War: Cross-national Evidence (1980–2009),” American Political Science Review 107, no. 3 (2013): 461–477.
  • Luke N. Condra et al., “The Logic of Insurgent Electoral Violence,” American Economic Review 108, no. 11 (2018): 3199–3231.
  • Katherine Sawyer, Kanisha D. Bond, and Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, “Rebel Leader Ascension and Wartime Sexual Violence,” The Journal of Politics 83, no. 1 (2021): 396–400.
  • Konstantin Sonin and Austin L. Wright, “Rebel Capacity, Intelligence Gathering, and Combat Tactics,” American Journal of Political Science (2023): ajps.12750, doi:10.1111/ajps.12750.
  • Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson, and Rafael J. Santos, “The Monopoly of Violence: Evidence from Colombia,” Journal of the European Economic Association 11, no. S1 (2013): 5–44.
  • Robert Taber, The War of the Flea: The Classic Study of Guerrilla Warfare (Potomac Books, 1965).

Week 7 – Feb 20 : Counterinsurgency

Required

  • Benjamin Valentino, Paul Huth, and Dylan Balch-Lindsay, “‘Draining the Sea’: Mass Killing and Guerrilla Warfare,” International Organization 58, no. 2 (2004): 375–407.
  • “Twenty-eight Articles” in David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency, 1st edition. (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
  • Jason Lyall, Graeme Blair, and Kosuke Imai, “Explaining Support for Combatants During Wartime: A Survey Experiment in Afghanistan,” American Political Science Review 107, no. 4 (2013): 679–705.
  • Sabine C. Carey and Neil J. Mitchell, “Progovernment Militias,” Annual Review of Political Science 20 (2017): 127–147, doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-051915-045433.
  • Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Cornell University Press, 2019).
  • Francisco Gutiérrez-Sanín and Jenniffer Vargas, “Agrarian Elite Participation in Colombia’s Civil War,” Journal of Agrarian Change 17, no. 4 (2017): 739–748.
  • Michael Albertus, “Land Reform and Civil Conflict: Theory and Evidence from Peru,” American Journal of Political Science 64, no. 2 (2020): 256–274.
  • Condra et al., “The Logic of Insurgent Electoral Violence.”
  • Sawyer, Bond, and Cunningham, “Rebel Leader Ascension and Wartime Sexual Violence.”
  • Sonin and Wright, “Rebel Capacity, Intelligence Gathering, and Combat Tactics.”
  • Livia Isabella Schubiger, “State Violence and Wartime Civilian Agency: Evidence from Peru,” Journal of Politics (2019).
Warning

Replication due: Feb 23rd by end of day

Week 8 – Feb 27 : Civil war termination and resolution

Required

  • Edward N. Luttwak, “Give War a Chance,” Foreign Aff. 78 (1999): 36.
  • Nicholas Sambanis, “Partition as a Solution to Ethnic War: An Empirical Critique of the Theoretical Literature,” World Politics 52, no. 4 (2000): 437–483, doi:10.1017/S0043887100020074.
  • David E. Cunningham, “Veto Players and Civil War Duration,” American Journal of Political Science 50, no. 4 (2006): 875–892.
  • Michaela Mattes and Burcu Savun, “Information, Agreement Design, and the Durability of Civil War Settlements,” American Journal of Political Science 54, no. 2 (2010): 511–524.
  • Virginia Page Fortna, “Do Terrorists Win? Rebels’ Use of Terrorism and Civil War Outcomes,” International Organization 69, no. 3 (2015): 519–556, doi:10.1017/S0020818315000089.
  • Rob Williams et al., “A Latent Variable Approach to Measuring and Explaining Peace Agreement Strength,” Political Science Research and Methods 9, no. 1 (2021): 89–105.
  • Jason Lyall and Isaiah Wilson, “Rage Against the Machines: Explaining Outcomes in Counterinsurgency Wars,” International Organization 63, no. 1 (2009): 67–106.
  • Devorah Manekin, Guy Grossman, and Tamar Mitts, “Contested Ground: Disentangling Material and Symbolic Attachment to Disputed Territory,” Political Science Research and Methods (2017).
  • Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl, Quagmire in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
  • Kevin Russell and Nicholas Sambanis, “Stopping the Violence but Blocking the Peace: Dilemmas of Foreign-Imposed Nation Building After Ethnic War,” International Organization 76, no. 1 (2022): 126–163.
  • Scott Wolford, “The Problem of Shared Victory: War-Winning Coalitions and Postwar Peace,” Journal of Politics 79, no. 2 (2017): 702–716.
  • David E. Cunningham, “Preventing Civil War: How the Potential for International Intervention Can Deter Conflict Outset,” World Politics 68, no. 2 (2016): 307–340.
  • Aila M. Matanock, “Bullets for Ballots: Electoral Participation Provisions and Enduring Peace After Civil Conflict,” International Security 41, no. 4 (2017): 93–132.
  • Nicholas Sambanis and Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl, “What’s in a Line? Is Partition a Solution to Civil War?” International Security 34, no. 2 (2009): 82–118.
  • Bernd Beber et al., “Peacekeeping, Compliance with International Norms, and Transactional Sex in Monrovia, Liberia,” International Organization 71, no. 1 (2017): 1–30.

Week 9 – Mar 6 : Wartime displacement

Required

  • Abbey Steele, “Electing Displacement: Political Cleansing in Apartado, Colombia,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 55, no. 3 (2011): 423–445.
  • Adam G. Lichtenheld, “Explaining Population Displacement Strategies in Civil Wars: A Cross-National Analysis,” International Organization 74, no. 2 (2020): 253–294.
  • Yang-Yang Zhou and Andrew Shaver, “Reexamining the Effect of Refugees on Civil Conflict: A Global Subnational Analysis,” American Political Science Review 115, no. 4 (2021): 1175–1196.
  • Emanuele Albarosa and Benjamin Elsner, “Forced Migration and Social Cohesion: Evidence from the 2015/16 Mass Inflow in Germany,” World Development 167 (2023): 106228.
  • Lachlan McNamee, “Mass Resettlement and Political Violence: Evidence from Rwanda,” World Politics 70, no. 4 (2018): 595–644.
  • Yuri M. Zhukov, “Population Resettlement in War: Theory and Evidence from Soviet Archives,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 59, no. 7 (2015): 1155–1185.
  • Juan F. Tellez, “Land, Opportunism, and Displacement in Civil Wars: Evidence from Colombia,” American Political Science Review 116, no. 2 (2022): 403–418.

Week 10 – Mar 13 : Legacies of war

  • Chad Hazlett, “Angry or Weary? How Violence Impacts Attitudes Toward Peace Among Darfurian Refugees,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 64, no. 5 (2020): 844–870.
  • Rafael Ch et al., “Endogenous Taxation in Ongoing Internal Conflict: The Case of Colombia,” American Political Science Review 112, no. 4 (2018): 996–1015.
  • Melissa Dell and Pablo Querubin, “Nation Building Through Foreign Intervention: Evidence from Discontinuities in Military Strategies,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 133, no. 2 (2018): 701–764.
  • Diego Ramos-Toro and Elsa Voytas, “Historical Narratives and Political Behavior in the US” (Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, 2024), doi:10.2139/ssrn.4769300.
  • Jonathan D. Tepperman, “Truth and Consequences,” Foreign Aff. 81 (2002): 128.
  • Francisco Villamil, “Mobilizing Memories: The Social Conditions of the Long-Term Impact of Victimization,” Journal of Peace Research 58, no. 3 (2021): 399–416, doi:10.1177/0022343320912816.
  • Guy Grossman, Devorah Manekin, and Dan Miodownik, “The Political Legacies of Combat: Attitudes Toward War and Peace Among Israeli Ex-Combatants,” International Organization 69, no. 4 (2015): 981–1009.
  • Nicholas Sambanis, Stergios Skaperdas, and William C Wohlforth, “Nation-Building Through War,” American Political Science Review 109, no. 2 (2015): 279–296.
  • Seonjou Kang and James Meernik, “Civil War Destruction and the Prospects for Economic Growth,” The Journal of Politics 67, no. 1 (2005): 88–109, doi:10.1111/j.1468-2508.2005.00309.x.
  • Corinne Bara, “Legacies of Violence: Conflict-specific Capital and the Postconflict Diffusion of Civil War,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 62, no. 9 (2018): 1991–2016.
  • Noam Lupu and Leonid Peisakhin, “The Legacy of Political Violence Across Generations,” American Journal of Political Science 61, no. 4 (2017): 836–851.
  • Scott Atran and Robert Axelrod, “Reframing Sacred Values,” Negotiation Journal 24, no. 3 (2008): 221–246.
Warning

⭐ FINAL PAPER DUE MARCH 20th, EOD

Resources

Guest lecture

You will:

  • Present for 30-40 minutes at the start of class on a subnational armed conflict of your choice, aimed at an upper level undergraduate
  • Each slide should contain at least one informative visual
  • Points to hit:
    • Who are the warring parties? What are they fighting over? What ideological affinities do the rebels hold?
    • Brief history/overview of the conflict: when did it start? how long was it fought? What tactics were used?
    • The conflict in the literature: highlight either 1) research on the conflict that sheds light on some puzzle / question about the conflict; 2) research that uses the conflict to answer some broader question about war

Replication

You will:

  • Find a paper with available replication data
  • Visualize or summarize some interesting element of the data as a figure or table
  • Replicate the paper’s main findings + a key figure from the paper
  • Extend the analysis in a theory-driven way, for instance:
    • Looking at sub-samples where effects should be different based on your argument
    • Looking at interactions such that the effect of X on Y depends on Z (you need a compelling argument as to why Z should moderate the effect of X on Y and is interesting!)

The final output will be a Quarto document that can compile without error. I will provide a template.

Final research design rubric

10 pages MAX, double-spaced.

  1. Introduction (2 pages)
    1. Motivate why we should care about the question you want to answer (e.g., because of its real-world impact, as a gap in the literature)
    2. BRIEFLY preview what the project will do (I will argue that X) and how it will do it (I will collect XYZ data)
  2. Literature review (2 pages)
    1. Briefly describe what we already know about your topic
    2. Highlight what is unknown or what gap your project will fill
  3. Theory + hypotheses (3-4 pages)
    1. Big note: theory != literature review
    2. Need an argument about a causal process
    3. Think about who the actors are in your story, what they want, and how their interactions produce different outcomes
  4. Research design (2-3 pages)
    1. Data
      1. Where will the data come from? What is the unit of analysis (e.g., country-year)?
      2. How will you measure the outcome variable(s)? Treatment variable(s)?
      3. Identification strategy — how will you (try to) identify the effect of X on Y? If prediction, how will you select what variables to include in the model?
      4. Modeling strategy — how will you model the relationship?