Chapter 22 Review Questions Answer Key

Conflict and Development
  1. A liberal theory of violence, which approximates the World Bank report cited above, considers violence an aberration and as the opposite of development. The implication—sometimes spelled out—is that devel­opment is a way out of violence. [p. 392]
  1. The grand narrative seeks to uncover the essence of the development process as it has unfolded historically. The classical scholar Karl Marx is one of the figures who has discussed this concept. Writing at a time of rapid change and much violence in Europe as well as beyond, they tried to understand “development” and the processes and patterns of social change. For Marx, development cannot be separated from conflict or understood as independent of it. Conflict is intrinsic to the development process, the motor that drives it forward as power and resources are redistributed to different classes and peoples. In a continuation of this grand narrative, Lenin also argued that imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism; the imperialist nations, the “most developed” in conventional terms, would then succumb to war against each other. [p. 393]
  1. While related, each of the terms “war,” “conflict,” and “violence” is distinct and specific. Violence encompasses the “physical violence,” but also less obvious manifestations. Two alternative definitions of violence are “structural” violence or extreme systematic inequality, and “symbolic” violence, the internalization of humiliation by the weak, and the legitimation of inequality and hierarchy. Conflict does not necessarily involve violence and denotes the existence of tensions between opposing views, interests, or wills. Finally, war refers to a situation of extraordinary violence that can be either interstate or civil (domestic). During war normal rules do not apply and special rules take over such as international laws governing war. [p. 393]
  1. Some 800,000 persons were killed in Rwanda in 1994. The victims were mainly ethnic Tutsi, while the perpetrators were mainly Hutu. Many outside observers initially attributed the violence to long-standing tribal animosities between the Hutu and the Tutsi. Yet these ethnic identities were in part a product of Belgian colonial policy, which treated the two as separate peoples and issued ethnic identity cards to institutionalize the division. The 1994 massacres were triggered by conflicts over concrete issues (power-sharing in the government, distribution of economic aid) and an uneasy military standoff between the (Hutu-led) government and (Tutsi) rebel forces. A radical Hutu faction that controlled the state had meticulously planned and organized the massacres. The machete was the weapon of choice—which seemed to symbolize the primitive nature of the society and the violence it produced—but modern guns bought on the international market or received through aid agreements with France were also used with decisive effect. [p. 399]
  1. Quantitative studies find no statistically significant links between climate change and armed con­flict, whether within or among states. A comprehensive review of studies that used a range of methodologies presents a more complicated picture. Within states, riots and violent protests may occur if food prices rise because of climate-induced reduction of agricultural production. Violent clashes may also occur when climate change cre­ates large migrations of people who have lost their livelihood (so-called environmental refugees). Violence involving vulnerable groups is typically one-sided, however. Groups made more vulnera­ble by climate change tend to become victims rather than rebels. For a start, they face the same problem of collective action as Trotsky’s poor; they are only the raw material for revolt. If protest and despair coincide with other factors, more organized, armed conflict may nevertheless result. In Darfur, for instance, conflict between nomads and pastoralists at the turn of this century clearly originated in climate change. As successive droughts forced nomads to move south­wards in search of new pastures, skirmishes with farmers did occur. Yet inter-communal councils succeeded for some time in managing the tensions. It took foreign interference, government re­pression, and the contagious effects of the wider conflict in Sudan to transform the tensions into sustained violence, dramatized by armed raiders (janjaweed) who brought death, destruction, and displacement. [pp. 397-8]
  1. Conflict is the opposite of development—war is development in reverse. This was the message of an influential 2003 report on civil wars from World Bank researchers at a time when Western peace-building efforts to bring countries out of conflict were at their most ambitious. The study concluded that “[w]hen development succeeds, countries become safer; when development fails, countries experience greater risk of being caught in a conflict trap” (Collier et al. 2003). Another major report in 2011 restated this position—“conflict and violence are a development problem” (World Bank 2011, 2). At first glance, this seems persuasive. Wars destroy lives, property, and the environment. As such, it is “development in reverse.” Most recent wars, moreover, have taken place in poor countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Western Europe and North America—by most accounts the richest and most developed countries in the world—have experienced very little war since World War II. The Balkan wars in the 1990s appeared to many as a shock, a ghost from a past it was assumed Europe had left behind. On closer examination, however, the picture is not so simple. Violence may set back “development,” but it also may sweep away older structures and make way for material improvement. Certainly not all poor countries have been caught in a conflict trap of recurring wars. Some very poor countries have indeed experienced recurrent armed conflict (e.g., the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi), but perhaps they are poor and underdeveloped due to recurrent violence caused primarily by other factors. Statistical analysis alone cannot reveal causality. [p. 392]
  1. Violence may set back “development,” but it also may sweep away older structures and make way for material improvement. Certainly not all poor countries have been caught in a conflict trap of recurring wars (e.g., Nepal and El Salvador). Some very poor countries have indeed experienced recurrent armed conflict (e.g., the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi), but perhaps they are poor and underdeveloped due to recurrent violence caused primarily by other factors. Statistical analysis alone cannot reveal causality. As numerous examples have shown, national development is not necessarily a ticket to safety, either for self or others. Countries considered as highly “developed” have experienced violent civil strife arising from deep-seated grievances, such as race riots in the United States, separatist violence in Spain, sectarian fighting in Northern Ireland, and IRA attacks in London. In the 2010s, sharply polarized politics in Europe and the United States took violent forms, including mass shootings (in the US and Norway), assassination of politicians (in Germany and the UK), and suicide attacks on the streets of European cities. Violence was also directed outwards. As discussed further below, the arguably most developed states in the world attacked Iraq in 1991, Kosovo and Serbia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, Libya in 2011, and Iraq again in 2003. [p. 392]
  1. A discussion of the relationship between development and conflict obviously depends on how we define development. Empirical studies in the positivist tradition typically disaggregate development along one or several dimensions—economic, social, and political—in order to assess the relationship to conflict. For instance, if development is understood primarily in terms of macroeconomic indicators (e.g., gross domestic product or GDP), one can investigate the relationship between growth rates and the incidence of conflict. If the focus is on social development, indicators of education, health, and distribution of material goods would be relevant. Ethnic diversity and divisions are classic indicators in studies of national integration. Elections, levels of corruption, or freedom of speech are used to indicate political development. Many recent studies have analyzed the relationship between such dimensions statistically, using indicators from generally accessible data banks. A very different approach is “the grand narrative,” which seeks to uncover the essence of the development process as it has unfolded historically. The classical scholars here are Karl Marx (1818–83) and Max Weber (1864–1920). Writing at a time of rapid change and much violence in Europe as well as beyond, they tried to understand “development” and the processes and patterns of social change. For Marx, development cannot be separated from conflict or understood as independent of it. Conflict is intrinsic to the development process, the motor that drives it forward as power and resources are redistributed to different classes and peoples. In a continuation of this grand narrative, Lenin argued that imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism; the imperialist nations, the “most developed” in conventional terms, would then succumb to war against each other. In Weber’s grand narrative, by contrast, capitalism is peaceful, emerging through rationalization of social and economic relations. Industrial capitalism overcomes its own internal tensions through rational planning and orderly competition for power within an arena of secular politics. The rules of competition are guarded by a state that has a legitimate monopoly of force. “Modernity,” then, is associated with societies ruled primarily by reason as enshrined in predictable, efficient, and secular institutions. This all suggests an exit from violence. In this tradition, a recent major effort to understand how societies develop mechanisms to ensure social order finds democratic institutions are of critical importance. [p. 393]
  1. The “Arab Spring” demonstrates that attempted transitions to more democratic pol­itics can be extremely destabilizing. After decades of stable but autocratic rule in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Libya, popular movements for democracy rapidly were replaced by prolonged civil war (Syria and Libya) or heightened repression (Egypt). Only one country (Tunisia) emerged with a relatively stable peace. The 2019 massive protests in Hong Kong may presage an­other transition as the pro-democracy movement tested the limits of mainland China’s tolerance for dissent under the “one-country, two-systems” arrange­ment set up when the sovereignty of Hong Kong was transferred from Great Britain to China in 1997. [p. 396]
  1. Efforts to reduce systemic and overlapping social, economic, and political inequalities in many countries have been at the heart of the development process. In a few historically rare cases, this has taken the form of social revolutions (as in France, Russia, and China); elsewhere, revolutionary movements have merged with the anti-colonial struggle (e.g., Algeria and Vietnam). Conflicts born of structural inequalities also have led to more recent civil wars. During the 1970s and 1980s, landless or poor peasants and workers fought the landed oligarchy that controlled the state and its armed forces in Central America. In Nepal, caste and class coincided to create highly unequal access to ed­ucation, economic opportunity, and political power. In both cases, radical movements mobilized the dis­enfranchised to challenge the state. The Nepal case il­lustrates what Frances Stewart (2002) calls horizontal inequalities, that is, coincidental boundaries among groups. When unequal access to political, economic, and social resources coincide with ethnic differences among groups, the divisions will deepen. Does sharp inequality in itself lead to violent up­heaval? Statistical analysis shows no clear link between inequality and level of conflict, yet stubborn evidence from historical cases of wars and revolutions suggests that inequality does matter. The most obvious explanation is that systematic inequality is a necessary but not sufficient condition for violent social transformation. “The mere exist­ence of privations is not enough to cause an insurrec­tion; if it were, the masses would always be in revolt,” Leon Trotsky observed in his History of the Russian Revolution. Dissatisfaction and despair are the raw material of violent change, but organized revolt against the status quo also requires mobilizing people (or solv­ing what is often called “the collective action” problem) and finding resources and support (consistent interna­tional support seems critical to success). If the state at the outset is weak, this greatly facilitates its downfall, as the revolutions in France, Russia, and China demon­strate. [p. 397]
  1. The premise of the standard peace-building pack­age is an expanded version of “the democratic peace” referred to above. In a peace-building context, it in­volved economic and political reforms believed to constitute the foundation for peaceful reconstruction and development. This became known as “the liberal peace.” Political reforms typically meant multi-party elections and the establishment of plural institutions. Civil society organizations and free media were en­couraged. On the economic side, reforms focused on market mechanisms, a minimalist but effective state, and macroeconomic stability. In addition, human rights monitoring was strengthened, and legal reforms patterned on Western legal traditions were initiated. The package was firmly anchored in the tradition of Western liberalism. [p. 402]
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