The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics)

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The first—selective violence—personalizes targeting. Alternatively, authorities can use indiscriminate violence, which involves col- lective targeting. Kalyvas argues that random violence cannot reliably induce compli- ance and may be counterproductive, because it does not provide a clear structure of incentives for noncollaboration and may even produce incentives for defection to insurgents. The exception is when there is a significant imbalance of power between the two actors and the gathering of information for selective violence is costly. There are many motivations for denunciations including the personal , but their supply is restricted by the likelihood of retaliation.

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Building on these ideas, Kalyvas develops a game theoretic argument on the probability of denunciations with Downloaded from http: Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. In sum, the equilibria suggest that the number of denunciations of fellow civilians has a concave curvilinear relationship with a change from incumbent to insurgent control of territory. Consequently, taking into account the costs and benefits of using violence, Kalyvas conjectures that political actors have an incentive to use selective homicidal vio- lence only in areas where they have secure but incomplete control to deter potential defectors and consolidate their control of the area.

Conversely, indiscriminate vio- lence tends to be used where one political actor is hegemonic and is perpetrated almost exclusively by the actor that has no control in the area; it is surprising that there will be little or no violence of either kind in zones of control parity. It is these theoretical insights that constitute the heart of the book. For example, as correctly pointed out by the author, these predictions contradict the multitude of theories suggesting that violence is most intense in the most contested areas.

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Furthermore, this argument is capable of explaining and predicting many of the pre- viously puzzling spatial and temporal variations in civil war violence. Clearly, the model simplifies reality, and Kalyvas articulates some reservations about this. In particular, he points to the problems in the assumption of individual ability to eval- uate risk and reduction of the reality of a civil war to a two-actor interaction. Examples include the assumptions that political actors are naturally reluctant to endogenize revenge cycles and that potential civilian denouncers have an exclusive relationship with either incumbent or insurgent organizations despite operating in an environ- ment where these organizations compete for public loyalties.

The lack of political actor response following a high number of denouncements in a fully controlled zone p. For example, due to defections, all civilians ini- tially associated with either side may have sufficient access to a secure political actor in controlled zones to credibly counter accusations.

Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics: The Logic of Violence in Civil War

Similarly, subsequent evi- dence about fence-sitting and dual identities in contested areas suggest that the assumption of exclusive association is troublesome, particularly alongside the pre- diction of increasing defection to the winning side in increasingly controlled areas. In my opinion, however, contrary to there being a flaw in the model, these con- testable assumptions point to possible fruitful venues of extension made possible by the very fact that the form selected makes the chosen assumptions transparent.

The theory of selective violence speaks to spatial variation in the level and type of violence resulting from changes in control by political actors in subnational units.

Showing the generalizeability of this theory, Kalyvas first surveys anecdotal evi- dence from subnational units in civil wars throughout the world. Second, he subjects the predictions of the theory to rigorous qualitative and quantitative tests against data collected in interviews, judicial archives, local histories, ethnographies, agricultural Downloaded from http: Book Reviews studies, research articles, and from secondary sources in one country—Greece.

The first set of tests focus on the region of Argolid in southern Greece. The second set of tests use data from across the country. Although the internal conflict in Greece involved a foreign occupation, the author makes a convincing case for why this conflict was a civil war.

By and large, the results of the analysis of the two phases of the war in Argolid support the hypotheses about the type and level of violence used by incumbents and insurgents as a result of change in their control over territory. Furthermore, the analysis attempts to resolve the question of endogeneity while controlling for other factors. The results question conventional wisdoms such as beliefs about the distribution of violence between incumbents and insurgents, and the thick description accompany- ing the multivariate analysis casts light on local paradoxes such as why entire vil- lages joined the Germans in when the war was being won by the Allies.

Importantly, the qualitative evaluation of the predictions of the theory also high- lights mispredictions and allows the author to speculate about their causes that may include positive reciprocity and revenge. The second set of tests examines the accu- racy of the predictions in the region of Almopia, and finally, across a number of regions in Greece. The results are largely consistent with various predictions of the theory but also highlight the distinctive features of Argolid and draw attention to factors that were not as evident in the regional analysis.

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Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR)

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