The Logic of Violence in Civil War

Stathis Kalyvas: The Logic of Violence in Civil War New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, xviii + 485 pages, ISBN: 0-521-85409-1.

The Logic of Violence in Civil War by Stathis Kalyvas is a serious and pioneering attempt to demonstrate the mechanisms that explain violence in the context of civil war. Kalyvas examines the dynamics of internal wars by focusing on the micro level and by differentiating between the broad concept of civil war and the phenomenon of civil war violence. He shows that violence in a civil war can neither be reduced to irrational factors, such as strong emotions or illogical behavior, nor to pre-existing ideological cleavages. On the contrary, violence against civilians has its own rationale and logic.

Kalyvas' study breaks new ground for political science and the study of violence in two senses. First, his analysis separates the violence-and-civil-war pairing by distinguishing 'between violence as an outcome and violence as a process' (p. 21, emphasis in original). While previous studies focused on violence as a direct outcome of civil wars, Kalyvas understands civil war as an exogenous shock and deals with violence as a dependent variable. His nuanced theory breaks civil war violence down into two basic categories. Indiscriminate violence is executed en masse without regard for the actions or preferences of individuals. In contrast, selective violence describes aggression directed towards individuals who are targeted based on specific information about their actions.

This distinction between indiscriminate and selective violence leads Kalyvas to a second novel contribution. Contrary to conventional literature on violence and civil wars, Kalyvas understands the use of violence as rational. For him, violence is the end product of many individual rational actions by political actors and civilians, who work to fulfill their interests within a given territorial space. More specifically, Kalyvas claims that despite the frequency and planning...