Disintegrationist Ideologies: Ethnic Mobilization and Violence

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Thesis

Reference

Disintegrationist Ideologies: Ethnic Mobilization and Violence

AGHDAM, Mohammad

Abstract

This thesis examines the role of ideology for political violence. It looks more specifically at the interaction of ideology and ethnicity - how and what type of ideologies of ethno-political organizations translate into mobilization and violence. The results suggest that the integration/disintegration characteristics of ideologies of ethno-political organizations is the main source for their choice of a violent strategy. While holding integrationist ideologies restrain organizations from using violence, having a territorial disintegrationist ideology or a normative disintegrationist ideology with rigid political and religious doctrines increases the likelihood of organizations using violence. Furthermore, these impacts depend on state institutions and regime type, and are conditioned by state behaviour. Repressive state behaviour and discrimination increase this probability especially in less democratic and authoritarian regimes. Overall, the results suggest that armed conflicts are not only driven by economic systems, but also by ideological struggles that must be considered for conflict resolution.

AGHDAM, Mohammad. Disintegrationist Ideologies: Ethnic Mobilization and Violence. Thèse de doctorat : Univ. Genève, 2020, no. SdS 147

DOI : 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:138005 URN : urn:nbn:ch:unige-1380059

Available at:

http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:138005

Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version.

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Disintegrationist Ideologies:

Ethnic Mobilization and Violence

THÈSE

présentée à la faculté des sciences de la société de l’Université de Genève

par

Mohammad Mohammadzadeh Aghdam

Sous la direction de

Prof. Simon Hug

pour l’obtention du grade de

Docteur ès sciences de la société mention science politique

Membres du jury de thèse:

Professeur Marco Giugni (Président du jury), University of Geneva Professeur Lars-Erik Cederman, ETH Zürich

Professeur Livia Isabella Schubiger, Duke University

Thèse no° 147 Genève, le 23 mars 2020

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La Faculté des sciences de la société, sur préavis du jury, a autorisé l’impression de la présente thèse, sans entendre, par-là, émettre aucune opinion sur les propositions qui s’y trouvent énoncées et qui n’engagent que la responsabilité de leur auteur.

Genève, le 22 avril 2020 Le doyen

Bernard DEBARBIEUX

Impression d’après le manuscrit de l’auteur

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use of violence. Particularly, ideologies become dangerous when they interact with ethnicity, defining a country’s chosen people with the right and duty to represent their interests and to protect their identity in opposition to other ethnic groups. Drawing on newly collected data on ethnic organizations, I investigate this interaction - how and what type of ideologies of ethno-political organizations translate into mobilization and violence. The results suggest that the integration/disintegration characteristics of ideologies of ethno- political organizations is the main source for their differences in the choice of a violent strategy over a peaceful strategy. While holding loose ideas and integrationist ideologies restrain organizations from using violence; in contrast, having a territorial disintegrationist ideology such as autonomy or separatist, or a normative disintegrationist ideology with highly political and religious systematic doctrines such as socialist, Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic ideologies, increase the likelihood of organizations’ use of a violent strategy.

Furthermore, the interaction analyses indicate that these impacts are dependent on state institutions and regime type and conditioned on state behaviour. Repressive state behaviour and discrimination have a large impact on an increase in the probability of using violence by organizations with disintegrationist ideologies especially in less democratic and authoritarian regimes. However, this probability decreases considerably in a country with a high level of democracy, which indicates that democracy moderates repression.

Overall, these results indicate that armed conflicts are not only driven by economic systems, but also ideological struggles that must be considered for conflict resolution. The instrumental use of ideologies for recruitment and mobilization is important yet they are also important as belief systems providing alternative visions of state governance. All collective violence have psychological, economic, geopolitical and institutional dimensions as well as an ideological dimension. But the causal significance of these dimensions may vary from case to case. Thus, ideological doctrines and principles rather than economic and autocratic interests determine insurgents’ organic and internal structures; their long-term vision, political agenda, organizational template, internal coherence and moral stance; the domination of a distance rhetoric from the host state; they justify and legitimize armed struggles and military plans; and, they address the masses and contribute to strategic and tactical gains on the battlefield. By taking the position of the group’s identity and group’s inequality, ideologies politicize its identity making it salient and articulate its grievances politically that become a basis for group formation and collective action. Thus, understanding insurgents’ ideological incentives and recognizing ideologies as a major functional component of armed conflicts opens up new opportunity for conflict resolution from a more profound perspective that increases the chances for success of any peace initiative and prevent insurgencies from occurring or escalating.

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Acknowledgements

The time spent pursuing my PhD has been one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life. I have amassed a wealth of knowledge and skills over this period. I am certain that I would not have been able to complete this journey without the support, mentorship, feedback, friendship, encouragement, counselling and tolerance of a great number of people. A great many people have contributed to the emergence of this thesis.

First and foremost, my supervisor Simon Hug deserves a special mention because it was through his support that I enrolled in the PhD programme at the University of Geneva within the framework of the R4D project on ‘Ethnic Power Relations in Fragile States’, and for this I will be forever grateful. Most of all, I am sincerely grateful to him for his crucial guidance throughout the project, his close readings of chapter drafts in a diligent and timely manner and providing me with constructive and vital feedback and insightful comments. His dedication, flexibility and concern from the first draft chapter to the last steps of printing the thesis are greatly appreciated. He was always ready to give advice and support throughout this work, but at the same time gave me the freedom to develop my own ideas, which has given me the opportunity to learn, raise the standard of my research and develop and improve my thinking abilities and skills. If this research has come to a successful finish, it is largely due to his excellent support.

Besides my advisor, I would like to express my special appreciation and thanks to other members of my Ph.D. Committee - not only for generously offering their time and support, but for their brilliant comments and suggestions and their intellectual contributions to my development as a scientist. I am thankful to Lars-Erik Cederman, who has inspired me in many ways with his theoretical and empirical contributions to the field of conflict studies to develop my current work. Especially his theoretical approach and methodological analysis of inequalities, grievances and conflict and the GROWup data project provided a solid and grounded basis for my thesis to build on. His insightful comments also helped to substantially improve the initial manuscript of my dissertation. I am also grateful to Marco Giugni for being a supportive, strong guiding force as Chair of my Ph.D. Committee. With his close reading of the manuscript, he provided constructive and critical feedback that helped to improve both the manuscript quality and my writing skills, especially given that my ﬁeld of research was far remote from his own. Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Livia Schubiger, whom I got to know while working in ‘Civilian Victimization and Conflict Escalation’ project. Her crucial remarks

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were certainly instrumental in shaping and substantially strengthening the manuscript of my dissertation. I really appreciate all the support and discussions with her in giving direction at crucial junctures during the start-up phase of my project and much valuable feedback at identifying the research topic and question and sharpening my ideas and focus.

During the project’s start-up phase, I was also greatly helped by many discussions with some other great people. Their encouragement and advice have been invaluable. In particular, I would like to give a huge thanks to Marlene Gerber, who mentored me during my master’s program at the University of Bern, for her inspiration, guidance and encouragement to pursue a PhD program. A very special thank you goes to Roland Rammelt, the scientific adviser at Biomedizinische und Naturwissenschaftliche Forschung (BNF) of the University of Bern, for the personal counselling and help in finding and starting work on a project of my own choice, which enabled me to establish, foster and expand my professional network and enter academia.

I am also grateful to all my colleagues and the R4D team, especially Fabien Cotter, Mirjam Hirzel, Seraina Rüegger and Manuel Vogt, for providing me with their support and assistance during working in the R4D project and throughout the writing of this dissertation. I would like to thank Kurt Annen for his time and helpful comments on some chapters of my thesis. I also want to acknowledge Dora Sari, Federico Ferrara, Elena Frech and Zbigniew Truchlewski, Robby Kapesa and Mallory Cannon with whom I shared an office during my dissertation. I am also thankful to the secretaries of the department of political science and international relations of the University of Geneva, Anne Gyger, Silvia David and Sonia Gouiller-Parisod, for their assistance all these years.

I am also immensely grateful for the generous funding I received from BNF and SNSF; without their financial support, this research would not have been possible. The funding allowed me to focus my entire attention to this research for four years, which was an inestimable help.

Finally, I am deeply indebted to family members and friends from ‘home’ and Switzerland, who have also been a source of inspiration, encouragement and moral support throughout this long journey.

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Abbreviations

ACV Academia de Cultura Valenciana

ANM Atlas Narodov Mira (Atlas of the People of the World) ANOVA Analysis of Variance

ASBP Arab Socialist Baath Party BO Badr Organization

BPLF Balochistan People’s Liberation Front CPN-M Communist Party of Nepal Maoist ELF Ethno-Linguistic Fractionalization EPR Ethnic Power Relations

EPRO Ethnic Power Relations Organizational dataset ERC Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya

ESEG Expert Survey of Ethnic Groups

FE Fixed Effects

FRELIMO Frente de Libertação de Moçambique GDP Gross Domestic Product

GMM Generalized Method of Moment GNP Gross National Product

ICC Intraclass Correlation Coefficients ICR International Conflict Research

IDP Islamic Dawa Party (Islamic Call Party) IR International Relations

ISC Islamic Supreme Council IV Instrumental Variables

JMB Jamaat-ul-Mujahidin Bangladesh

JVP Jathika Vimukti Peramuna (People's Liberation Front) KDP Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq

KR-20 Kuder-Richardson 20 Coefficient of Reliability KRG Kurdistan Regional Government

LR Likelihood Ratio MAR Minorities at Risk

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MHP Milliyetci Hareket Partisi (Nationalist Action Party)

ML Maximum Likelihood

MPLA Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola POS Political Opportunity Structure

PQ Parti Québécois

PUK Patriotic Union of Kurdistan RBP Recursive Bivariate Probit model

RE Random Effects

SIT Social Identity Theory SMM Structural Mean Model SRE State Religious Exclusivity TSCS Time-Series Cross-Sectional

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Chapter 1 - Introduction

Throughout history to the current day, ethnic conflicts have been one of the world’s most common forms of armed conflict. The ethno-nationalist share of total wars has been increasing steadily, from one fifth in 1814 to 75 percent in the post-Cold War era (Wimmer, Cederman, and Min 2009). Ethnic conflict is also one of the real dangers to global peace and security because it can result in state and regional destabilization and violence and tremendous human suffering. Grave human rights violations such as genocide and crimes against humanity, economic decline, state failure, environmental problems and refugee flows are some common consequences of ethnic violence. Some examples of the best- known and deadliest cases from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are the violent conflicts in the Balkans, Rwanda, Chechnya, Iraq, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Darfur; in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Reuter 2011); and the current religious and ethnic conflicts in the Middle East.

A popular claim is that ethnic cleavages generate internal armed conflict. Yet a vast literature emphasizes that ethnic cleavages matter for conflict only in combination with specific political and economic contexts and conditions such as the salience of group identity, and relative ethnic group inequality and grievances. It is here and within this framework, where the role of ideologies enters the picture. By attaching a system of norms and values to identity and making it politically salient and articulating group grievances politically, they provide a basis for group formation and translate their grievances into collective action and violence. In establishing an authoritative set of norms or values, ideologies not only create a sense of identity and bind individuals to a community (Apter 1964, Parsons 1951, Plamenatz 1970) serving to achieve ‘social solidarity and cohesion’ (Rejai 1991, 17), but also make identity salient and its borders clear and sharp, which leads to more group polarization and an escalation of intergroup conflict. With this research, I investigate this interaction between ideology and ethnic identity in a group mobilization process.

This chapter introduces this study by setting out the rationale, background and context for the research problem. This section begins with a discussion of the importance of peace and conflict studies, which hold that preventing violence and promoting peace are the necessary conditions for the development and survival of humanity. It then defines violence and its motivational and contextual factors including

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ideology. By situating my study within the field of peace and conflict studies, and more specifically ideology within the violence triangle, I conclude that the analysis of ideology is necessary and crucial for both the use and the restraint of violence by political organizations, making an important contribution to scholarly literature in explaining and understanding the variation in patterns of violence.

The following section outlines the existing gap in the literature, which leaves the door open for further research on the role of ideologies in civil war. It then describes my contribution’s attempt to close this gap. The final section provides an overview of the subsequent chapters of this thesis.

1.1 Background and Rationale for the Study

Human survival on our small planet faces various threats such as militarism, poverty, economic inequality, environmental degradation, rapid growth in the world population and human rights abuses (Galtung 1996). It is well documented that violent conflict and war have a destructive impact on societal development and increase poverty and mortality and hinder health, education and democratization (Brück, De Groot, and Bozzoli 2012). A World Bank report asserts that ‘while much of the world has made rapid progress in reducing poverty in the past 60 years, areas characterized by repeated cycles of political and criminal violence are being left far behind, their economic growth compromise and their human indicators stagnant’ (World Bank 2011, 1). It is estimated that world poverty in coming years will be concentrated in conflict-affected and fragile states (OECD 2014).

By addressing these problems and challenges facing our planet, peace and conflict studies aim at creating a new and better world order with focus on sustainable development, the promotion of human rights and the prevention of war (Galtung 1996). Creating a peaceful world and society is a necessary condition for the survival and development of humankind. Thus, conflict prevention needs to remain a top priority on the development agenda because preventive action and adequately designed policies not only can reduce the number of casualties, but also lead to more social, economic and political development (Themnér 2015). This is peace and conflict research’s goal, which is by its nature policy- oriented and aims at promoting and sustaining peace (Gleditsch, Nordkvelle, and Strand 2014, Wallensteen 2011).

The importance of peace and conflict study and doing research in this field are also crucial for building a peaceful and better world. ‘Peace/violence’ are similar to ‘health/disease’; like health studies, the idea of a system (of actors, of cells) of well-states and ill-states and the triangle diagnosis-prognosis-therapy can be applied to peace studies. Similarly, peace/violence have their conditions and contexts such as inequality, injustice and power asymmetry that need diagnosis or analysis. For instance, an equitable

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relation might be a good condition for the establishment of peace. Thus, the researcher must look for causes, conditions and contexts in various spaces – nature, human, social, world, time and culture (Galtung 1996). One of the important factors, which its analysis is important for both predicting violent conflict and preventing it, is ideology. The essential role of ideologies in promoting or restraining political organizations’ use of violence is emphasized by a vast literature on conflict (e.g. Asal, Brown, and Schulzke 2015, Kalyvas and Balcells 2010b).

1.1.1 Violence Triangle

The terms ‘peace’ and ‘violence’ are linked. Peace is the negation and absence of violence. Peace can be created by reducing violence (cure) and avoiding violence (prevention). To know about peace, we need to know about violence. Based on the EPR-Organizations Data Project, in this study violence is defined as ‘actions intentionally leading to the loss of life or consciously accepting the possibility of the loss of life’¹. However, some scholars define violence in broader terms meaning harming and/or hurting the body or mind, referred to as physical and mental violence respectively (Galtung 1996). For example, Galtung (1990, 292) defines violence in a broader sense as ‘avoidable insults to basic human needs, and more generally to life, lowering the real level of needs satisfaction below what is potentially possible’.

Furthermore, he classifies the basic human needs and their respectively negation (violence) into four categories: ‘survival needs (negation: death, mortality); well-being needs (negation: misery, morbidity);

identity, meaning needs (negation: alienation); and freedom needs (negation: repression)’ (Galtung 1990, 292) .

Regardless of whether we call it violence or contextual factors for violence, both cultural and structural dimensions play a significant role in leading to violence. Based on Galtung’s (1969) ‘violence triangle’, violence seems like an iceberg, from which a small part is visible, but a huge part is hidden (see Figure 1). This indicates that violent conflict is a complex process, which consists of different components such as behaviour (direct), contradiction (indirect/structural) and attitude (cultural). Thus, providing a complete picture and a full articulation and explanation of a violent conflict is only possible if all these dimensions and components are considered and linked together. All collective violence has institutional and cultural dimensions. For example, violence can be built into the structure in that it provides unequal power and consequently unequal life chances for the people such as an uneven distribution of resources, literacy/education and medical services and in some districts and for some groups, the power to decide over unevenly distributed resources. Repression and exploitation are two examples of structural

1 Vogt, Manuel and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch. 2016. ‘The EPR-Organizations Data Project: Project Description and Coding Instructions’. Codebook. ETH Zürich.

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dimension of collective violence that can be caused by economic and political structures (Galtung 1996).

As argued by Galtung (1996, 70), ‘deep inside every conflict lies a contradiction, something standing in the way of something else’. Contradiction explains that in any conflict situation there are some obstacles that block the cooperation between different actors. For example, the dispute over pursuing the same scarce goal by two actors can lead to aggression, conflict escalation and violence.

Violence

Cultural Dimension Structural Dimension

Figure 1: Violence Dimensions built on Galtung’s Violence Triangle

Likewise, some aspects of culture can be used for legitimization of violence and the violence built into the structure. Culture can change the red/wrong moral colour of an act to green/right or at least to yellow/acceptable, making reality opaque so that a violent act can be overlooked or at least not seen as violent. For example, to justify treating another group badly, groups need to and accept any cultural rationale handed to them. Social inequality, exploitation and repression need justification that the people can view as normal and natural. This is exactly the function of culture, which preaches, teaches, admonishes and eggs on (Galtung 1990). Violence is thus set in cultural norms and attitudes that is pro-

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violence or promotes violence. It shapes the perception, images and other psychological conditions we have of others and ourselves such as thoughts, enemy construction, negative stereotypes and feelings like anger and hate.

At any corner in the violence triangle, violence can start and then easily be transmitted to the other corners. As Galtung (1990) argues, different scenarios are conceivable for triggering violence. It can start in the structural corner or when direct and structural dimensions of violence combine or from the cultural via structural to direct violence. For instance, the disparity in goals and interests can create frustration that may lead to aggression turning inward as an attitude of hatred and outward as behaviour of verbal or physical violence. The aggressive behaviour also builds hostile and hatred views towards each other, which finally creates contradiction and intolerance. Alternatively, culture can shape beliefs and emotions hindering an individual’s acceptance of each other’s views, driving them into contradiction, which finally leads to aggressive behaviour. However, generally the cultural dimension of violence plays the substratum role, from which the other two dimensions of violence can derive their nutrients and legitimation. It justifies direct and structural dimensions of violence, so it is regarded as right, legitimized and thus rendered acceptable in society.

1.1.2 Ideology and Violence

Ideology is a good example of how culture can play an important role in legitimizing both peace and violence under some conditions. Not all ideologies are violent; some explicitly advocate nonviolence.

As Galtung (1996) argues, ideologies can be hard or soft, or an ideology can be comprised of hard or soft aspects. The harder varieties focus on some abstract, transcending goal and softer varieties focus on empathy, even compassion. Some examples of harder aspects of ideologies are the faith in the triumph of a transcendent God, the triumph of some ‘great’ nation and the triumph of some political utopia over the world (capitalism, socialism, democracy, fascism). For example, the greatest occidental ideologies, Islam and Christianity, liberalism and Marxism have both hard and soft aspects and varieties.

These ideologies and religions have some characteristics in common such as claiming to be single, valid carriers of truth and universalist, claiming validity all over the world and across time. Explaining the soft dimension of religions, he further argues that ‘In the soft versions all human beings are chosen and there is no Evil, Devil, Satan somewhere’ (Galtung 1985, 12). Highlighting a soft or hard dimension of a religion is a matter of interpretation of this religion. Taking Islam as an example, Sufis, which adopts a more immanent concept of God, is a soft version and interpretation of Islam. In contrast, there are hard interpretations of Islam such as the political, radical and fundamentalist interpretations of Islam.

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Based on these differences between ideologies in terms of their content, ideologies can be more peaceful or violent. Ideologies have been shown to play an important role in both fomenting and restraining political organizations’ use of violence (e.g. Asal, Brown, and Schulzke 2015, Kalyvas and Balcells 2010b). Leaders use violence as the best means to achieve some goals such as a new society, group defence and the definitive defeat of an enemy. Moreover, they use ideologies to justify and legitimize violence and mass killing in response to threats to the group (Valentino 2005). Gutiérrez Sanín and Wood (2014, 217) argue that without assuming a strong role for ideology, it is difficult to explain mass killings like the Holocaust and Rwanda. In support of this claim, Straus (2006) shows that the Hutu mass killing and genocide of the Tutsi was legitimized by the ideology that all Tutsi were enemies and a threat to the existence of the Hutu nation; therefore, the mass killing of Tutsi was seen as necessary for the continuity of the Hutu nation. Stanton (2009, 2013) found, however, that since 1989 more than 40 percent of states and rebels exercised restraint; moreover, states and rebels are different in exercising some types of restraint during civil war such as the absence of massacres, scorched earth campaigns, forced displacement, bombing or strafing of civilian areas (Stanton 2009, 2013). These differences might be explained by ideological differences rather than countrywide social structures and cultural norms (Wood 2012, Cohen, Green, and Wood 2013).

This difference implies that the analysis of ideology is necessary and important for both the political organizations’ use and restraint of violence. In answering this question ‘Is ideology important for the analysis of civil war?’ Gutiérrez Sanín and Wood (2014, 213) state that ‘at first glance, the answer is yes: organized violence is about ideas as well as power’ and ‘they divide and fight around ideas. And they use ideas when taking literally life and death decisions’. Furthermore, they argue that ideology plays an essential role in the functioning of armed groups and is important for explaining the variation in armed group behaviour. The crucial role of ideologies in prolonging and fuelling violent conflict should be assessed as part of a realistic course of action. This not only helps with understanding the nature of internal warfare since 1989, but also developing formulas for resolving these conflicts (Ugarriza 2009). Therefore, side-lining ideology leaves some war-related phenomena unexplained such as mass killing and genocide (Levi 1958, Gutiérrez Sanín and Wood 2014), restraints by armed actors such as refraining from rape of civilians (Cohen 2013, Wood 2006, 2009) and avoidance of using violence against civilians (Gutiérrez Sanín and Wood 2014).

These examples suggest that the analysis of ideology and its relationship to group strategy and institutions can make an important contribution to scholarly explaining and understanding of variation in patterns of violence (Gutiérrez Sanín and Wood 2014). One such analysis and crucial contribution would be the analysis of the interaction of ideologies with ethnic identities in a group mobilization

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process, which is still unexplored and poorly understood. Ideologies ‘become particularly dangerous when they define a chosen people (gender, generation, race, class, nation) with the right and duty to spread and defend the faith’ (Galtung 1996, 7). Ethnic groups tend to articulate their identities (in particular, ethnic identity) and grievances in ideological terms to become a basis for a group formation and collective action. For example, the secessionist movements target a specific ethnic group with a common national identity. The national ideology can help to articulate and reinforce a belief in a common identity and use it for the mobilization of their target group in support of their secessionist program. Moreover, the nationalist ideology helps the secessionist groups to articulate the stateless grievance by emphasizing the target group should have its own state and being under the role of other ethnic groups is injustice and harms the group (Pavkovic and Radan 2016).

Despite its importance for promoting and restraining of violence, ideology as a main explanation for violence is explicitly absent in the key theories and empirical works on civil war in the post-Cold War era. During the Cold War, ideology was the primary explanation, used as a minimally structured set of beliefs (Collier 2000a, Kaldor 2012) to which people identified themselves as either pro-West and capitalist or pro-Soviet Union and socialist or Marxist (Stewart 2009). After the Cold War, with the emergence of rationalist explanations a new literature on civil war appeared in the late 1990s that focused more on economic explanations and the emergence of a dominant paradigm based on greed versus grievance for explaining armed conflicts neglecting the role of ideology as the main factor for civil war (Ugarriza and Craig 2013). Since the beginning of this century, scholarship on civil war has been revived, yet ideology as a systematic set of ideas relating to group objectives, program for action, identification, grievances and challenges, and as a source of variation in institutions and strategy is neglected in key works. Rather, ideology is often replaced by structural variables or situational incentives in these studies. However, more recent literature realized the importance of ideology for mobilization reintroducing the idea into the analytical landscape of political organizations, but it is often only implicitly and to a limited degree (Gutiérrez Sanín and Wood 2014). This review of the literature shows that a gap remains leaving the door open for further research on the role of ideologies in civil war.

1.2 Research Project

This research addresses the limitations in the existing literature. The theoretical relevance and the impact of different types of ideologies on ethnic mobilization and their interaction with ethnic identity in group mobilization processes are still underdeveloped and poorly understood. It aims to close this gap by

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developing a general theoretical model and testing it with new data collected for this purpose. In this section, first, I introduce the research project and research questions the thesis addresses and attempts to answer. Then, I discuss the contributions that this study makes to the scholarly debate and literature on conflict.

1.2.1 Central Argument and Research Questions

Ideology as defined in this study - a socially shared fundamental belief system of a group and its members - reproduces specific forms of intergroup relations and societal structures at the socio- cognitive level with their implementation shapes social practices at the microsocial level. It can have impact on intergroup relations in different ways such as conflict and struggle, competition and cooperation. As a source for variation in armed group behaviour, ideology provides perspectives for interpreting the world, specific programs, institutions, strategies and structures for the armed groups.

Some ideologies identify objectives, friends and enemies and prescribe specific life instructions and strategies such as secession through warfare (Gutiérrez Sanín and Wood 2014). The variation across armed groups in organizational forms, type of violence they choose and their relation to ideology is emphasized by many scholars (Arjona 2010, Mampilly 2011, Sinno 2008). However, ideological differences as a main source for mobilization and variation in group institutions and norms (Blattman and Miguel 2010) and their interaction with ethnic identity in group mobilization processes are still underexplored and poorly understood. There is still little systematic theoretical and empirical research on the role of different ideologies in collective action and ethnic conflicts. Yet these theoretical and empirical limitations raise questions: do ideological differences of ethno-political organizations impact on the choice of ethnic mobilization strategies? When and how does the ideology of ethno-political organizations contribute to the unity of ethnic movements and increase the risk of violence? What type of ideologies and how do they lead to conflict escalation and war between ethnic groups?

This research attempts to provide an answer to these questions by developing a more generalized theoretical model of ideology-ethnic cleavage interactions. A promising opportunity for the development of such a theoretical model can be found in social identity and grievance approaches, in which the role of ideologies is still underexplored. Given the multiple associations among ideologies and intragroup cohesion and intergroup conflict, one possibility is that these variables are linked in a mediation from through two factors: identity and grievance. The intergroup conflict is either a conflict of interests resulting from competition for resources or it is a conflict of values and identities resulting from competing identities. This model argues that group ideologies, on the one hand, by definition represent group interests and grievances, and on the other hand, as the fundamental axiomatic principles

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for group formation, existence and maintenance shape group identities and values. By positioning themselves against ethnic inequality and supporting the group’s ethnic identity, some ideologies unify ethnic movements and translate ethnic mobilization into violence.

By attaching a system of norms and values to collective identity, some ideologies make it politicized and politically salient for shaping intergroup relations. This moves intergroup relations into a phase of competition over symbolic and non-material issues such as values and identities that consequently leads to the development of a distancing rhetoric dominating intragroup and intergroup discourses. Finally, intergroup comparison and competition lead to ingroup bias and favouritism and outgroup negativity and hostility. Moreover, ideologies articulate ethnic grievances in political ways, offer the ethnic group a response to a set of grievances, and address these responses to the host state authorities. This mechanism moves the intergroup relations into a phase of mobilization by ethnic groups and repression by the state, which finally can lead to violence. Disintegrationist ideologies of ethno-political organizations are good examples of the above-mentioned characteristics. In other words, the integration/disintegration characteristics of ideologies of ethno-political organizations is the main source for their differences in the choice of a violent strategy over a peaceful strategy. One fundamental function of ideologies is to determine the position of a group in power hierarchy and in relation to other groups, around which different social and symbolic boundaries are drawn. Based on this position dimension, I categorize ideologies in this study into two main categories: integrationist and disintegrationist ideologies. While integrationist ideologies demand for more inclusion into the polity and power-sharing arrangements, disintegrationist ideologies do not agree with established polity/boundaries and attempt to create new boundaries of their political community. The idea of state transformation and the boundaries of political community are defined in nationalist ethnic-territory terms demanding a new polity or state based on a specific territory for the ethnic group as well as in normative terms providing different political and religious interpretation of statehood based on specific religious and political doctrines and principles.

More specifically, I hypothesize that those ideologies that focus on the change in territorial and/or normative intergroup boundaries in favour of one ethnic group and in support of its ethnic identity have a positive impact on the unification of ethnic movements and push them towards violence. By changing intergroup boundaries – territorial or normative – some ideologies lead to change in intergroup power- relations, interests and values. In such situations, both group interests and identities become conflictual.

Conflicting interests and identities imply various kinds of social conflicts and are so fundamental that these social conflicts become a matter of everyday life. For example, territorial disintegrationist ideologies like autonomy or/and separatist, or organizations having normative disintegrationist

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ideologies with highly systematic doctrines such as political and religious doctrinal ideologies are more likely to use a violent strategy. These resistant boundary-making ideologies as symbolic boundaries, on the one hand, have psychological functions such as separating people into groups and generate feelings of similarity and social identity, which decrease intragroup distance and increase intergroup distance and can lead to intergroup polarization, hostility and aggression. On the other hand, as social boundaries, they represent interests of groups by presenting benefits in grievance forms such as the removal of economic and political discrimination or protection from the physical harm of the host state. They offer a group response to a set of grievances and address these responses to the host state authorities that finally lead to confrontation, conflicts of interest, aggression and violence against government as the source of frustration.

1.2.2 Intended Contributions

With this dissertation, I make two valuable contributions to the scholarly debate and literature on conflict. First, I contribute to theory development because little scientific research has attempted to include ideology as the main factor in a theoretical framework and models on conflict. Much of the existing literature emphasizes grievance (Cederman, Gleditsch, and Buhaug 2013, Gurr 1970, 2000) and opportunity structures (Collier and Hoeffler 2001, Collier and Sambanis 2002, Fearon and Laitin 2003) as significant factors in conflict and disregard ideology in conflict analysis, viewing it as something abstract or irrational (Mock and Homer-Dixon 2015). While ‘much of the early literature on post-Cold War armed movements characterizes these movements as nonideological’, ‘the literature on political parties does analyse the role of ideas and ideology and yet political parties that have emerged out of armed conflict are treated as ‘outliers’ and ‘exceptional’’ (Curtis and Sindre 2019, 388). Yet this research draws attention to the crucial role of group ideologies in conflict escalation and violence by arguing that ideologies not only include a constative (saying) function/dimension that describes reality, but also a performative (doing) function that transforms this reality and introduces new effects into it.

With this thesis, I emphasize that ideologies not only have instrumental use for recruitment, internal cohesion and mobilization but they also provide alternative visions of state governance.

Theorizing ideology as the performative enactment of collective behaviour helps to explain why and how ideology has an enduring role in individuals’ and groups’ lives. By arguing that ethnic cleavages and general grievances are not sufficient factors for violent conflict, this study emphasizes why ideologies articulate and translate group grievances and identities into collective action and violence.

As Mock and Homer-Dixon (2015) argue, to create a sense of group identity, identify enemies, legitimize aggression and take collective action emotions and shared group beliefs are necessary.

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Ideology, as a distinctive system of normative and/or purportedly factual ideas, not only provides political worldviews for groups and their members, but also guides their political behaviour. As belief systems, ideologies provide a framework and plan for action in a variety areas such as conducting a war (Graham 2007, Ron 2001, Thaler 2012, Ugarriza and Craig 2013), the distribution of resources in society and ideas about the nature of the state (Curtis and Sindre 2019).

Moreover, this research enriches the recent trend of focusing on the internal institutions of armed groups (Gates 2002, Gutiérrez Sanín and Giustozzi 2010, Gutiérrez Sanín 2012, Hoover Green 2011, Manekin 2012, Staniland 2010, Wood 2009) by bringing ideology back into the analytical landscape of political organizations. Most previous research focused on the state and ethnic group levels (Gurr 1970, 2000, Collier and Hoeffler 2001, Collier and Sambanis 2002, Fearon and Laitin 2003) or the role of state institutions and state strength (Gates 2002). However, the research neglected organizational power (Drake 1998, Sánchez-Cuenca and de la Calle 2009, Weinberg, Ami, and Arie 2009) with few studies focused on the organizational level of analysis (LaFree and Ackerman 2009). Ideological differences as a main source for ethnic mobilization and variation in group institutions and norms is underexplored (Blattman and Miguel 2010), with these differences often treated as exogenous (Gutiérrez Sanín and Wood 2014). This absence indicates that all armed groups are alike and the difference in ideology has no role in the variation in institutions and the strategy of armed groups (Gutiérrez Sanín and Wood 2014). Conversely, this study emphasizes that ideologies as the main source for organizations’ internal institutions make a difference in the kind of institutions, strategies and various features they prescribe for organizations. And, this study supports the argument that the internal organic structure of insurgent groups, the internal disciplines and cohesion of organizations and the justification of military plans and struggle are more determined by doctrines associated with ideologies than economic and autocratic interests (Ugarriza 2009).

Second, methodological concerns include data problems, which is a serious challenge to research on ethnic political organizations. Research on ethnic conflict and mobilization produced conflicting results stemming from the inherent problem of the data on ethnic groups and organizations. The use of macrolevel indices is problematic (Cederman, Wimmer, and Min 2010) because they are based on the work of anthropologists and linguists. Thus, they are not measurements of politically relevant ethnic groups such as fractionalization indices for African countries, which include a high number of languages and ethnic groups but only a few are politically salient at any given time (Posner 2004). Furthermore, they reflect more the country’s demography (Chandra and Wilkinson 2008), which is not always associated with the ‘actual constellation of power at the state center’ (Cederman, Wimmer, and Min 2010, 89). At the group level, most research uses data with serious limitations and shortcomings;

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therefore, they are less relevant for general tests of comprehensive sample and demographic size and reduces the horizon for comparison. For instance, the Atlas Narodov Mira (ANM, Atlas of the People of the World) contains little information about religious cleavages and nothing about the status of political groups (Cederman, Gleditsch, and Buhaug 2013). Similarly, the Minorities at Risk (MAR) dataset excludes groups in power from systematic consideration and the Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior (MAROB) is restricted to the Middle East region (Cederman, Wimmer, and Min 2010).

The Ethnic Power Relations (EPR) dataset made a good step forward by providing annual data on politically relevant ethnic groups. Cederman, Wimmer, and Min (2010, 91) argue that ‘these theoretical, sampling, and measurement problems hinder the development of precise and testable hypothesis about which mechanisms connect ethnonationalist politics to political violence’. To address these problems and take up this challenge, the EPR dataset project has collected more accurate data on active ethnic groups that politically represent the group by adding measures of group access to state power. The EPR dataset covers all sovereign states and includes annual data on over 800 politically relevant ethnic groups and their access to state power in every country from 1946 to 2017 (Cederman, Wimmer, and Min 2010, Vogt 2014). Drawing on the EPR-Organizational (EPRO) dataset, which is built on the EPR dataset, I provide new data to investigate the impact of ideological differences in ethnic mobilization, which is of crucial importance to the study of ethnic-ideology interaction.

The EPRO dataset includes ethnic organizations that represent group interests at the national level of politics in a random sample of 37 countries from 1946 to 2013. The criterion for including of organizations in the dataset ‘refers to the target of mobilization, rather than the structural set-up of the organization’², which makes the EPRO dataset relevant for my study that focuses on the role of ideologies in group mobilization process. One of the advantages of the EPRO dataset for my purposes is that it includes different types of ideologies of ethnic organizations such as integrationist and territorial disintegrationist ideologies such as autonomist and separatist ideologies. Since the EPRO dataset does not contain information on the normative dimension of ideologies of these ethnic organizations in a second step, I collected separately additional information on the normative political and religious ideologies of these organizations like socialist, fascist, Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu. Including different types of ideologies of ethnic organizations makes the dataset more comparable and thus more relevant for answering my research question that investigates why and how ideological difference can be a source for difference in organizational choices of a violent strategy.

2 Vogt, Manuel and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch. 2016. ‘The EPR-Organizations Data Project: Project Description and Coding Instructions’. Codebook. ETH Zürich.

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Another advantage is that the EPRO dataset includes organizations that have both used and not used violence.

Finally, according to my theoretical model intergroup conflict and civil war are the outcome of a complex process that should be broken down to multiple interactions between state and organizations and different hierarchy levels such as country, ethnic group and organization levels. In other words, the variation in dependent variable (i.e. the change in the choice of violence against government) at the lower level (organization level) can be explained through independent variables that apply to three different levels: macro (country), meso (ethnic group) and micro (organization) levels. To consider these context/level effects and the effects of time-invariant variables in my dataset and within as well as between variable effects I use a multilevel probit model for analysing the time-series cross-sectional (TSCS) data with a binary dependent variable (i.e. violence against government). Finally, since the relationship and interaction between state and dissident or repression and mobilization play a crucial role in the escalation of conflict I include two variables in my models to account for the role of state institutions and state behaviour.

1.3 Outline of the Thesis

This thesis is structured as follows. Chapter 1 presents the background and the specific study objective, which is to investigate the impact of ethnic organizations’ ideology on their choice of a violent strategy.

By situating my study within the field of peace and conflict studies and more specifically ideology within the violence triangle, it attempts to draw attention to the importance of understanding ideology for both violence prevention and peacebuilding, which are the necessary conditions for the development and survival of humanity. This study shows that the cultural dimension of violence, including ideologies from which violence and its structural dimension derive their nutrients and legitimation, remains fairly unexplored and poorly understood in the conflict literature. Finally, this chapter presents my research project, which attempts to close this gap and contribute to the existing literature by developing a more generalized theoretical model to argue that ideologies and violence are linked in a mediation form through two mediating factors: identity and grievance.

Chapter 2 reviews the literature on ideology and civil war in order to identify the gaps and to ground the development of a suitable theoretical framework to examine the link between ideology and violence.

By criticizing the dominant greed/grievance duality framework as the main predictor of civil wars in the literature on conflict, it indicates that the important role of ideology for explaining variation in armed group behaviour and patterns of violence is neglected. Despite the importance of ideology in recent

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literature and its reintroduction into the analytical landscape of political organizations through a focus on the motivating and cohesive role of religious, ideology in conflict analysis is still discussed only implicitly and to a limited degree. The chapter also explores the gap between ideology and violence through the ideological link of identity and grievance, which allows for further research on the role of ideologies in civil war. The discussion focuses on these two arguments: first, for certain identities to become politically salient in playing a role in conflict and violence they must be attached to ideologies through a variety of systems of ideas, values and norms; and second since grievances are too common and widespread to be considered triggers for violence, ideologies must make the latent grievances manifest, translate and turn into collective action and violence. The final section discusses state-dissent interactions and contextual factors. Since ideology and political agenda of ethnic movements can be viewed as a collective challenge to the status quo governments respond in different ways such as accommodation or/and repression. A vast literature has shown that both domestic and international factors have a significant impact on the process of intergroup interactions and relations and its development in conflict direction.

In Chapter 3, I develop a theoretical model that underpins this research, linking ideologies to violence.

The first section discusses the role of ideologies in shaping intergroup relations. The difference in ideologies’ content, structure and organization provides the basis and criteria for group differentiation as well as the basis for the peaceful or conflictual relationship between groups. While ideologies of the group in power are an instrument of the ruling ethnic group and serve to sustain and legitimize its power and domination over other ethnic groups, the disintegrationist ideologies - territorial and normative - challenge this domination through providing alternative proposals to the status quo, changing the intergroup boundaries both territorial and normative and consequently changing intergroup power- relations. In the chapter’s second section, I outline two mechanisms that link ideologies to violence:

identity-violence and grievance-violence mechanism. Ideologies as the bearer of group identities and group grievances determine the group’s ideological position towards hierarchical inequalities and the group’s ethnic identity. Consequently, ideology not only shapes groups’ identity and grievances, but also makes them politically salient for intergroup relations and conflict.

The research methodology and design is explained in Chapter 4, which is a quantitative TSCS research design with two types of independent variables (integrationist and disintegrationist ideologies) and a binary dependent variable (violence against government). The section outlines the data collection methods, techniques, processes and stages. The rationale for selecting the EPR-Organizations dataset in this analysis, with the intention to build on the dataset and complete it with additional data for ideologies of ethnic organizations, is discussed. It explains the EPRO sample size, its characteristics and criterion

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sampling, which contains 17,316 observations for 666 ethno-political organizations from 142 ethnic groups of 37 countries for the years from 1946 to 2013. In the following section, the operationalization and categorization of ideologies is discussed. I operationalized ideology at organizational level as a socially shared fundamental belief system of a group and its members. Based on two core attributes of these belief systems - coherence (internal) and contrast (external) – I categorized ideologies into two main categories: integrationist and disintegrationist ideologies. Furthermore, it discusses the exclusive and exhaustive characteristics of these categories and the validity and reliability issues. In the final section, I explain the statistical methods used for analysing the TSCS data with a binary dependent variable (using violent strategy). According to my theoretical model, the variation in the dependent variable is explained through three different levels: country, ethnic group and organization. Thus, the need for utilizing a random effects model is discussed, which can deal with hierarchical and multilevel data considering the residual terms at both higher and lower levels and considering the effects of time- invariant variables.

Chapter 5 presents the results and findings of the statistical analysis carried out from the data collected for testing the hypotheses and answering the research questions. It is divided into two sections. The descriptive statistics section illustrates the sample data and variables through graphs and tables. It further describes the variables (dependent, independent and control) used in this study. The second section presents the quantitative results of inferential statistics. First, the results of multilevel probit models for testing the hypotheses (H1-H3) are presented. Then, the results of control variables included in statistical models are explained. Finally, the marginal effects of interaction between state and organizations are reported showing the impact of state repressive behaviour and institutions on ideologies of ethnic organizations leading to violence.

Chapter 6 discusses the reported findings of statistical analysis in Chapter 5 with regard to the research questions and the theoretical model raised in Chapter 3 and assesses their relevance for existing knowledge in the field. The first and second section discuss the results of territorial and normative disintegrationist ideologies in the light of my theoretical argument that these ideologies provide alternative visions of state governance, which leads to the change of intergroup boundaries in the favour of the aggrieved ethnic group and in support of its ethnic identity. Through this change, the intergroup relationship enters into a phase of conflict of interests between the ruling and the ruled group. The final section provides a case study of ideological conflict in Iraq. It discusses the Kurdish struggle for autonomy and independence as an example of territorial disintegrationist ideologies. In contrast, the conflict between Sunni and Shia Arabs in Iraq has a strong normative dimension based on principles drawn from two main branches of Islamic religion – Sunni and Shiite religion.

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Finally, the concluding chapter, Chapter 7, reviews the research findings with regard to the research questions and theoretical framework raised by the existing literature. The chapter describes the general conclusions based on this study’s findings. It makes a deduction and synthesizes the results of the research questions and subsequent discussion. Then, it discusses the importance of this research and its empirical, theoretical and methodological contributions to peace and conflict studies and its implication for future research. Finally, the limitations of this study regarding the sample, data collection and data analysis are considered and suggestions for further research are presented.

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Chapter 2 - Literature Review

In this chapter, I review the current state of scholarship on the linkage between ideology and violence, on the one hand, and the role of state in this violent conflict and its relationship to dissidents, on the other hand. Ethnic mobilization is a result of a constant interaction between internally heterogeneous ethnic groups, ethnic movements representing these groups and the state. The ideology and political agenda of an ethnic movement can be seen as a collective challenge to the state and other groups. By taking position to group’s identity and making it politically salient as well as articulating its grievances in political terms ideologies challenge the status quo. Viewing internal dissent as a real treat to the status quo and to government’s grasp on power the government responds in a way that reasserts its control either by accommodations or repression. Moreover, the nature of state response is determined by state institutions and regime type.

The organization for this chapter is as follows. The first section sheds light on the role of ideology in civil war literature. It discusses the chronological role of ideology in different phases in the development of civil war literature, showing how and why its role increased or diminished in these various stages.

The discussion then focuses on the two main roles that ideology has shown to play for armed groups:

motivational and cohesive, and in various patterns of violence. The following two sections (2.2 and 2.3) focus on the gaps in the current literature on ethnic conflict to which I can contribute to the literature.

More specifically, they discuss identity and grievance and how ideology is neglected but can play a crucial role. In Section 2.2, the relationship between identity and violence and the link between identity and ideology are discussed. The discussion explores the argument that to become politically salient and therefore to play a role in conflict and violence, certain identities must be attached to an ideology’s system of ideas, values and norms. Section 2.3 discusses the relationship between grievance and violence as well as its correlation with ideology. The main argument is that since grievances are too common and widespread to be considered a trigger for violence, ideologies must make the latent grievances manifest, translate and turn them into collective action and violence. Section 2.4 discusses state-dissident interactions. It reviews the literature on repression from different aspects such as rationalist, structuralist and cultural approaches. Finally, Section 2.5 concludes.

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2.1 The Role of Ideology in the Literature on Civil War

Some scholars distinguish between old and new wars arguing that while ‘new civil wars are characteristically criminal, depoliticized, private, and predatory; old civil wars are considered ideological, political, collective, and even noble’ (Kalyvas 2001, 100). The new wars are primarily based on privatized networks of state and non-state actors working beyond the conventional governments and using transborder resource networks of state incumbents, social groups, diasporas and so on, instead of conventional armies (Duffield 2001). In most accounts, the dividing line between the old and new wars is the end of the Cold War. While wars during the Cold War were primarily international and interstate, those in the post-Cold War era are intrastate wars, occurring within national borders (Wallensteen 2014, Patel 2012). These differences are regarded by some scholars as a shift from old wars to new ones (Patel 2012, Duffield 2001) that changed the nature of armed conflict (Patel 2012).

Walter (2017) highlights three distinct waves of civil wars in the post-World War II era distinguished by their own distinct attributes. She states that these waves have altered and influenced how we understand civil wars and the research and literature on civil wars. The first wave, which started roughly in 1951 and ended with the close of the Cold War, was dominated by class-based rebellions heavily funded by superpowers that produced a wave of literature with a focus on peasant mobilization and revolution (Gurr 1970, Scott 1976, Tilly 1978, Popkin 1979, Petersen 2001, Wood 2003). The second wave, which started in 1992 and ended after 2001, was dominated by ethnic and separatist claims and demands and resulted in a large body of research on the role of ethnicity and identity in civil wars (Ellingsen 2000, Quinn, Hechter, and Wibbels 2003, Cederman and Girardin 2007, Fearon, Kasara, and Laitin 2007, Wucherpfennig et al. 2012, Denny and Walter 2014). The third, new phase started with the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and is characterized by the predominant role of religion and ideology and the significant impact of technology – the Internet – on shaping behaviour in novel and unexplored ways. To understand the multiple dimensions of the new phase of civil war, additional research on the role of ideology and information technology in these conflicts is needed (Walter 2017).

Based on this interpretation of conflict literature, some scholars argue that these waves of civil wars and their attributes have also impacted the literature on ideology in different ways. The literature on the role of ideology in civil war can also be divided into three phases: Cold War, post-Cold War and recent.

During the Cold War, ideology was the primary explanation of wars and defined minimally as a structured set of beliefs (Ugarriza and Craig 2013) with which people identified as either pro-West and capitalist or pro-Soviet and socialist or Marxist (Stewart 2009). But after the Cold War, with the emergence of rationalist explanations, a new literature on civil war appeared in the late 1990s, which

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focused more on greed- and grievance-based explanations of armed conflict (Ugarriza and Craig 2013).

Economic explanations of conflict such as greed explanations, which emphasize that combatants are motivated by greed factors such as taking power or control of natural resources, illegal industries and public finances (Ballentine and Nitzschke 2005, Berdal and Keen 1997, Collier 2000b, Collier and Hoeffler 2004, Fearon 2005, Keen 1998) ‘became dominant and found great appeal among scholars and policy makers alike’ (Ugarriza and Craig 2013, 447). However, some literature focused on socioeconomic and political grievances such as marginalization, repression, unemployment and underdevelopment that push individuals towards violent action (Blomberg and Hess 2002, Elbadawi and Sambanis 2002, Fearon and Laitin 2003, Miguel, Satyanath, and Sergenti 2004, Nafziger and Auvinen 2002, Spoor 2004, Stewart 2008, Stewart and Fitzgerald 2001).

The dominant greed/grievance duality framework’s choice to ignore other important factors aside such as the anthropological and psychological features of organized violence (Ugarriza and Craig 2013), which emphasize ideological and identity-based mobilization and group competition based on fear of subrogation or extinction of identity and culture (Horowitz 1985, Petersen 2002), has resulted in criticism. Ugarriza (2009) argues that the poor understanding and undermining of ideology’s role in the post-Cold War era, which is a key component of modern insurgency, has negatively impacted scientific research: It has not only weakened scholars’ ability to coherently explain the dynamics of contemporary armed conflicts, but also reduced the chances of success for international and state conflict settlement policies. To resolve the conflict puzzle and to answer the unresolved questions, many rationalist and non-rationalist scholars want to move beyond the greed/grievance duality (Ballentine and Sherman 2003, Berdal and Malone 2000, Berdal 2005, Sambanis 2004) in suggesting a comprehensive framework for research on armed conflict that considers both rationalist and non-rationalist perspectives (Arnson and Zartman 2005, Ballentine and Sherman 2003, Duyvesteyn and Angstrom 2005). Zartman’s (2005) theory is an example of an attempt to add a new dimension including identity and ideology (creed) to the existing greed and grievance framework, which he called the ‘need, creed, and greed’

framework.

Different reasons have been advanced for these absence and interpretation. Some researchers attribute the idea of a de-ideologized world to Fukuyama’s philosophical propositions and Collier’s economic explanations, which became dominant in the post-cold era and greatly influenced the understandings of post-Cold War conflict by undermining the role of ideology (Ugarriza 2009). Fukuyama’s (1989, 4) main argument was that the age of ideological struggle ended with the Cold War and liberal democracy might therefore constitute the ‘end point of mankind’s ideological evolution’. This vision became an appropriate context for the development of Collier’s explanations on armed conflict. By emphasizing

Disintegrationist Ideologies: Ethnic Mobilization and Violence

Thesis

Reference

Disintegrationist Ideologies: Ethnic Mobilization and Violence

Disintegrationist Ideologies:

Ethnic Mobilization and Violence

Mohammad Mohammadzadeh Aghdam

Prof. Simon Hug

Docteur ès sciences de la société mention science politique

Table of Contents

Abstract ... 7

Acknowledgements ... 8

Abbreviations ... 10

Chapter 1 - Introduction ... 13

Chapter 2 - Literature Review ... 29

Chapter 3 - Ideology and Ethnic Power Relations: The Change of Intergroup Boundaries and Violence ... 60

Chapter 4 - Research Methodology ... 100

Chapter 5 - Results ... 126

Chapter 6 - Discussion ... 150

Chapter 7 - Conclusion ... 172

References ... 187

Appendix ... 212

Abstract

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Chapter 1 - Introduction

1.1 Background and Rationale for the Study

1.1.1 Violence Triangle

1.1.2 Ideology and Violence

1.2 Research Project

1.2.1 Central Argument and Research Questions

1.2.2 Intended Contributions

1.3 Outline of the Thesis

Chapter 2 - Literature Review

2.1 The Role of Ideology in the Literature on Civil War