Kalyvas on Civil War

Stathis Kalyvas's 'The Logic of Violence in Civil War' came out 20 years ago. It was deeply silly. Civil Wars differ greatly from each other. They have no common game-theoretic or other logical structure. 

It is sometimes said that Civil Wars are more savage but this isn't always the case. Where combatants face significant penalties for war-crimes, less of them occur. Where barbaric behaviour is rewarded, the opposite is the case. 

Civil war is defined as armed combat within the boundaries of a recognized sovereign entity between parties subject to a common authority at the outset of the hostilities.

The American Civil War fails to meet this criteria because, when it began, 'dual Sovereignty' was weighted towards the States not the Federation and secession occurred.  It wasn't till 1868, with the 14th Amendment, that the opposite was clearly affirmed.

Within civil war, my focus is on violence committed intentionally against noncombatants.

For what purpose? Ethnic cleansing? Religious conversion? Punishment for sin- e.g. that of having slaves? Collection of tribute? Sadism? The motives for violence are too varied for there to be anything to focus on. Moreover, there doesn't have to be a Civil War for massive violence to be inflicted on 'non-combatants'. 

This sort of violence is a phenomenon that has long remained off research limits 

For the same reason that people don't research the effect of farting on Feminists.  There is nothing sensible one can say on the topic. 

 because of its conceptual complexity and empirical opacity.

Stupidity 

To use Antoine De Baecque’s (2002:851) felicitous words, my goal is to bring reason to circumstances when reason is pushed to its limits.

We could use reason to explain why Feminists aren't offended by their own farts but get very angry when we lower our trousers and fart in their faces.  

From a methodological point of view, I show the importance of systematic research at the microlevel.

Farting is important from the methodological point of view because a person who doesn't fart will remain full of shit and eventually die.  

Typically, microlevel evidence tends to be marginalized as irrelevant or too messy. It is commonplace among historians that the “local” must be integrated with the “global”  yet efforts to do so rarely venture beyond the boundaries of the case study.

Why is there no general theory of farting in its relation to Feminists?

Here, I show a possible way of achieving this integration. I begin with a simplified and abstract characterization of violence in civil war,

i.e. one where uncorrelated asymmetries (which side you choose) have associated 'bourgeois strategies' with different pay-offs.  

yet one that stands on well-specified conceptual foundations.

He says modestly. But he is lying. He can't 'well-specify' shit.  

I analytically decouple civil war violence from civil war.

In which case you need to differentiate anarchy related violence caused by the curtailment or suspension of the rule of law and violence permitted, but not caused, by such conditions whose cause we can trace back to something related to the civil war itself. 

I show that despite its many different forms and the various goals to which it is harnessed across time and place, violence in civil war often displays some critical recurring elements.

Like farting. However, we will see they aren't critical at all. In other words, nothing would have changed if those elements had been omitted.  

Rather than just posit this point, I coherently reconceptualize

i.e. cherry pick 

observations that surface in tens of descriptive accounts and demonstrate that seemingly random anecdotes tend to be facets of the same phenomenon.

Women seldom applaud a truly stupendous fart. Women are more likely to be Feminists than men. It follows that there is a well defined and widely distributed correlation between farting and Feminism. Sadly, researchers have shied away from this important field.  

The positive component of the book consists of two parts: a theory of irregular war

which isn't necessarily a Civil War nor is a Civil War necessarily irregular 

and a microfoundational theory of violence (with two strands: indiscriminate and selective).

my farts are sometimes indiscriminate. Occasionally, I am able to selectively fart in the face of someone I dislike.  

Unlike existing work, the theory stresses the joint character of civil war violence, entailing an interaction between actors at the central and local levels,

there need be no such thing. 

and between combatants and noncombatants.

Which is the case in any type of conflict in a populated area.  

This interaction is informed by the demands of irregular war,

which are ideographic- i.e. dependent on local contingencies.  

the logic of asymmetric information,

which militates for signalling and screening mechanisms. Again, these will be ideographic.  

and the local dynamics of rivalries.

because two rivals for the poetry prize are likely to take advantage of a Civil War to stab each other- right?  

Hence the theory differs from existing accounts of violence that stress exclusively macrolevel motivations and dynamics, pinpoint overarching and preexisting cleavage structures, and characterize violence as “wanton,” “indiscriminate,” or “optimal” from the users’ point of view.

War matters. Smart people should analyse different types of War. Stupid people are welcome to focus on farting or whatever the fuck this cretin has hit upon. 

From the theory, I specify a model of selective violence that is consistent with the theoretical characterization, in which the interaction between actors operating at different levels results in the production of violence in a systematic and predictable way.

Useless shitheads love to speak of 'production' though all they can produce is shit.  

This exercise yields counterintuitive empirical predictions about the spatial variation of violence at the microlevel, which I subject to an empirical test using data I collected in Greece.

Which had a failed Commie insurrection. But the outcome would be decided outside Greece and would depend on what deal was struck between Soviets & the Anglo-Saxons. The odd thing about Kalyvas's book is that he spends a lot of time on the German occupation of Greece and the habit of local Albanians to denounce their relatives to the Germans. But that is a case of enemy occupation, not Civil War.