In his book, Michael Boyle offers detailed and in-depth answers to two tremendously important questions overlooked by most of the current literature on civil war: Why is there violence after war? And, more specifically, “why do some post-conflict states have higher levels of strategic violence than others?” (p. 25).
Boyle presents his argument in several parts. He categorizes different types of postconflict violence; describes two causal pathways from peace settlement back to violence; constructs a data set of postconflict cases; and outlines a structural theory to explain the reappearance of violence in postconflict settings. He then illustrates his argument with in-depth case studies of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo, East Timor, and Iraq. He bases his studies on extensive data collection that he conducted in several of the countries, as well as through a Freedom of Information Act request. This review describes each part of his argument, highlighting both its merits and shortcomings.
First, the central outcome of interest is the occurrence of violence after a peace settlement. Severine Autessere’s Trouble with the Congo (2010) investigates the phenomenon of local-level postconflict violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), but before Violence after War, the problem had not yet been addressed in a broader, comparative perspective. Boyle categorizes postconflict violence into three types. Expressive violence stems from emotional reactions; instrumental violence is designed for criminal or personal gain; and strategic violence has a variety of political aims (pp. 26–32). While the borders between the categories can be fuzzy, Boyle’s typology is useful and represents a refinement of Stathis Kalyvas’s seminal two-part distinction in The Logic of Violence in Civil War (2006) between expressive and strategic violence. Much of postconflict violence is criminal in nature and does not have an explicit political purpose. It is therefore theoretically useful, and empirically accurate, to separate instrumental violence from the other two basic forms.
Boyle then delineates two causal pathways from peace settlement back to strategic violence: direct and indirect. On the direct pathways, combatants disrupt or spoil the peace process for the same reasons they fought the war; postconflict violence “revolves around the same fault lines in the society that motivated the war” (p. 11). The literature on war resumption and termination addresses this phenomenon fairly well. However, indirect pathways back to violence post—peace settlement have not been studied in depth, and this book helps us to better grasp these mechanisms. Indirect pathways depend on internal group control, cohesion, discipline, and leadership (pp. 79–90). When these organizational factors are lacking, violence resumes, but with different forms and purposes from the original war.
Third, having described the two most common pathways back to violence, Boyle presents an original data set of 52 cases of postconflict violence. From this set, he seeks to explain varying levels of violence by measuring the “opportunity structure for violence” (pp. 14, 90–93). The opportunity structure comprises three factors: the “vulnerability” of subnational civilian groups, the “flexibility” of state institutions, and the “ability and willingness” of external forces such as United Nations peacekeepers to prevent violence. While it is certainly commendable to seek to uncover the structural causes of violence in general, it is hard to explain change with constants. Moreover, it is very difficult to disentangle and measure these factors after a peace settlement, but before the resumption of violence, without running into endogeneity problems. How can we know that a group is vulnerable before it is targeted? How do we know whether peacekeepers are willing to protect civilians before they are challenged?
Fourth, the bulk of the book centers on five in-depth cases studies of postconflict violence. Boyle painstakingly amassed large quantities of data about the causes of violent deaths post—peace agreement for all cases. He also conducted field research in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and East Timor, and presents heretofore unpublished data from the U.S. Central Command on violence in Iraq from 2003 to 2008. Each case portrays the levels of violence after the peace settlement, and categorizes pathways back to violence as direct or indirect.
In Bosnia, Boyle argues, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, that the Dayton Accords can be conceived as “flexible” because they allow hardliners to remain in the system without seeking to overturn it. This counterintuitive analysis is intriguing, but “flexible” is probably not the most accurate way to categorize Bosnia’s deeply divided, ethno-sectarian-based system of government. The case study of Rwanda is provocative in its focus on the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s strategic use of violence to secure its rule in postgenocide Rwanda and its continued destabilization of neighboring Congo in a quest to prevent external threats. The author’s study of Kosovo is arguably the most nuanced and interesting of the cases, as he presents a largely original account of the two waves of postconflict violence and the splintering between Albanian groups. Both the Kosovo and East Timor case studies effectively demonstrate the ways in which postconflict violence can be different in nature from the original conflict, especially in the rise of intragroup violence, as opposed to wartime, antiregime violence. However, both the Kosovo and East Timor studies lose track of the book’s original framework, namely, the “opportunity structure,” which includes the role of external actors. Part of the reason why the government in Kosovo has been so divided and dysfunctional is the divided nature of the international intervention (among NATO, the UN, and the European Union). No one has been in charge, either internationally or domestically, which has created an ideal environment for the rise of organized crime (unlike in East Timor, where the UN perched at the top of the international hierarchy).
The final case study of Iraq is somewhat puzzling, as by Boyle’s own admission, “Iraq is less clearly a post-conflict case than the others considered in this book and is therefore not directly comparable to them” (p. 259). However, the violence, and denial of it, in Iraq post–U.S. invasion was so severe that Boyle argues persuasively for the importance of investigating this case—more for general interest than because it fits into a tidy research design. The United States turned a blind eye to postconflict violence, which allowed aggression to flourish. The author extends this policy-oriented warning in his conclusion, where he offers excellent insights into the processes and perils of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR). He cautions that such policies may, in fact, create indirect pathways back to potentially large-scale violence.
While this book has many merits, in focusing primarily on internal sources of violence it ignores the alternative argument that larger, systemic forces may contribute to local violence (although note that Boyle is in good company, as Kalyvas’s book shares the same shortcoming). If we focus primarily on local conflict and internal factors as the primary drivers of violence, we miss the apparent systemwide phenomenon that the levels of instrumental (and possibly strategic) violence have become very high across all major civil wars. In Afghanistan, Darfur, DRC, Iraq, Libya, Mali, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, rebel groups are weak, fracturing, and not often motivated by political purposes. Rather, the rebels often employ instrumental violence for local, personal gain. The rise of this type of violence (both pre- and postsettlement), and the fracturing of groups, renders violence reduction exceedingly difficult. In other words, widespread instrumental violence (without a clear end in sight) characterizes many of the current, bloodiest civil wars. Such pervasive, cross-case outcomes suggest external, rather than internal, sources.
How can we explain the systemwide rise of debilitating, instrumental violence? While Violence after War certainly brings us closer to categorizing and understanding some of the types and sources of postconflict violence, this avenue of research remains open for further exploration.
