INDISCRIMINATE VIOLENCE AS NORM-VIOLATIVE VIOLENCE

Introduction

Low capacity states which are fighting an insurgency face a daunting challenge: The key

asset in any counterinsurgency is information, because information allows each side to monitor

the movements of the other (Mason 2004, 161-2) and to detect defectors among the insurgent

population (Kalyvas 2006, 287). However, access to information is in part a function of control

of territory (Kalyvas 2008, 406). Hence, states with low coercive capacity and limited

penetration into remote areas are particularly vulnerable to insurgency, because their lack of

penetration and limited coercive capacity render them unable to assert control over large areas.

However, a solution to that challenge appears at hand. The development of unmanned

aerial vehicles (UAVs) holds the promise of revolutionizing counterinsurgency, because UAVs

provide low-capacity states with a greatly enhanced ability to obtain two key pieces of

information: rebel movements; and civilian support in the form of deliveries of food and

supplies. Perhaps most significantly, UAVs equipped with infrared cameras can detect rebel

movement at night, thereby transforming areas of fragmented sovereignty into areas of

incumbent sovereignty, and areas of rebel sovereignty into areas of fragmented sovereignty

(Kalyvas 2007, 407-408). Thus, UAVs hold the promise of resolving a key obstruction to

successful counterinsurgency: control of territory requires a “staggering” amount of military

resources, far beyond that able to be mustered by the low-capacity states that are most at risk of

civil war (Kalyvas 2007, 407-408).

Moreover, current scholarship implies that the use of UAVs is likely to come at a low

cost. It has become a truism in the study of civil war that indiscriminate violence on the part of

the incumbent serves to drive civilians into the arms of the opposition. Thus, Stathis Kalyvas

observes that “[i]t is often noted that insurgents receive most new recruits after two types of

events: indiscriminate incumbent violence against civilians, and successful insurgent

engagements against the incumbents” (Kalvas 2006, 127), and the United States military advises

its officers who are engaged in counterinsurgency that “[f]ires that cause unnecessary harm or

death to noncombatants may create more resistance and increase the insurgency’s appeal –

especially if the populace perceives a lack of discrimination in their use” (US Army/US Marines

2007, 249). Violence delivered by UAVs appears to address this problem, because such

violence is purported to be highly selective (Shane 2011), and indeed there is some empirical

support for that claim (Bergan and Tiedemann 2011). Thus, the seductive logic behind the

appeal of UAVs is obvious: researchers argue that indiscriminate violence is counterproductive;

UAV strikes deliver selective violence; therefore, UAV strikes are not counterproductive.

There are, of course, manifold flaws in that chain of logic, but my argument herein is

that the claim that selective violence delivered by UAVs is not counterproductive is based on a

false premise. The purported causal link between indiscriminate violence and increased civilian

support for rebels is spurious, because of the presence of a confounding variable. Violence that

violates norms increases support for insurgents, regardless of whether the violence is selective or

indiscriminate.

This has three important implications. First, it implies that categorizing violence as

either indiscriminate or selective can often be misleading, because selective violence can

sometimes be norm-violative. Second, it implies that it might be the case that not all

indiscriminate violence leads to increased support for rebellion, but rather only indiscriminate

violence that violates norms (possibly because its indiscriminate nature violates norms, but

possibly because it violates other norms). Finally, it implies that the effects of government

violence on civilian support for rebel groups – including the delivery of violence by UAVs –

cannot be fully understood without an appreciation of local norms regarding the use of violence.

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Literature Review

Perhaps the two most influential studies of indiscriminate violence are those of Stathis

Kalyvas (2006) and Jeff Goodwin (2001). Yet, the two works employ very different conceptions

of “indiscriminate violence.”

Kalyvas defines “indiscriminate violence” by distinguishing it from selective violence.

“Violence is selective,” he says, “when there is an intention to ascertain individual guilt. . . . [It]

entails personalized targeting, whereas indiscriminate violence implies collective targeting”

(Kalyvas 2006, 142).

Goodwin’s concept of “indiscriminate violence” is quite different. His principal thesis is

that Latin American revolutionary movements gained strength only when weak governments

engaged in indiscriminate violence against their political opponents (Goodwin 2001, 143). That

indiscriminate repression, Goodwin argues, engendered violent opposition because it made it

“absolutely clear” to reformist movements that there was no alternative to violence as a means of

obtaining political and social change (Goodwin 2001, 154-5). However, the examples that

Goodwin provides make it clear that the government repression to which he refers was not

“indiscriminate” in the Kalyvas sense. Those examples include the arrests of leaders of an

election boycott in Nicaragua in 1974 (156-7), the police firing upon a 50,000-person protest in

El Salvador in 1977, resulting in 48 or more deaths (157), and the murder of political opponents

of the regime in Guatemala (158). “[V]irtually any type of peaceful political organizing and

protest,” Goodwin notes, “was liable to be attacked violently . . . regardless of whether it was

undertaken by revolutionaries or by reformists” (159).

Thus, to Goodwin, “indiscriminate violence” is government violence which fails to

discriminate between the type of actor engaged in opposition to the state. That is a definition

wholly different from that employed by Kalyvas. Indeed, under Kalyvas’s definition, all of the

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examples cited by Goodwin would be selective violence, rather than indiscriminate violence;

after all, one of the key reasons that the distinction is important to Kalyvas and those who

engage in his research agenda is that “when violence against insurgents is selective, individuals

can mitigate their odds of becoming victims by minimizing participation in the insurgency;

selective violence exacerbates the ‘rebel’s dilemma’ (Lichbach 1995) by creating effective

deterrence. By contrast, indiscriminate violence tends to generate a perverse structure of

incentives, leading to a failure of deterrence” (Kocher, Pepinsky and. Kalyvas 2011, 203). In

Goodwin’s examples, participants would have been able to avoid becoming victims by refusing

to participate in reform movements and protests; hence, Goodwin’s conception of indiscriminate

violence is wholly foreign to that employed by Kalyvas.

Moreover, the different conceptions of indiscriminate violence employed by Kalyvas and

Goodwin imply very different causal mechanisms, given that Goodwin’s analysis is premised

upon pre-existing mobilization and pre-existing grievance, whereas Kalyvas focuses on the role

of indiscriminate violence in altering the calculus of individuals who might otherwise be happy

to stay on the sidelines (Kalyvas 2006, 151).

Goodwin’s mechanism is clear from his thesis, and indeed from his title: indiscriminate

government violence leads to rebellion because it convinces reformers that there is “no other

way” to accomplish change, apart from violence. Kalyvas, on the other hand, identifies five

potential mechanisms whereby indiscriminate violence can be counterproductive: 1) emotional

reactions and norms of fairness; 2) the alteration of incentives for collaborating or defecting; 3)

“reverse discrimination,” whereby the state mistakenly targets moderates, or even its own allies,

rather than its enemies, who are more likely to flee at the first hint of approaching government

forces; 4) creation of the ability of rebels to offer selective incentives to civilians in the form of

protection; and 5) overestimation of the ability of civilians to influence the actions of political

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actors (Kalyvas 2006, 153). In regard to the first mechanism, Kalyvas makes brief mention of

the tendency of indiscriminate violence to trigger anger, but he argues that the key mechanism is

the desire for revenge (154).

In their model of civilian support for violent opposition to the state, Bueno de Mesquita

and Dickson suggest an additional mechanism. Employing a definition of indiscriminate

violence similar to that of Kalyvas, they argue that indiscriminate violence acts as a signal to

civilians that the government is “hard-line,” leading civilians to believe that radicals, rather than

moderates, will be most likely to obtain concessions from the government (Bueno de Mesquita

and Dickson 2007).

However, the utility of Bueno de Mesquita and Dickson’s analysis is open to question,

because they apparently assume that civilians already oppose the government – indeed, they

refer to civilian actors throughout their article as the “aggrieved population” – and hence need

only decide whether to support moderate opposition groups or radical insurgents. Thus, they

neglect the possibility that civilian preferences are endogenous to the conflict itself (Kalyvas

2006, 77-82). This assumption of pre-existing grievances tend to undermine the empirical basis

for their inquiry. They note that “[t]he empirical record contains examples of different types of

reactions” to indiscriminate violence, and cite a single paired example in support of that claim:

“Israeli crackdowns in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have, by and large, increased Palestinian

support for violence in general and the extremist militant groups in particular (Bloom 2004). . . .

Conversely, counter-terror efforts against Basque separatists in the 1980s by the French and

Spanish governments were accompanied by a decline in support for ETA (Funes 1998)” (Bueno

de Mesquita and Dickson 2007, 373).

Yet, the different responses of Palestinians and Basques – which responses, it must be

borne in mind, are aggregations of individual responses – might well be a function of differences

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in the depth of grievance and the extent to which grievance is distributed throughout the

population in each area. Given the history of the Israel-Palestinian dispute, it seems likely that

Palestinians score as high in depth and distribution of grievance as any group in the world.

Thus, it is perhaps not surprising that they have responded to Israeli violence by increasing their

support for militants. It is only by neglecting the history of the two groups that Bueno de

Mesquita and Dickson can construct a model that ignores dimensions of grievance and assumes

that civilian responses to counter-insurgency are a function solely of civilian calculations

regarding how best to obtain redress for grievances. Had the authors taken into account the

dynamics of grievance formation, they might have constructed a more accurate (albeit, less

parsimonious) model, or might at least have more explicitly justified their exclusion of variables

that capture the degree and extent of endogenous or exogenous grievances.

Empirical tests of the effect of indiscriminate violence have been few, and the results

have varied. Jason Lyall studied the effect of Russian artillery fire in Chechnya on subsequent

insurgent violence. Treating artillery fire as indiscriminate violence, he examined matched pairs

of shelled and unshelled villages and found that shelled villages experienced a lower amount of

subsequent violence than did unshelled villages (Lyall 2009). Lyall infers therefrom that, rather

than being counter-productive, indiscriminate violence can have suppressive effects on insurgent

violence (357).

However, there are reasons to question the significance of Lyall’s findings. He purports

to test the mechanisms of revenge and desire for security, but his study is a poor test of both.

Regarding the security mechanism, it does not seem that joining an insurgency is a rational way

for victims to protect themselves from artillery. The security mechanism would seem to be more

likely to be triggered in cases in which indiscriminate violence is delivered in the form of

physical incursion by government foot soldiers, because insurgent forces are more likely to be

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able to provide protection from soldiers on foot than from munitions delivered from afar from

Russian artillery bases firing weapons with a range of 30 kilometers (Lyall 2009, 342-3).

Moreover, the extent of the shelling in Lyall’s villages does not seem to be sufficient to

trigger very much in the way of either revenge or security concerns. His data included a total of

882 strikes on 73 villages, killing at least 265 civilians and wounding 368, and damaging at least

583 buildings and farms (343). That is an average of only nine casualties and eight damaged or

destroyed farms or villages per population center. Given that relatively low level of violence, it

is not surprising that Lyall did not find evidence that the shelling triggered increased support for

the insurgency.

Also, as Kocher, et al., note in their discussion of Lyall, levels of insurgent violence vary

with the degree of control exercised by the parties to conflict, and high levels of insurgent

violence can indicate that the insurgency is waxing or waning in strength (Kocher, et al., 2011,

204). If the former was the case, then the relationship between shelling and insurgent violence

might be spurious, because if an insurgency is growing in a particular area, that growth is likely

both to draw artillery attacks and to generate additional insurgent violence.

In their study of the effect of American bombing of hamlets in Vietnam, Kocher, et al., in

fact found that “hamlets bombed in September were more likely to move toward insurgent

control, and less likely to move toward incumbent control, by December than hamlets that were

not bombed ” (Kocher, et al. 2011, 208). This finding supports the argument that indiscriminate

violence is counterproductive, but it leaves unanswered questions regarding the mechanism at

work, because, as was the case in Chechnya, it seems unlikely that any resident of one of those

hamlets would think that the Viet Cong could protect him or her from American bombing.

As for the mechanism of revenge, its utility as a mechanism for distinguishing between

the effects of selective and indiscriminate violence is somewhat questionable, because there is

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little reason to think that the desire for revenge is prompted only by indiscriminate violence.

Indeed, the desire to take vengeance upon those who have harmed your compatriots or loved

ones seems to be elemental to human nature, regardless of the means or propriety of the loved

one’s death. It is the reason that Romeo slew Tybalt (Shakespeare 1994, 262), and it is the

reason that Achilles not only slew Hector, but also swore to “drag Hector hither and let dogs

devour him raw; twelve noble sons of Trojans will I also slay . . . to avenge [Patroclus]" (Homer,

n.d.). Thus, if desire for revenge is the operative mechanism, then for practical purposes, the

degree of discrimination of violence is less important than its intensity, since a greater number of

casualties of course generates a greater number of aggrieved survivors seeking revenge.

The validity of the revenge mechanism is further undermined by the findings of Condra

and Shapiro, who found that, in Iraq, both sides are punished by civilians for inflicting collateral

damage. However, the anti-insurgent reaction did not occur in Sunni areas, where the

insurgency was most popular, and the anti-Coalition reaction was absent in mixed areas (Condra

and Shapiro 2012). As Condra and Shapiro note, their findings are inconsistent with both the

revenge mechanism (182) and the protection mechanism (178).

A Neglected Variable

I argue herein that indiscriminate violence is often counterproductive because it often

violates norms, and such norm-violative behavior undermines civilian support. In other words,

civilian responses to violence in civil war are in part a function of civilian judgments regarding

the morality of that violence. This hypothesis is consistent with Condra and Shapiro’s findings

that responses to collateral damage vary with the identity of the perpetrator and victim, because

individuals tend to judge the actions of in-group members as more morally acceptable than the

identical actions performed by members of out-groups (Tarrant, et al., 2012; Battson, et al.,

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2009). Thus, it is not surprising that, once identities have hardened, responses to insurgent and

government violence would vary depending on which side the victims tend to support.

This argument has two important implications. First, it implies that indiscriminate

violence cannot reflexively be treated as a discrete category that is separate and distinct from

selective violence. When testing mechanisms such as protection, it makes sense to treat

selective and indiscriminate violence as separate categories. However, the distinction between

selective and indiscriminate violence is meaningless and potentially misleading when the

mechanism involved is the violation of norms regarding the use of violence, because both

selective violence and indiscriminate violence can violate norms. For example, the selective use

of sexual violence might well violate local norms. Thus, indiscriminate violence often operates

merely as a subset of norm-violative violence; that is, it is counterproductive not simply because

it is indiscriminate, but because its lack of discrimination violates norms.

The second implication of this argument is that scholars who seek to understand the

probable effect of violence on civilian preferences cannot treat societies generically. Instead,

scholars must disaggregate societies by examining and taking into account local norms

regarding the use of violence.

Indiscriminate Violence as a Spurious Cause of Civilian Support for Rebellion

One reason for caution in accepting the conventional wisdom that civilian support for

rebels is increased by indiscriminate incumbent violence as such is that many scholars who

assert the existence of such a causal relationship fail to clearly distinguish between

indiscriminate violence and “brutal” violence or violence that is otherwise outside acceptable

normative bounds. For example, Jeremy Weinstein argues that, “[w]hen used in an

indiscriminate fashion, violence generates resistance from noncombatant populations”

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(Weinstein 2007, 301), but immediately thereafter, when identifying the reason for the use of

“indiscriminate” violence, he states that “[t]he brutal and widespread abuse of noncombatants by

insurgent groups is instead often an unintended consequence of an organizational strategy that

appeals to the short-term material interests of potential recruits” (301). Thus, Weinstein uses

“brutal . . . abuse” as a synonym for “indiscriminate” violence, when in fact those are two

different phenomena. Weinstein repeats that error when he applies this theory to case studies of

the Maoist insurgency in Burma and the RUF in Sierra Leone; he argues that the Maoists used

violence “selectively,” targeting police stations and military barracks, while the RUF engaged in

“killing and mutilation” in such manner that led to its commanders “now sit[ting] in the docks at

trial, charged . . . with crimes against humanity” (304). By contrasting Maoist “selective”

violence with RUF “crimes against humanity,” rather than with “indiscriminate” violence,

Weinstein again equates indiscriminate violence with brutal violence.

Stathis Kalyvas falls into the same trap, despite the care he takes in defining

“indiscriminate violence.” In discussing the role of local militias, he observes that “the local

character of militias that permits the gathering of information . . . may also turn them into

indiscriminate weapons with counterproductive effects” (Kalyvas 2006, 108). Yet, the example

he presents of that phenomenon seems not to be indiscriminate violence, but rather unjust

violence: “For example, a British journalist . . . ‘was sure from his conversations [with

insurgents in 1948 Greece] that Right Wing excesses and arbitrary and unjust acts of

Government representatives are still rapidly swelling the rebel ranks’” (108-9).

Other scholars do not explicitly conflate indiscriminate and brutal or otherwise norm-

violative violence, but they do fail to distinguish between the two. Jeff Goodwin, for example,

summarizes his thesis thusly: “[C]ivilians sometimes conclude that revolution is the only ‘way

out’ of their predicament, this book suggests, when they confront certain types of states that

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respond to political dissent with repression, typically of a violent and indiscriminate nature”

(Goodwin 2001, 25-6).

Another example is Nicholas Sambanis’s discussion of why both sides in the Northern

Ireland dispute felt constrained by public opinion: “A more intense campaign by the Irish

Republican Army (IRA) and a more indiscriminate and forceful response from the British army

would have caused negative reactions from civil society on both sides” (Sambanis 2004, 264).

Thus, according to Sambanis, it was not just “indiscriminate” violence that would have been

counterproductive, but also excessively “forceful” violence as well.

The point is not that these scholars necessarily erred in failing to distinguish between

indiscriminate and norm-violative violence, for it may well be that such a distinction is irrelevant

to their analysis. That certainly seems to be the case with Goodwin, because both indiscriminate

and selective -but-brutal government responses to protest imply that peaceful agitation will be

punished; hence, both are consistent with his theory that dissenters turn to violence when

government responses to grievances leave dissenters with “no other way out.” However, in

regard to the question of whether indiscriminate violence is counterproductive, the failure to

distinguish between indiscriminate and norm-violative violence is of paramount importance, for

if most scholars fail to clearly distinguish between those types of violence, or if in practice

indiscriminate violence is almost always norm-violative as well, then it is impossible to1

determine whether the association between indiscriminate incumbent violence and subsequent

increases in support for insurgency is real, or instead is spurious because the increased support is

As was apparently true of paramilitary violence in Columbia, where in the initial period1

of the war, paramilitaries “carried out a wave of indiscriminate violence that included massacres,mutilations (often on those still living), torture, and the destruction and theft of property.”Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín,“Telling the Difference: Guerrillas and Paramilitaries in theColombian War,” Politics and Society 36 (2008): 15.

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caused by the norm-violative nature of the government response, rather than by its

indiscriminate nature.

The View “On the Ground”

Although the theoretical literature tends to neglect the norm-violative aspect of

government violence, several case studies imply that norm-violative government action results in

subsequent mobilization or radicalization on the part of its victims. In his study of violence in

Northern Ireland, Robert White identified the British policy of internment without trial as a

“serious mistake” that proved to be counterproductive (White 1989). The British largely

succeeded only in interning civil rights agitators, rather than IRA fighters (1289); hence, their

actions were indiscriminate in the Goodwin sense, but not in the Kalyvas sense. Regardless, it

was not the indiscriminate nature of the internment that White’s interviewees found upsetting,

but rather its norm-violative nature; in the words of one interviewee, “‘the way I had been

brought up to respect other people's rights wasn't being done by the state’” (1290).

Similarly, in his study of rebellion in Aceh, Michael Ross found that it was government

“brutality” which “produced a deep-seated antipathy toward Jakarta and ultimately contributed

to GAM’s third incarnation in 1999” (Ross 2005, 44), and in El Salvador, Elisabeth Wood found

that participants joined the rebellion in part as a “repudiati[on] of perceived injustices” (Wood

2003, 18). Finally, in Vietnam, it was France’s “authoritarian and often brutally repressive

policies [which] unintentionally encouraged the further growth of the Viet Minh[,]” by

increasing resentment of the French to the point that members of ethnic minorities overcame

their reluctance to support the largely Vietnamese Viet Minh (Goodwin 2001, 123).

The fact that case studies tend to highlight the role of government “brutality” in fostering

violence lends support to the suspicion, discussed previously, that the purported causal function

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of “indiscriminate” violence is spurious, in that the apparent effects of indiscriminate violence

might well instead be caused by the “brutality” with which it is so often accompanied.

More importantly, “brutality” is in actuality a normative concept, because “our

understanding of violence is culturally defined. Killings by knife and machete tend to horrify us

more than the often incomparably more massive killings by aerial and field artillery bombings.

As Crozier put it forty years ago: “The violence of the strong may express itself in high

explosives or napalm bombs. These weapons are no less discriminate than a hand-grenade tossed

from a roof-top; indeed, they will make more innocent victims. Yet they arouse less moral

indignation around Western firesides’” (Kalyvas 2001, 115). This phenomenon explains why

the Japanese military was willing to engage in “beheading contests” in the course of its

occupation of China (Honda and Gibney 1999, 126), yet “fail[ed] to . . . wage a [Western-style]

war of total annihilation – a ghastly practice that was mostly outside their samurai tradition”

(Hanson 2001, 363), and why Cossacks shunned vicious face-to-face combat but were not shy

about riding down and killing a retreating enemy, whereas Westerners like Clauswitz viewed the

latter with “revulsion” (Keegan 1997, 9) but saw the former as required by “an ethic of personal

honor” (Keegan 1997, 390).

Thus, whether or not violence is deemed “brutal” by parties to conflict is determined by

whether or not the violence violates culturally determined norms. Hence, the mechanism by

which “brutal” violence leads to opposition is its norm-violative nature. That this is so can be

seen by the fact that government actions which are not actually “violent” can nevertheless

engender support for violent opposition, if those actions violate norms. An obvious example of

that is the British internment policy discussed above. Technically, that policy was not “violent”

and was certainly not “brutally violent,” yet it drove individuals to support IRA violence because

it violated a norm: “‘the way I had been brought up to respect other people's rights wasn't being

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done by the state’” (White 1989, 1290).

In addition, anecdotal evidence indicates that, to those operating “on the ground,” the

connection between norm-violative violence and support for the opposing party is clear. In Iraq,

“[a]s one Iraqi policeman said, ‘That’s why Fallujah is boiling. . . . American soldiers conducted

humiliating house searches, breaking furniture, frisking men and women and stealing cash and

jewelry’” (Moyer 2010). The operative term here is “humiliating,” because humiliation is most

often experienced in response to norm violations (Pulham 2009, 9-10). Similarly, the American

military’s night raids arouse opposition because they violate local norms, especially regarding

the treatment of women: “‘It's just like a prison now,’ said Hajji Thamir Rabia, an old man in the

village. ‘The Americans do night raids, come into our houses when the women are sleeping’”

(Filkins 2005). That this activity generates the potential for violent opposition is made clear by

the participant’s next statement: “‘We can't fight them. We don't have any weapons’" (Filkins

2005.).

Night raids by coalition forces in Afghanistan show a similar pattern; there, the victims

of the raids complain of ‘”cultural insensitivity, particularly towards women’” (Gaston,

Horowitz and Schmeidl 2010, 6) and other forms of disrespect of cultural norms. These

behaviors, too, apparently “sometimes push[ed] individuals toward outright support for

insurgents. As one interviewee suggested, ‘If someone is handcuffed in front of women, he

would see no other way left, but to head towards the mountains’” to fight with the insurgents (8).

That attitude is consistent with a survey of Afghans conducted after the first deployment of

American “surge” forces in early 2010. The survey found that opinions about the coalition

forces had turned negative, and that, “[o]f those interviewed, 95% believe more Afghans have

joined the Taliban in the last year, 78% of the respondents were often or always angry, and 45%

of those stated that they were angry at the NATO occupation, civilian casualties and night raids”

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(Jackson 2010, 2). The response regarding whether others have joined the Taliban is particularly

telling, because asking what others think or what others have done is an effective way of

obtaining an accurate assessment of poll respondents’ views when there is one socially

acceptable response (Adler and Clark 2011, 240).

The effect of norm-violative behavior on civilian support, and the concomitant need to

respect local norms, was apparently understood by Mao, whose rules of conduct for guerrillas

were dominated by concern for respecting the norms of the civilian population. Those rules

included admonitions to be courteous, and to refrain from “bath[ing] in the presence of

women[,]” and from “without authority[,] search[ing] the pocketbooks of those you arrest” (Mao

2000, 92). The contrast with the behavior of American soldiers on night raids, and the

subsequent level of civilian support received by Mao and the coalition forces, respectively, could

not be more stark.

Moreover, the idea that norm-violative government behavior engenders opposition is

consistent with a long tradition of analysis of revolution. Jack Goldstone, relying in part on

Margaret Levi’s notion of state violations of norms of fairness leading to “the withdrawal of

compliance,” observed that “[s]tate rulers operate within a cultural framework involving

religious beliefs, nationalist aspirations, and notions of justice and status. Rulers violate these at

their peril” (Goldstone 2001, 148). Similarly, as Elisabeth Wood notes, Barrington Moore found

that collective action is most likely where norms of fairness are violated (Wood 2003, 248).

The model of ethnic conflict developed by Nicholas Sambanis and Moses Shayo lends

additional support for the theory that norm-violative actions undermine support for government.

They argue that ethnic conflict becomes more likely when individuals’ social identity shifts from

identification with the nation – defined as the union of the ethnic groups living in a given

country – to the ethnic group (Sambanis and Shayo 2012). The factors which determine whether

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an individual identifies with his or her nation or with his or her ethnic group are the relative

status of the two groups and the perceived similarity between the individual and members of the

group (3). Hence, either a decline in the status of the nation (such as from an economic crisis or

defeat in battle) or an increase in perceived distance from the nation, can cause a shift to ethnic

identification and a resultant increase in conflict (4).

Norm-violative behavior by the state would tend to cause both a decline in the status of

the nation – which would be perceived as immoral – and an increase in perceived distance,

because an entity that rejects norms that an individual holds dear will of course be perceived by

that person as increasingly “other.” Thus, if Sambanis and Shayo are correct, violent state

behavior that is perceived as norm-violative should indeed result in increased support for violent

opposition to the state.

Legitimacy Redux?

At this juncture, an obvious objection should be addressed: Isn’t the argument that norm-

violative government behavior undermines support for incumbents and enhances support for

rebels simply a repackaged version of the idea that violent challenges to government are caused

by the loss of legitimacy? After all, if legitimacy is “the belief that existing institutions are

appropriate, or morally proper” (Dogan 2004, 110), then the argument that norm-violative

government behavior increases support for rebellion is virtually indistinguishable from the

argument that rebellion is caused by loss of legitimacy. That seems to present a major stumbling

block, because, as Kalyvas notes, the current thinking is that “[e]xplanations of rebellion in

terms of grievance parallel explanations of regime breakdown in terms of legitimacy; they are, as

Adam Przeworski (1991:54-5) points out, either tautological or false; only when organized

political forces challenge the sovereign does ‘political choice become available to isolated

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individuals’” (Kalyvas 2006, 93).

However, that argument is unconvincing. The poverty of that contention becomes clear

when the citation to Przeworski is quoted at length:

This is why explanations of regime breakdown in terms of legitimacy are either

tautological or false. If by a loss of legitimacy we understand the appearance of

collectively organized alternatives, they are tautological in that the fact that these

alternatives are collectively organized means that the regime has broken down. If

we see legitimacy in terms of individual attitudes, in Lamounier’s (1979:13)

terms as ‘acquiescence motivated by subjective agreement with given norms and

values,’ they are false. Some authoritarian regimes have been illegitimate since

their inception, and they have been around for forty years. What is threatening to

authoritarian regimes is not the breakdown of legitimacy but the organization of

counterhegemony: collective projects for an alternative future. . . . This is why

authoritarian regimes abhor independent organizations (Przeworski 1991, 54-5).

Przeworski’s argument shows only that loss of legitimacy is not a sufficient cause of

rebellion; it says nothing about its relevance as a necessary or otherwise contributing cause.

Moreover, authoritarian regimes abhor not only independent organizations, but also free speech.

Given Przeworski’s logic that those things abhorred by authoritarian regimes are causes of

rebellion, those regimes’ suppression of speech implies that loss of legitimacy does, indeed,

cause rebellion, for what could authoritarian regimes fear from free speech, if not challenges to

their legitimacy? Also, what of other types of regimes ? Some democratic regimes have

coexisted with collective alternatives since their inception, and have also “been around for forty

years.” Using Przeworski’s logic, this implies that the existence of collective alternatives is no

more a cause of rebellion than is loss of legitimacy. In fact, of course, both can be contributing

17

causes: In the United States, “collective alternatives” have been no threat to the status quo unless

and until state legitimacy has been undermined by economic or social change, such as during the

Great Depression. Similarly, Hitler’s NSDAP existed as a “collective alternative” to the Weimar

Republic for many years, but did not exceed three percent of the vote until the advent of the

economic crisis of the late 1920s (Falter and Zintl 1988).

Moreover, properly understood, the argument that loss of legitimacy contributes to

conflict is not tautological, because it is properly understood not as a cause, but as a mechanism:

the state acts in a manner contrary to the expectations of its citizens, causing citizens to favor

rebellion through the mechanism of diminution of government legitimacy. In addition, a claim

that loss of legitimacy causes rebellion is tautological only if that loss is alleged to be a sufficient

cause of rebellion; clearly the claim that X causes Z only if X is accompanied by Y cannot be a

claim that X and Z are equivalent. Therefore, for example, neither Jack Goldstone’s argument

that a government will not be overthrown unless it is seen as both ineffective and unjust

(Goldstone 2001, 148), nor Seymour Lipset’s argument that the Weimar government fell in part

because sectors of German society perceived its values as alien (Lipset 1959), is a tautology.

However, Przeworski’s observation about the importance to rebellion of a “collective

project for an alternative future” is, nevertheless, highly germane to the question of the effect of

government violence on support for rebellion, for it is precisely when such an alternate project is

available that the state must avoid undermining its legitimacy, for it is then that such loss of

legitimacy is most likely to contribute to violent opposition. Such an alternative obviously exists

once an armed group has begun attacking the state, so a state that engages in norm-violative

behavior in the course of combating that group does so at the risk of undermining its own

support and bolstering that of the rebels.

18

Economic Grievances as Normative Grievances

Another objection to the notion of norm-violative government action as a cause of

increased civilian support for rebels lies in the fact that study of the role of grievance in civil war

violence has recently been “unfashionable” (Kalyvas 2007, 442), and even those who study

grievance tend to define grievance in economic, rather than normative, terms. Thus, “[s]cholars

of social revolution argue that the depth of an individual's discontent with his or her economic

position in society is a major causal factor that differentiates participants in rebellion from

nonparticipants” (Humphreys and Weinstein 2008, 440), and when researchers argue that

“grievances are ubiquitous,” they are usually referring to economic grievances (Buhaug, et al.

2011, 816).

However, the role of economic grievance in civil war actually underscores the

importance of normative factors in engendering opposition to the state, because grievances about

the distribution of economic benefits are not purely economic grievances, but are in fact also

normative grievances – that is, they are grievances about violations of norms regarding

distribution of benefits. After all, economic benefits are unequally distributed in all societies at

all times, so given that political unrest is relatively rare, unequal distribution, without more,

cannot be a cause thereof. Thus, unsurprisingly, studies of the role of economic grievance in the

onset of armed conflict indicate that onset is affected by capacity of the state to ensure not just

“effective” economic governance but also “just” economic governance (Ballentine 2003, 264).

For example, Wucherpfennig, et al., studied the politics of ethnic exclusion, in which elites

secure their political, social or economic interests by excluding part of the population from

political or economic goods. Although Wucherpfennig, et al., focus on the duration of conflict,

they also observe that ethnic exclusion can contribute to the onset of violence, if it violates

“norms of justice and equality” (Wucherpfennig 2012, 85-6).

19

Even the old notion of relative deprivation as a cause of conflict, which has recently

received some scholarly attention (Regan and Norton 2005), is ultimately rooted in a normative

mechanism, for it is premised on the notion of a gap between expectations and achievements

(Mason 2004, 33), and what are expectations if not judgments about one’s just desserts? (Walker

and Smith 2002, 2). Moreover, it is undeniable that society-wide economic expectations

regarding distribution and growth can take on normative aspects; for example, the “American

Dream” is not only an expectation that one will be economically rewarded for hard work, but is

also “an abstract set of values” (Ghosh 2013, 14) and “a people’s idea of what sort of a society

they would like to create for themselves” (14).

An additional source of evidence that grievances generated by economic inequality are

rooted in norms can be found in studies of cross-cultural variations in the outcomes of

“ultimatum games.” In a standard ultimatum game, one person is given a sum of money and told

that he or she can keep it all, or share some portion thereof with a second person. However, the

second person has the choice of either accepting or rejecting that offer. If the second person

rejects the offer, both players get nothing (Jensen, Call and Tomasello 2007, 107). Studies of the

behaviors of players from different cultures have repeatedly found differences in the willingness

of players to accept unequal offers Oosterbeek, Sloof and Van De Kuilen 2004; Chen and Tang

2009). Those differences can only be explained by culturally specific variations in norms of

fairness, in that unequal offers are refused (and both players thereby penalized) only if the offers

are perceived as unfair.

Moreover, the case studies of Elisabeth Wood and James Scott provide further evidence

that economic grievances are dependent on normative judgments. Wood studied peasant support

for rebellion in El Salvador, and found that liberation theology played an important role therein.

Among other things, it asked peasants to think about “‘how was land distributed in the time of

20

Jesus Christ? As a consequence, it was clear that we had rights as a person’” Wood 2003, 99).

Previously, peasant attitudes had been characterized by veneration of authority (15); thus, the

introduction of new norms caused peasants to begin to see the status quo as unjust, a violation of

their rights.

James Scott studied peasant resistance in Malaysia, and found that resentment of the

local rich landowner was not a function of his wealth, but rather his shameless behavior, which

“broke all the rules” (Scott 1985, 18). Moreover, peasant resistance was triggered by attempts by

landowners to institute new norms more consistent with a market-based economy; as a result, an

ideological struggle had erupted between the rich and the poor (23), with the result that landlords

were forced to rely more heavily on coercion and law, rather than social control, to ensure

compliance (312). Thus, the question in Malaysia was not whether the new or old economic

order was objectively more just, as large-N studies of economic grievance implicitly assume.

Rather, the question was whether the landowners would win their ideological battle to depict the

new order as normatively just.

Finally, considering grievance as purely an economic phenomenon ignores the reality

that even gross economic inequality can be perceived as just, even by its victims (Burkett 1997).

Thus, economic grievances can only be understood in conjunction with an understanding of

relevant local norms, and is perfectly consistent with the argument that responses to violence can

only be understood in the context of local norms relating thereto.

Conclusion

Civilians who live in an area contested by parties to a civil war have a range of options in

regard to supporting rebels, ranging from betrayal of the rebels, to passive tolerance, to covert

support, to active support (Mason 2004, 161-7). Given that the civilian support is a key to rebel

21

success, and that the average length of civil wars since 1944 is more than eight years (Balcells

and Kalyvas 2012, 5-6, n. 9), anything that moves civilians toward the rebel end of the support

spectrum is likely to have a substantial effect on duration of civil wars. I have argued herein that

government violence which violates local norms is one such factor, and that it is a causal

variable that has previously been neglected.

Implications for Further Research

The argument presented herein implies three predictions which might be explored in

future research. First, responses to violence will vary depending on local norms. Second,

responses might be different in conflicts than are perceived by their participants as ethnically

based, rather than ideologically based, because of the possibly greater effect of in-group/out-

group bias on perceptions of the morality of violence. Finally, and for the same reason, violence

conducted by external parties might be deemed more normatively suspect than violence by

internal actors.

An additional issue which might be subject to future research relates to a caveat: In the

Condra and Shapiro study discussed earlier, the authors found that collateral damage inflicted by

Coalition forces in Iraq led to higher levels of insurgent violence, while collateral damage

inflicted by insurgents led to lower levels of insurgent violence, presumably because collateral

damage caused irate civilians to furnish or withhold intelligence. The anti-insurgent reaction did

not occur in Sunni areas, where the insurgency was most popular, and the anti-Coalition reaction

was absent in mixed areas (Condra and Shapiro 2012, 167-187). I have argued that their results

are consistent with the argument presented herein, that civilian responses to violence in civil war

are a function of civilian judgments regarding the morality of that violence.

However, a similar study of more long-term effects found no evidence of a shift in

22

allegiance in Iraq (Condra, et al., 2010). Therefore, it is possible that the effects of norm-

violative behavior on civilian allegiances are short-lived. Of course, the same might be true of

the effects of indiscriminate violence, as well. Thus, research which attempts to distinguish

between short-term and long-term effects of government violence toward civilians could well be

highly fruitful.

More generally, the analysis set forth herein implies that researchers should use caution

when analyzing the effect of indiscriminate violence. For example, sexual violence against those

suspected of supporting rebels would code as “selective” violence, and hence would escape the

analysis of a researcher who is testing most of the mechanisms proposed in the literature. Yet, if

sexual violence is seen by civilians as violating norms, its use might well affect civilian

preferences. A researcher who is cognizant of that possibility could attempt to control for the

existence of sexual violence. Similarly, a researcher who seeks to resolve the conflict between

the outcomes of Jason Lyall’s research on shelling in Chechnya and that of Kocher, et al., on

bombing in Vietnam, might examine local norms regarding combat in the two areas. If, for2

example, Vietnamese find aerial bombing to be unsporting or unmanly, that might well explain

the variation in outcomes between the two studies.

A renewed focus on normative aspects of grievance might also pay dividends in areas

outside the study of the effects of violence. For example, Hartzell, Hoddie and Bauer found that

adoption of economic liberalism increases the risk of civil war onset, because “different

economic structures . . . produce different sets of winners and losers within societies” (Hartzell,

Hoddie and Bauer 2010, 353). However, they observe that this theory is problematic, because it

“does not explain why one should expect the mix of winners and losers characteristic of one type

See pages 6-8 herein.2

23

of economic structure to be the source of more (or less) civil war than the groups of winners and

losers that are typical of the opposing type of economic structure” (353.). They hypothesize that

the answer to that apparent conundrum is that “the IMF-guided process of liberalization

generates new losers at a rate with which a state with weakening powers is incapable of

contending” (353). However, that explanation is itself problematic, given the obvious challenges

of operationalizing a concept like a state’s “incapability of contending” with rapid change.

A more viable explanation might be derived from focusing on the normative content of

economic structures. In Hartzell, et al.’s study, the old, highly regulated economic structures

differed from the new, more open economic structures not only on the open/closed axis, but also

on the old/new axis. That is, the closed structures were well established; hence the divisions

between winners and losers associated therewith were also well established, and therefore were

likely to be considered consistent with established norms and hence essentially just. In such a

situation, conflict is unlikely; as Jonathan DiJohn observed in a related context, “If there is at

least a passive acceptance of the distribution of rights and rents that emanate from mineral

income, then rent-seeking struggles may be low. . . . It is when the distribution of rights is

perceived as illegitimate by significant groups within a society that conflict and violence

becomes more likely” (Di John 2008, 15). Similarly, Chalmers Johnson posited that a society

will remain stable, and hence immune from revolution, as long as the society’s value structure

and its socioeconomic structure are in harmony, such that the socioeconomic structure is seen as

just (Johnson 1982, 62).

The situation is different when economic liberalization creates a new set of winners and

losers. That new arrangement, being new, is less likely to be consistent with established norms,

and hence is more likely to be perceived as unjust, thereby generating grievances. That might be

a better explanation for the phenomenon noted by Hartzell, et al., than the one which they

24

propose.

Policy Implications

As discussed in the introduction, the argument presented herein has obvious implications

for the use of UAVs in counterinsurgency. I have argued that indiscriminate violence is often

counterproductive in part because it is perceived as norm-violative, and that any type of norm-

violative violence can be counter-productive, even if it is “selective.” Thus, whether UAV

attacks are, in fact, counterproductive despite their relatively selective nature depends on

whether such attacks violate the prevailing norms in each area in which they are used. There is

some anecdotal evidence that drone attacks have been counterproductive in Yemen (Zenko 2013,

10-11), and an American theologian recently published a criticism of American UAV policy in

which he maintained that UAV strikes violate the “proportionality” principle of just war theory,

arguing that the use of UAVs is “out of ‘proportion, because it uses the most advanced

technology in the world to assassinate people who can basically only throw the equivalent of

sticks and stones back at you. Moreover, it gives these people no chance to surrender. It is like

capital punishment without an arrest, a charge, a trial, or a right of appeal” (Zahl 2013).

At first glance, this argument might appear to be poor evidence for the argument that

UAV strikes can be deemed norm-violative; after all, despite its distinguished pedigree, just war

theory is hardly a widely accepted norm. However, the significance of this criticism lies in the

fact that the author completely misstates the proportionality principle of just war theory. The

proportionality principle does not hold that an actor armed with sophisticated weapons cannot

attack an actor armed with primitive weapons or even an actor who is unable to fight back, but

rather that “the destructiveness of war must not be out of proportion to the relevant good the war

will do” (Hurka 2005, 35). The author’s error implies that the use of UAVs feels viscerally

25

unfair to him, and that he is casting about for an intellectual justification for what appears in

truth to be discomfort over a violation of norms.

Given the fact that capabilities of UAVs will likely continue to develop, even as the cost

of purchasing and operating them declines, the use of UAVs in counterinsurgency operations

seems inevitable. Yet, that use might well prove to be counterproductive, if UAVs are used not

just for surveillance but also as attack vehicles, and if such use runs counter to local norms

regarding the use of violence. Therefore, an understanding of local norms regarding violence is

likely to become increasingly important to the success of counter-insurgency operations.

26

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