Kai Thaler

University of California, Santa Barbara | UCSB · Department of Global Studies

Civil wars are not only destructive: they can also generate new, long-lasting social, political, and economic structures and processes. To account for this productive potential and analyse post-conflict outcomes, I argue that we should analyse civil wars as critical junctures. Civil wars can relax structural constraints, opening opportunities for w...

What types of relationships do armed groups have with states? How do different levels of ties and power relations affect both armed group and government behavior? This article develops a spectrum across which armed group–state relationships can move, focusing on three key types of relationships—delegation, sponsorship, and autonomy. An armed group–...

Military integration seeks to improve counterinsurgency and peacebuilding outcomes by incorporating former rebels into preexisting or new state security forces during or after civil wars. While peacebuilders continue to promote military integration, there is mixed evidence about its effectiveness and the mechanisms through which it affects counteri...

A century after Max Weber famously posited that the state is defined by holding a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a territory, it is abundantly clear that states rarely hold such a monopoly, and they may in fact willingly cede it, both in wartime and in peacetime. Yelena Biberman’s deeply researched book Gambling with Violence takes...

Researchers studying conflict, violence, and human rights in dangerous settings across the globe face a complex set of ethical, personal, and professional dilemmas. Especially in more positivist fields and professions, there is pressure to conduct and present research as ‘objective’. Yet the reality of field research in violent and conflict-affecte...

While Liberia's postconflict stability is impressive, its institutions are weak, and its democratic consolidation is incomplete and reversible. Analyzing Liberia's 2005, 2011, and 2017 elections reveals three trends. First, there has been an ongoing establishment of the norm that power should be contested institutionally, rather than by nonconstitu...

The dynamics and diversity of African armies An overview of current knowledge In his in-depth historical study of African armies, Edgerton (2004) argues that the armies of the continent shifted over time from honor to infamy. Other popular interpretations describe African armies as “unprofessional”, “irrelevant” and “dangerous” (Howe 2005). Is thi...

The study of political and social violence and conflict has expanded in recent decades, concurrent with a rise in the use of mixed methods research (MMR) throughout the social sciences. This article examines how methods are best integrated in studies of violence and conflict, critically reviewing examples from previous prominent works and suggestin...

There is considerable debate over the causes of violence around the world, one which goes beyond the analysis of conflict to consider the dynamics of community behavior and the importance of economic and behavioral factors. One of the most interesting countries to study is South Africa, where violence seems to have increased rather than declined si...

Theories that seek to explain patterns of violence in civil wars frequently pass over the issue of ideology. This paper argues that ideology may shape the use of selective versus indiscriminate violence by an armed group. The role of ideology is examined in the cases of Frelimo in Mozambique and the MPLA in Angola in their countries' wars of indepe...

The failure of the international community to act on the legal and moral imperative to stop, punish, and prevent genocide and other mass killings has led to the establishment of genocidal regimes that institutionalize genocide as a tactic of repression and power consolidation. One such repeat offender regime was the New Order government of Indonesi...

The failure of the international community to act on the legal and moral imperative to stop, punish, and prevent genocide and other mass killings has led to the establishment of genocidal regimes that institutionalize genocide as a tactic of repression and power consolidation. One such repeat offender regime was the New Order government of Indonesi...

People in violent neighbourhoods attribute violence in public spaces to, especially, poverty and unemployment, but agree that social disintegration, disrespect, drinking and drugs and the weaknesses of the criminal justice system also contribute substantially. However, data from a panel of young men in Cape Town provide little support for the hypot...

Given the high levels of crime and violence in South Africa, there may be a temptation for citizens to arm themselves for protection. Using quantitative survey data from the Cape Area Panel Study and qualitative interviews with residents of high-violence neighborhoods, this paper examines the question of who carries weapons outside the home in Cape...

This paper examines the drivers of male perpetration of violence against adultfamily members and intimate partners in Cape Town, South Africa. Data on 1,369 young men from the Cape Area Panel Study are analyzed and significant causal pathways are examined for the full sample and for disaggregated samples of African and coloured respondents. Socioec...

Given the high levels of crime and violence in South Africa, there may be a temptation for citizens to arm themselves for protection. Using quantitative survey data from the Cape Area Panel Study and qualitative interviews with residents of high-violence neighborhoods, this paper examines the question of who carries weapons outside the home in Cape...