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The Ontology of “Political Violence”: Action and Identity in Civil Wars

Kalyvas, Stathis N.·2003·Perspectives on Politics

Abstract

I discuss several conceptual problems raised by current understandings of political violence, especially as they pertain to actions, motivations, and identities in civil wars. Actions “on the ground” often turn out to be related to local and private conflicts rather than the war's driving (or “master”) cleavage. The disjunction between dynamics at the top and at the bottom undermines prevailing assumptions about civil wars, which are informed by two competing interpretive frames, most recently described as “greed and grievance.” Rather than posit a dichotomy between greed and grievance, I point to the interaction between political and private identities and actions. Civil wars are not binary conflicts, but complex and ambiguous processes that foster the “joint” action of local and supralocal actors, civilians, and armies, whose alliance results in violence that aggregates yet still reflects their diverse goals. It is the convergence of local motives and supralocal imperatives that endows civil wars with their particular and often puzzling character, straddling the divide between the political and the private, the collective and the individual.

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Metadata

Authors
Kalyvas, S. N.
Venue
Perspectives on Politics
Published
2003-08-28
Volume
1
Issue
3
Pages
475-494
ISSN
  • 1537-5927 (ISSN-L)
  • 1541-0986
OpenAlex
W1972208633
Cited by
799
References
64
FWCI
19.27
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Ontology of “Political Violence”: Action and Identity in Civil Wars. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1017/s1537592703000355
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Kalyvas, S. N. (2003). The Ontology of “Political Violence”: Action and Identity in Civil Wars. Perspectives on Politics. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1537592703000355

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