Laia Balcells

International System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict

Because they are chiefly domestic conflicts, civil wars have been studied primarily from a perspective stressing domestic factors. We ask, instead, whether (and how) the international system shapes civil wars; we find that it does shape the way in which they are fought—their “technology of rebellion.” After disaggregating civil wars into irregular wars (or insurgencies), conventional wars, and symmetric nonconventional wars, we report a striking decline of irregular wars following the end of the Cold War, a remarkable transformation of internal conflict. Our analysis brings the international system back into the study of internal conflict. It specifies the connection between system polarity and the Cold War on the one hand and domestic warfare on the other hand. It also demonstrates that irregular war is not the paradigmatic mode of civil war as widely believed, but rather is closely associated with the structural characteristics of the Cold War.

Continuation of Politics by Two Means: Direct and Indirect Violence in Civil War:

This article distinguishes between ‘‘direct’’ and ‘‘indirect’’ violence during civil wars. These two types differ in their forms of production: while indirect violence is unilaterally perpetrated by an armed group, direct violence is jointly produced by an armed group and civilians, and it hinges on local collaboration. These differences have consequences for the spatial variation of each of these types: in conventional civil wars, indirect violence is hypothesized to be positively associated with levels of prewar support for the enemy group; in contrast, direct violence is hypothesized to increase with the level of political parity between factions in a locality. The predictions are tested with a novel dataset of 1,710 municipalities in Catalonia and Aragon during the Spanish civil war (1936—1939).

The Consequences of Victimization on Political Identities Evidence from Spain

This article explores the impact of war-related traumatic experiences on political identities and political behavior by exploring different pieces of empirical evidence from the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), the Franco dictatorship (1939–75), and its aftermath. On one hand, the author analyzes semistructured interviews of survivors of the civil war and the dictatorship; on the other hand, she assesses data from a specialized survey implemented on a representative sample of the Spanish population. The analyses broadly suggest that, controlling for family leanings during the civil war, victimization experiences during the civil war and the subsequent dictatorship lead to the rejection of the perpetrators’ identities along the political cleavage that was salient during the war (i.e., left–right). The survey analysis also indicates that (1) although grudges related to severe wartime violations are transmitted through generations, moderate wartime violations do not have such a long-term political impact; (2) the political effects of victimization do not increase with proximity to the traumatic events (i.e., age); and (3) victimization experiences do not have a significant impact on identities along cleavages that were not salient during the war (i.e., center–periphery).

Bridging Micro and Macro Approaches on Civil Wars and Political Violence Issues, Challenges, and the Way Forward

This article reflects on the importance of linking micro and macro levels of analysis in order to advance our current understanding of civil wars and political violence processes and discusses the contributions of the articles in this special issue. We first identify the main problems in research on political violence that is focused on a single level of analysis and describe the challenges faced by research that attempts to establish connections between different levels. We then introduce the different articles in the special issue, with an emphasis on the micro–macro-level linkages they develop and highlighting their commonalities. We conclude by emphasizing the importance of a new research agenda for the study of civil wars and political violence that bridges social, economic, and political dynamics occurring at the local level and conflict processes taking place in the macro arena.

The determinants of low-intensity intergroup violence. The case of Northern Ireland

What accounts for low-intensity intergroup violence? This article explores the determinants of low-intensity sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, which has marked the post-1998 peace agreement period. Low-intensity violence comprises a variety of events from riots to attacks against other civilians as well as against homes and symbolic buildings such as churches. We argue that this violence is more likely and prevalent in interface areas where similarly sized rival communities are geographically in contact with each other. Parity and contact spur intergroup competition and threat perception, and they increase the viability of violence. We use original cross-sectional time-series violence data for the 2005–12 period at a disaggregated subnational level, the ward, and a wide variety of social and economic indicators to test our hypotheses. In particular, we assess the impact of within-ward ethnic composition, on the one hand, and the ethnic composition of neighboring wards, on the other. We find that the number of intergroup violent events peaks in wards where there is parity between groups, and in predominantly Catholic (Protestant) wards that border predominantly Protestant (Catholic) wards. The article makes two main contributions: it shows that micro-level dynamics of violence can expand beyond local territorial units, and it suggests that ethnic segregation is unlikely to prevent intergroup violence.

Preferences for Inter-Regional Redistribution

What explains individual support for inter-regional redistribution? Few studies examine support for regional redistribution, even though such issues are politically salient in many democracies. We test models that hypothesize that such preferences are affected by regional and individual income, as well as other arguments beyond the traditional political economy framework. We focus on informational assumptions and implications of these models with an experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey in Spain. We randomly inform some citizens of the true relative income of their region to assess the impact of this information on regional redistribution preferences. We find that citizens’ learning about their region’s relative position affects these preferences in a manner consistent with some of the political economy models. We also find some support for out-group concerns as an important factor. The findings have implications for the applicability of economic models to explaining support for regional arrangements.

Party Polarisation and Spatial Voting in Spain

In this article, we examine which political issues are considered most important by the Spanish electorate. Although a variety of potentially relevant issues are available, voters are forced to summarise them in just one vote. Thus, they need to prioritise some issues over others. This article analyses which issues end up being the most important for the Spanish electorate when they decide their vote, and why some issues become more influential than others. Our hypothesis is that voters give more weight to issues that polarise the parties. The hypothesis is tested at the individual and at the aggregate level.

Mass Schooling and Catalan Nationalism

In 1659, the kingdoms of France and Spain signed the Treaty of Pyrenees, a peace treaty by which a piece of the Spanish territory became part of France. Since then, Catalan identity has persisted on both sides of the border. However, while this identity is today politically and socially relevant in Spain, it is not in France. This article argues that this variation can be explained by the characteristics of the historical process of the spread of mass literacy in each of these countries. Catalan national identity is not salient in French Catalonia because the first generation of mass literates became so under French rule. In contrast, the nonexistence of a scholastic revolution in Spain prior to the beginning of the 20th century allowed for the successful sowing of a Catalan national identity during the first decades of that century. The fact that mass literacy took place in Spanish Catalonia during a period of Catalan nationalist upheaval led to the endurance of this identity.