https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8516-7402
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ABSTRACT
Why do some groups fighting in civil wars target civilians more than others? We propose an explanation that challenges the current focus on material and organizational factors and instead brings back and emphasizes the role of ideology. We argue that the ideological frameworks of armed groups, whether state or non-state, condition their decisions about targeting, in some cases setting normative constraints on action even if such choice involves higher costs and risks. We examine these hypotheses using a mixed-method approach that combines a statistical analysis of a newly constructed disaggregated data set on all fatalities in Northern Ireland’s conflict between 1969 and 2005 with a comparative historical study of the interaction between key ideologies and the armed groups that adopted them.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Dr. Anar K. Ahmadov has held research and teaching positions at Princeton University, Oxford University, and the LSE, and for over a decade worked as a consultant, analyst, and executive in international development. He is Assistant Professor in Governance and global Affairs, Leiden University College, The Hague.
Professor James Hughes holds a chair in Comparative Politics at LSE, and has published widely on political violence and ethnonational conflicts. His most recent book (coedited with Denisa Kostovicova) is Rethinking Reconciliation and Transitional Justice after Conflict, London: Routledge, 2019.
Notes
1 For helpful summaries, see Hayes and McAllister (Citation2001) and O'Leary & McGarry, (Citation1993).
2 In robustness checks, we adopt a non-conservative definition.
3 The strengths and weaknesses are different across the three sources. For example, McKeown (Citation2009) presents structured data, Sutton (Citation1994) gives dates of incidents, and McKittrick et al. (Citation2007) provide a lot of useful qualitative information about victims. The weaknesses include inconsistencies or missing information on gender, victim’s status, motivation behind killing, wrong coding of some combatants as non-combatants, and large number of fatalities with insufficiently specified responsible group.
4 Formed in 1970, the UDR was merged with the Royal Irish Rangers to form the Royal Irish Regiment (RIR) in 1992.
5 The choice of this sub-national level is dictated by the limitation in McKeown’s, Citation2009 dataset.
6 In the Northern Ireland conflict, groups were invariably homogenous in their ethnic make-up, so an ethnic homogeneity variable would not add any value.
7 In the case of Northern Ireland conflict the latter is more applicable as victimization was more likely to be clustered in time than space, possibly due to the relatively small size of the country and the relative segregation of different communities – groups were more likely to retaliate by violence in a different location but in the same time period.
8 AUROC remains similar between models with and without ideology variables, suggesting that in the latter the significant variables were probably absorbing the effect of ideology.
9 There was a fragmented landscape of armed groups in Northern Ireland which also reflects certain ideological differences when it comes to appropriate strategies and tactics. We can further disaggregate republicanism and loyalism by specific tenets associated with different armed groups within each camp. For the republican camp we find that, although all forms of republicanism are associated with a smaller likelihood of civilian victimization, this association is statistically significant for groups that espoused Irish republicanism and Irish republican socialism but not for groups that espoused far left views (e.g., Marxism-Leninism or Trotskyism). For the loyalist camp, we find that higher likelihood of civilian victimization is associated with Ulster loyalism per se but not necessarily with an ideological principle of Ulster self-determination. However, we stress that we should treat such disaggregation of ideological camps with additional caution because comparing a relatively limited number of armed groups in our statistical analysis can lead to biased estimates.
10 The ‘murder triangle’ refers to the area in Armagh and Tyrone which broadly corresponds with the activities of the ‘Glennane Gang’ (for which see Cadwallader, Citation2013).
11 On the link between impunity and socialization, see Wood and Toppelberg (Citation2017).
12 The efforts of Loyle, Sullivan, & Davenport, Citation2014 to assemble such data hold promise for future studies.
