Postgraduate Module Descriptor

POLM088: State-building after Civil War

This module descriptor refers to the 2019/0 academic year.

Module Content

Syllabus Plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:

State-building and civil wars – key concepts and dilemmas
Origins of civil wars: security dilemmas
Origins of civil wars: identities and interests
Civil war onset and duration
Ending civil wars: negotiation, peace-keeping, partition
Constitutional design for divided societies
Strengthening institutions and maintaining political order after civil war
Promoting democracy in weak states
Case studies and student presentations

Learning and Teaching

This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:

Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities	Guided independent study	Placement / study abroad
22	278

...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:

Category	Hours of study time	Description
Scheduled learning and teaching activities	22	11 x 2 hour weekly seminars.
Guided independent study	60	Complete weekly reading assignments.
Guided independent study	188	Research, and drafting of policy memo, paper outline, and final paper
Guided independent study	30	Research and preparation for in-class presentation

Online Resources

This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).

PRIO data on armed conflict: https://www.prio.org/Data/Armed-Conflict/

Uppsala conflict data program: http://ucdp.uu.se

ETH Zurich international conflict research data: https://icr.ethz.ch/data/

Political violence at a glance: http://politicalviolenceataglance.org

Indicative Reading List

This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.

Basic reading:

Autessere, Severine. 2010. The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding. Cambridge University Press.

Cederman, Lars-Erik, Andreas Wimmer, Brian Min. 2010. “Why Do Ethnic Groups Rebel? New Data and Analysis, World Politics 62: 87-119.

Collier, Paul and Anke Hoeffler. 2004. “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” Oxford Economic Papers

56, no. 4: 563-595.

Doyle, Michael and Nicholas Sambanis. 2000. “International Peacebuilding: a Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis”, American Political Science Review 94: 779-801.

Doyle, Michael W., and Nicholas Sambanis. 2006. Making War and Building Peace: United Nations Peace Operations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Fortna, Virginia Page. 2004. “Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace? International Intervention and the Duration of Peace after Civil War”, International Studies Quarterly 48: 269-292.

Gurr, Robert Ted. 1968. “Psychological Factors in Civil Violence,” World Politics 20, no. 2: 245-278.

Hartzel, Caroline. 1999. “Explaining the Stability of Negotiated Settlements to Intrastate Wars” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 43: 3-22.

Kalyvas, Stathis. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kuperman, Alan. 2004. “Is Partition Really the Only Hope? Reconciling Contradictory Findings about Ethnic Civil Wars”, Security Studies 13:4: 314-349.

Licklider, Roy. 1995. “How Civil Wars End”, Stopping the Killing: How Civil Wars End, NY: NYU Press.

Lijphart, Arendt. 2004. “Constitutional Design for Divided Societies”, Journal of Democracy 15: 96-109.

Olson, Mancur. 2000. Power and Prosperity. New York: Basic Books, Chapter 1.

Posen, Barry R. 1993. “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” Survival 35: 27-47

Power, Samantha. 2013. A Problem from Hell. America and the Age of Genocide. Basic Books.

Walter, Barbara. 1999. “Designing Transitions from Civil War: Demobilization, Democratization, and Commitments to Peace”, International Security 24: 127-155.