Warfare, Political Identities, and Displacement in Spain and Colombia

Laia Balcells () and Abbey Steele
Additional contact information
Abbey Steele: Maxwell School of Syracuse University

No 124, HiCN Working Papers from Households in Conflict Network

Abstract: This paper explores the causes of displacement during civil wars. Recent scholarship has shown that conventional civil wars � those in which forces are relatively balanced � and irregular civil wars � those in which one side is substantially stronger than the other � exhibit different patterns of violence. We hypothesize that, while the mode of violence differs, the form of displacement should be consistent across the wars: displacement is a tactic of war that armed groups use to conquer new territories. By expelling civilians associated with rivals, armed groups improve their odds of gaining control of contested territory. This implies that members of a group are targeted for displacement because of their identity and presumed loyalties. We test the theory using two fine-grained datasets on individuals displaced during a conventional civil war, in Spain (1936-1939), and an irregular civil war, in Colombia (1964-). In both cases, the war cleavage was reflected in national elections: thus, where political parties received support indicated which populations were sympathetic to rivals. In both civil wars, we observe higher levels of displacement in locations where more sympathizers of rival armed groups reside. The paper makes three contributions. First, it shows that the microfoundations of displacement are similar in two types of civil wars. Second, it is the first comparison to our knowledge of the sub-national dynamics of displacement within two different civil wars. Third, it explains macro-level differences with a coherent micro-level framework.

Keywords: violence; civil war; displacement; Colombia; Spain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2012-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hicn.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/HiCN-WP-124.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hic:wpaper:124

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in HiCN Working Papers from Households in Conflict Network
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tilman Brück () and () and () and ().