GOV 312L Lecture 14: Module 14 Reading
Document Summary
Organized violence is purposive, intended to realize certain aims. The incumbent government is normally a participant in civil wars and one or more non-governmental faction is vying for control of government. Although they can occur on ethnic lines, they are separate from ethnic pogroms. Ethnic pogorms are violent crashes between ethnic groups- or other forms of civil strife where representatives of the state or army are not directly involved. They are distinguished from lower level interstate violence by some threshold of severity. Threshold used in civil war is 1,000 battle deaths per year. Fighting that results in fewer deaths is not enough to call it a civil war. They can be characterized by different types of fighting than international wars. Civil wars involve irregular fighting among shifting factions. Guerilla warfare involves a hit and run tactic designed to surprise and inflict harm on any enemy while suffering minimal casualties.
