As part of our continuing interest in the ongoing negotiations with Colombia’s FARC rebels, co-author Mike Albertus and I published an analysis in Foreign Affairs earlier this week entitled “Land for Peace in Colombia.”
In the piece we consider how land reform in the peace accords in Guatemala and El Salvador helped resolve the civil conflicts in those countries. We highlight market-based reforms as a reasonable compromise that is applicable to Colombia. However, given our statistical findings on Colombia’s troubled past with land reform, we warn that to get FARC buy-in such a program would have to be credible — strongly supported and well funded.
That’s where the international community has a role to play. We suggest international actors can help make commitments to land reform credible by:
Creating a verification mechanism for the implementation of land programs.
Donating matching-funds to a government market-based land purchase program.
Colombia has a historic opportunity for peace. With any luck, the international community will also seize on its chance to contribute to resolving the linchpin issue of land reform.
Why has violence surrounding the drug trade in Mexico spiked so much since the mid-2000s? Check out this video for a graphic representation of the death toll:
Javier Osorio, a PhD candidate at Notre Dame and fellow at Yale’s Program on Order, Conflict & Violence, has an answer: competitive elections produced an incentive to use the military to crack down on criminal gangs, which in turn produced an incentive among weaker gangs to attack the leaders and hitmen of the gangs targeted by the Mexican military in an effort to expand their markets. Add to that the long-term trend of shrinking drug profits (since the 1970s prices have fallen as demand for high quality has risen), and you get the shock to the status quo that has generated a horrific human toll.
To briefly sketch the theory, begin with a status quo where a non-democratic government concedes, in exchange for bribes, a certain amount of control over territory. That is, the government does not develop the bureaucratic capacity necessary to fully enforce its claim to a monopoly on the legitimate use of coercion; instead, it engages in corruption and lines the pockets of those who might otherwise enforce the claim. This status quo produces a certain amount of killing as drug cartels enforce their territorial claims, but violence is relatively scarce as expectations are well established and the police look the other way.
But the introduction of competitive elections gives the executive an incentive to disrupt this status quo in an effort to gain legitimacy among a public weary of corruption and groups of people who are “above the law.” That incentive grows as the gap between electoral winners and losers shrinks (i.e., competitiveness increases). Osorio notes that Felipe Calderón’s margin of victory in 2006 presidential election was razor-thin, and attributes Calderón’s decision to utilize the Mexican military to crack down on drug cartels to the above incentive. I won’t provide further details (you can download a working paper here), but note that Osorio extends the theoretical model considerably in chapters he is not yet distributing, so you will want to keep an eye out for further work.
To test hypotheses Osorio has machine coded news reports from more than 100 local and national newspapers (and other sources), generating an events dataset that has almost 10 million observations over the district-day as the unit of observation. He then develops arguments about, and measures of, the value of territorial control to drug cartels in each district, thereby developing hypotheses about the excepted spatial and temporal variation in killings. It is exemplary subnational work, and I recommend it strongly.
I wonder about the extent to which Osorio’s theory travels well to understanding urban violence in the US. You may be unfamiliar with the extent to which certain urban neighborhoods in the US have been effectively abandoned by government. The Interrupters is an excellent documentary that makes this point as subtext to an engaging story, and I strongly recommend it (for a pop culture reference, check out Flavor Flave kicking “911 is a Joke”). There are also wide swaths of rural America where federal, state, and local government does not effectively press its claim to a monopoly on coercion (Winter’s Bone, the novel or film, offers a compelling fictitious story over this subtext).
Consider, for example, Chicago, where the Democratic party has held a supermajority for decades. This is similar to the PRI party’s historical grip on electoral politics in Mexico, a situation in which we would expect to find implicit and explicit deals cut between local cops, police commanders, and even aldermen (for a record of Chicago, see this report) and possibly mayors. If you watched The Wire you remember the Hamsterdam episode (<= [spoiler alert]), which can be described using Osorio’s theory as a situation in which a Police Commander decides to cede 100 percent of a well demarcated space to a gang.
What is interesting, then, is to ask what would happen if the Machine was broken and competitive elections occurred in cities like Chicago. Would we see a spike in violence as politicians with an incentive to reign in corruption weakened the strongest gangs, thereby unwittingly producing an incentive for weaker gangs to muscle-in, generating corpses along the way? The film noir, LA Confidentialdoes not unfold precisely this way, but it doesn’t seem entirely off point either.
I close with a cautionary note for PhD students writing dissertations: reading this work may depress you. Osorio’s project is the real deal: it addresses an important topic of the day; he utilizes formal theory to temper his argument and develop his hypotheses; he has an area expert’s command of the historical facts (local, national and regional); he collects original data, writing a software program for that purpose, utilizes GIS technology, has almost 10 million observations, and is working with advanced statistical methods; he positions the work within eternal debates about democratic governance and political order. Oh, and the title of his dissertation rocks: Hobbes on Drugs.
The gun control debate reignited by the Sandy Hook school shootings has highlighted some interesting attitudes and beliefs among a large section of the American public. An argument heard with increasing frequency in the Obama years is that the Second Amendment guarantees a right to own weapons because an armed populace is necessary to prevent tyranny. This is bad constitutional law, but is it good political science? Joshua Keating says probably not, noting that there appears to be no obvious correlation between democracy and gun ownership. My guess is that there might be a correlation between gun ownership and anarchy or weak states, but with the causal arrow running from fragmented, tribal societies to both high gun ownership — because of clan warfare — and weak states — because of lack of national sentiment among the population — but not much causation running directly between the guns and regime type, either way. After all, there is already a place where conservatives worried about tyranny can go where guns are plentiful, the government is small, and religion is taken very seriously, and it’s called Afghanistan.
But let’s take leave of reality altogether and ask whether the argument is credible even in theory. This might not seem like an important question, but it matters if one wants to think about whether gun nuts are simply mistaken, and hence amenable to reason, or whether their pro-gun views are driven by factors other than the intellectual arguments they present. So could the private possession of semi-automatic weapons prevent US government-imposed tyranny?
The answer would seem to be an obvious no if what is meant is that private citizens could effectively resist unified federal enforcement because they have AR-15s. Individually, and even in groups, citizens with semi-automatic rifles could be easily defeated by US Army, Marines, or National Guard units. These military units are comprised of young men and women who are well-trained and armed with automatic weapons, mortars, artillery, armored combat vehicles, etc. In open combat they would make short work of even a large number of middle-aged militia types. Private citizens with AR-15s would probably not even make much of a difference in a civil war fought between units of the American military with different loyalties. Only if the military refused to engage the militia units altogether could they hope to operate with any effectiveness, possibly against local police forces.
So the scenario would have to be that the federal government is attempting to impose tyranny without the support of the US military. Perhaps a tyranny-minded political party would develop a paramilitary wing, or devise an apparatus of repression within the Department of Homeland Security. This dynamic seems only to replicate the same issue on a slightly smaller scale. The fundamental problem is that any aspiring tyrant worth his salt will have much greater resources, firepower, and perhaps most important, organizational strength, than the insurrectionists. Rebels rarely win civil wars without significant external support.
That leaves terrorism. The final strategy could be that possession of AR-15s and the implicit — and in the case of James Yeager, explicit — threat of massacres could be sufficient to deter potential tyrants. The problem here is that tyrants tend to use such events as excuses to crack down and strengthen tyranny, rather than be deterred by them. Alternatively, the insurrectionist strategy could instead be provocation: to goad the tyrant into a response that reveals how tyrannical he is, which will then lead to a broad insurrection that overwhelms the government. Timothy McVeigh was thinking along these lines, although he used a truck bomb rather than a shooting spree. The Arab Spring reminds us that popular uprising can happen seemingly out of nowhere though, of course, the rebellions that succeeded were peaceful. Of the two that turned violent, Libya was only won thanks to NATO intervention, and Syria is still ongoing, despite substantial aid to the rebels from external supporters. It is unclear what external aid US gun enthusiasts can look to when they attempt to overthrow the US government.
Opium field targeted for eradication in Afghanistan. ISAF Photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Monica R. Nelson.
One of the main policies pursued in the war on drugs has been crop eradication. Instead of hurting drug producers and reducing the flow of narcotics as intended, these efforts have proven to be a great bust, and one that can be measured. At least this is the finding from recent scholarship on crop eradication in both Afghanistan and Colombia, which indicate that counter-narcotics efforts have largely not decreased supply, and, at least in Afghanistan, have had the perverse effect of increasing resource flows to insurgent groups. This should not be surprising, since when demand for any good is inelastic, restricting supply from what you’d have in a fully competitive market yields a more than proportional increase in prices, i.e. more profit.
A new paper on opium production in Afghanistan by Jeff Clemens shows that this is exactly what has happened in the Afghan opium trade. Because demand for opium is largely price inelastic and eradication efforts in Afghanistan disproportionately targeted government controlled areas, the net effect of crop eradication was to increase resources flowing to farmers in Taliban-heavy districts, who benefited from the removal of their competitors’ crops. Given the widespread evidence that the Taliban effectively tax opium in territory where they have a strong presence, this dynamic was almost surely a financial boon to the Taliban.
Similar studies, including work by Colombian economist Daniel Mejía focusing on crop eradication in Colombia, show that aerial spraying has done little to put a dent in the production of coca, from which cocaine is made. Again, these studies find that demand for drugs is price inelastic, so that small increases in price do not greatly affect consumption but do increase profits. Mejía finds that interdiction of drug trafficking is a relatively more efficient policy compared to eradication but that counter-narcotics resources have been relatively mis-allocated toward the latter. For these reasons as well as adaptations by producers to eradication, Mejía concludes, “The amount of cocaine reaching consumer countries remains relatively stable seven years after the initiation of Plan Colombia, and the price of cocaine at different stages has not risen.”
In sum, crop eradication efforts appear to be a net benefit for armed groups while depleting government coffers. Surely the resources allocated to crop eradication could be better spent.
French troops deploy to Mali. Screencap from Voice of America, via YouTube.
For the last several days, French forces have used military force to support the government of Mali in its battle against the Islamic insurgents who have captured nearly half of the country. This conflict is just the latest in a string of French interventions in its former African colonies. In 2002, French troops intervened in a civil war in Cote D’Ivoire, targeting both government and rebel troops. In 2011, it intervened in Cote D’Ivoire again, this time to help remove incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo from power after he refused to accept electoral defeat.
In fact, France has shown a much greater willingness to intervene in its former, post-independence African colonies than other colonial powers like Great Britain French forces intervened to stop a coup d’etat in Gabon in 1964 and provided substantial support to the government in Chad throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In general, French intervention was used to shore up governments in its former colonies it viewed as pro-France.
French willingness to intervene may have had effects beyond the actual cases of intervention as well. Quantitative studies of civil war have found that former French colonies in Africa have been less likely to experience civil wars than comparable countries exhibiting similar factors predicting civil war. In his book War, Guns, and Votes, Paul Collier attributes this lower occurrence of civil war to France’s “over the horizon guarantees” to protect the governments of these former colonies.
These guarantees could explain the low occurrence of civil war in former French colonies, because they affect potential rebels’ expectations of the likelihood of achieving success through civil war. In general, rebels initiate civil wars because they hope to achieve some goal, either directly through military action or by forcing the government to make concessions. Potential rebels in former French colonies anticipated French military intervention in response to violent rebellion, and therefore would expect to be less likely to achieve their goals through civil war.
In the case of Mali, it would be interesting to know whether and how the potential for French intervention affected the rebels’ decisions. Did the rebels expect France to intervene? Do they think they will be able to continue to control large parts of Mali after the intervention? Or, do they have goals that might actually be facilitated through intervention? These are not questions easy to answer, but they could help us understand the rebels’ motivation and the potential course that the conflict will take.
The Obama administration has recognized the Syrian opposition, rather than the Assad regime, as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people. Terming the opposition coalition ”inclusive” and “reflective and representative” of Syrians, this diplomatic move is a major change in US policy towards the Syrian war.
However, Obama’s recognition comes with strings. Specifically, the administration says that opposition groups “have some responsibilities to carry out” state functions. These include helping to, in the New York Times’ phrasing, “govern areas that have been wrested from Mr. Assad’s control, provide public services like law enforcement and utilities, and perhaps even channel humanitarian assistance.”
That is, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces must engage in so-called “parallel institution-building” — this week’s political violence thought of the week.
My sense is that parallel institution-building — “parallel” in the sense of replacing the embattled governing regime — is more or less a good idea. Such measures can help opposition movements build legitimacy and political power, which both tips conflicts’ balance in favor of the opposition and lays out a potentially smoother transition to post-conflict state-building functions.
But the hope that international legitimacy will encourage parallel institution building by the Syrian opposition may prove unfounded, for two reasons. First, institution building activities typically require some base of operations and territorial control. In Syria rebel-held zones are by no means contiguous, nor are they unambiguously under rebel control. Recent reports indicate that the rebels control some areas of the Syrian countryside and roadways. But the major cities — arguably the most important strategic zones in the war — remain at least highly contested, or still dominated by regime forces. It is not clear how the opposition will be able to generate alternative institutions that effectively rival or replace the government’s when they control little territory outright.
Second, there are lots of different groups who have already been building parallel institutions in Syria — and they are not all on the same side. The opposition itself has been building parallel political and economic institutions more or less from the start. The Local Coordination Councils and other political organizations remain active in promoting political capacity-building even after 18 months of fierce fighting. But this is not just a fight between the Syrian opposition and the Syrian government. Local defense councils, for example, have sprung up among minority communities seeking to protect themselves against what they view as “Muslim violence coming from the countryside.” The key question is whether the opposition can actually begin governing without impinging on the other armed or unarmed groups that are trying to do the same thing. If the National Coalition cannot win support among these other groups, then the Obama administration’s strategy will do little to advance the opposition’s aims.
The Vice Presidential debate featured some interesting exchanges on foreign policy, too many for some but probably just the right amount for loyal readers of PVGlance. I was particularly struck by the confab over withdrawal from Afghanistan. Ryan accused the Obama administration of having a fixed deadline for withdrawal; Biden defend the plan to get all troops out by 2014. Though focused on Afghanistan, this argument was, of course, but a pale shadow of the enormous row over “time tables” for withdrawal from Iraq during the 2008 Presidential campaign, where McCain accused Obama of having a time table for withdrawal that would surely lead to defeat. In fact, Obama’s policy in the end was not significantly different from Bush’s, the US withdrawal continued more or less on the schedule that had already been laid out, as dictated by political reality in both Iraq and the US.
The new fusillades may strike one as a somewhat contrived effort to generate differences that matter in theory but probably would not in practice, or at least they strike this one as such. But it reminded me of the deadline issue, and its potential for interesting strategic analysis. The Ryan/McCain thesis is that deadlines are bad because they announce a specified time at which one side will quit fighting, even if that side has not won by that point. In wars of attrition this would appear bad, because it publicly announces to the other side ‘if you can only hold out that long, then you can win’. The unstated assumption is that the opposing side will then be encouraged to hold out until the announced withdrawal when they would not otherwise.
However, I have not seen a model that actually exhibits that result, and it would be interesting to see if it really holds true. These war of attrition models arose to study biology, so let’s use a biological example. Let’s say two lions are fighting over a certain piece of territory with lots of antelope on it. One lion, call him Lion A, is forced by domestic political circumstances to admit to the other lion, Lion B, that it can only fight for ten years and will then have to give up because the war will become unpopular among the pride at home. This might seem like a problem for the domestically constrained Lion A. However, if Lion B was only planning to fight for ten minutes, ten years will seem like an eternity, and the deadline could hardly influence the ultimate outcome in Lion B’s favor. Shorten Lion A’s deadline and I’m not sure at what point Lion B starts fighting longer.
Specifically, if we assume that each lion has a privately known length of time that they are willing to hold out and then Lion A has to admit its deadline publicly, if that deadline is longer than the pre-existing privately known quit time of Lion B, will Lion B then decide to hold out longer to outlast Lion A? If I were less lazy I could probably do the model instead of finish this blog post, but for now I merely conjecture that the answer is no, because Lion B is comparing the utility for quitting now with the utility for holding out one more instant, and quits when they are equal, and Lion A has announced that it will quit at some time later than the next instant. This actually means it will discourage Lion B from holding out further because previously it thought there was some chance Lion A would quit in the next instant, and now it knows that it won’t. This logic holds except in the case where Lion B’s privately known quit time happened to be the instant before the announced quit date of Lion A, in which case Lion B would say whoopee and keep fighting one more instant, confident that they could outlast Lion A. Bottom line: I’m not sure the Ryan/McCain thesis actually works even in the simple model that they seem to be envisioning. But I could be wrong. I leave the proof as an exercise for the reader.
A second issue has to do with the cost of war and whether it occurs at all. We know from game theoretic analysis that if both sides were able to/forced to announce truthfully how long they were able to hold out, then the war could be avoided and the two sides could simply cut to the chase and award the disputed good to the more patient party. What happens if only one side is able to do this? How does it affect the likely outcome, and the expected costs paid? I suppose it’s just a war of attrition with one sided uncertainty but I don’t recall the results, in comparison with the two sided case.
All this doesn’t even address the Obama/Biden comeback. The Obama/Biden thesis is that only by setting a deadline can one light a fire under the host government’s posterior and get them to assume the burden of fighting the insurgency in a serious way. The funny thing is that this analysis should appeal to Mitt Romney, who has labeled 47 percent of Americans are shiftless, not to mention his running mate, Ayn Rand Fan Club Secretary Paul Ryan. Host governments are on welfare, and entitlement reform is the only way to get them to take charge of their lives and fight their own fights. Here, the simple model clearly supports the Obama/Biden/Rand analysis; in a straight up public goods model, why contribute at all when Uncle Sam is footing the tab? The best response is to free ride.
However, the simple model in this case may be too simple. The core problem with counterinsurgency is that the host government is weak to start with, which is why they need help in the first place. Cut off the help to early and the host government may fail altogether However, it’s hard to tell when a host government can really stand on its feet at all, given the incentives to free ride. A model that incorporated this tradeoff would have very wide applicability to problems like unemployment benefits, etc. One can imagine an equilibrium strategy that involves phased reduction of benefits (in the counterinsurgency model, troops) to see if the host can cope, so that the situation can be retrieved if they cannot. But an alternative equilibrium may be the cold turkey approach: support host governments up to a certain announced time, and then cut them off to sink or swim on their own.
A model that incorporated all three issues — war of attrition, public goods/free riding, and uncertainty about host government strength — would be very interesting.
We recently published an article in the American Sociological Review in which we argue that Israeli conciliatory actions like negotiations, improving living conditions, and other concessions have been more effective than repression actions — arrests, killings, and curfews — in reducing Palestinian terrorist attacks. View the press release here, and view the study here.
But if negotiation and concessions can reduce terrorism, then why doesn’t the Israeli government do these things more often? We suggest three plausible explanations, although there may be more.
Politics. Israeli leaders may view dovish policies toward Palestinians as too politically risky. Even if there is high voter enthusiasm for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, unilateral Israeli concessions are extremely controversial. A politician embracing such policies may pay for this position at the polls or, in some cases, with his life. With Israel’s changing demography, politics may play an even more important role today than it did twenty years ago.
Genuine fear of backfire. Although our study shows otherwise, a dominant narrative in Israel is that making concessions to Palestinians is ineffective. For instance, after Israel and the PLO negotiated the Oslo Accords, various Palestinian groups responded with a wave of terror throughout the 1990s, culminating in the highly traumatic Second Intifada. It is easy to see such events as representative, but they are not. In fact, we find that conciliatory actions actually had the strongest violence-reducing effects during the Second Intifada, whereas Israel’s militaristic retaliation only exacerbated terrorist violence.
Insincerity about the peace process. The current Israeli ruling elite may simply be unwilling to pay the price for peace, which would a genuine two-state solution. We have our doubts that Netanyahu is serious about the peace process. Instead, he seems content to kick the can down the road, calculating that settlements will continue to expand, Palestinians will remain despairing but only moderately active, and “facts on the ground” will eventually come to favor Israel. On the contrary, our research shows that this course of action does little to make Israelis safer.
THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.
Yet again a film premiers and people begin discussing the view of political violence that exists within it. (This is not to be confused with the potentially political violence that exists outside of the film — the horrific shooting in Colorado — which I will not discuss here). Within a book that I am currently finishing, titled Pop Struggle, I am exploring repression and dissent within film, graphic novels and comics, and trying to understand what is/is not covered as well as what the diverse media identified try to tell us about who starts, escalates, wins and loses in these state-challenger contests. In line with this effort, I thought it would be useful to explore what is political about the violence in The Dark Knight Rises.
Deviating from the general starting point of most academia as well as most American movies (which I tackle in the book), my discussion will not start with the behavioral challengers. Following my earlier blog post, I will start with the police.
What’s political about police violence in The Dark Knight Rises?
As Weber would maintain, Gotham’s police seek to hold the monopoly on the legitimate use of coercion, and they will target those who challenge them using violence when they are pushed to do so. Indeed, the police place greater value on eliminating these individuals than thieves or criminals, as evidenced when the police would rather pursue Batman than the robbers they were previously chasing. The police are clearly reactive in the film; they never initiate conflict. This is important because the reason for the behavioral challenger (Bane and crew) and challenge (seeking to destroy Gotham) are prompted by the inequality, corruption, indifference, suffering and injustice of the status quo — something that the police, by definition, support.
What’s political about the authority’s violence or facilitation of violence?
As conceived in the film, the authorities in Gotham rely on mystery, myths, deception and (by working with/tolerating Batman) intimidation as well as violence to maintain the perception that they are in control, and that they should be followed. [The Dark Knight spoilers] For example, maintaining the inspirational myth of Harvey Dent’s virtue is believed to be essential for the maintenance of political order. Like Hannah Arendt, The Dark Knight Rises does not believe that governments can rule by force alone — they need something else. The Dark Knight trilogy does not follow Etienne de la Boetie, however, advocating the use of bread, circuses and distraction. Rather, they seem to follow Machiavelli’s advocacy for the use of force and fear with a little love thrown in there for good measure. Indeed, what is the Bat-Sign projected into the night sky but a terroristic device tolerated/facilitated by the authorities? Of course, within the trilogy it is believed that only criminals would fear the Bat, but why would this actually be the case? Wouldn’t everyone fear the Batman? After all, it is entirely possible that Batman could make a mistake and target a non-challenger, like he did when everyone believed he killed Dent. But the series only deals with this possibility in the form of a fabrication that the viewing audience knows to be a lie. In reality (i.e., in the movie world), pro-state vigilantes never make mistakes. They always get the right person and they never are unsure about someone’s allegiance (in part because they have the person under surveillance — most likely illegally obtained). In the “war” (The Dark Knights Rises’ phrase, not mine), there are no mistaken identities, just not enough force.
What’s political about the challengers’ violence?
Within the film, Bane and crew wish to instrumentally destroy Gotham City within the sovereign nation of the US because it is the essence of all that has become evil: corruption, suffering, injustice and inequality. The destruction of this city (like Constantinople and Rome before it, noted in an earlier film) will allow humanity to begin anew. In short, Bane and crew have a fundamental disagreement with the status quo and offer humanity a reboot achieved through mass violence. The violence is not the end but, rather, the means. Most violence in the Batman series is instrumental, except in the case where a criminal mastermind (like the Joker) is brought down. Note: the position of the status quo with all the greed and inequality is never justified. That’s just the way it is.
Toward the ends identified above, Bane and crew overcome the agents of order and take over Gotham by force (easily actually because Bane and his allies are both smart as well as vicious).
Bane does not frame his efforts publicly as violence. Rather, he and his allies frame it as “returning” Gotham to its citizens (i.e., “manipulate” the public), facilitating their exacting “justice” on “criminals” who arrive at the court already presumed guilty. There is a claim made and violence is used to bring it about.
Finally, what’s political about the vigilantes’ (i.e., Batman’s) violence?:
Batman wishes to re-establish the status quo through violently eliminating behavioral challengers. He also wishes to “return” Gotham to its citizens, which is interesting because as one of Gotham’s favorite sons, he would be returning the city to himself — presumably so Bruce Wayne could continue to chill in his mansion, ride around in his Lamborghinis and party til he drops. Of course, this is only his public persona — he actually hates this. ;)
In order to restore/preserve order, Batman engages in violence that authorities are incapable and unwilling to do.
Batman uses mystery, myths, magic and deception to make it seem that he (and hence the existing status quo) is more in control than he actually is.
When Batman (and by implication the state) is unable to wield enough force they have to retreat, retrain, rearm (Batman does maintain his own research and development firm which provides weapons to himself as well as the US military — like Ironman) and return to kick some ass. Once force of the most lethal nature is released, then order is restored. Interestingly, there is not much said about the corruption associated with this order in the film but through a relocation of wealth noted in the end suffering, indifference and, presumably, some injustice is addressed. Only by the rich dying (metaphorically) is the system improved.
The population need not fear Batman’s “death”/retirement. Indeed, the next generation of vigilante is on the way to being prepared (enter Robin).
Interestingly, the film differs from the Frank Miller graphic novel upon which it is based in important ways. For example, in the graphic novel: 1) Batman is near 60 and comes out of retirement to take on Bane and crew; 2) Batman takes an even more aggressive stance regarding his vigilante status by having to defeat Superman before proceeding along his path of violence (Superman did not want the un-authorized violence to be enacted as it would send the wrong signal to the population/globe); and, 3) Batman does not take Bane and crew on with New York’s finest but rather he generates his own vigilante crew ending in a bone-crunching one-on-one battle in mud to take away Bane’s fighting advantage. In short, in the Hollywood version of the story Batman is younger, less of a vigilante/renegade and less of an anti-establishment cult figure. This is generally consistent with the findings of my book. Films are always less politically radical than their literary inspirations.
Community friction is not an interdiction fiction. Today I’m flagging an essay of mine appearing in the National Interest, “A New Approach to the Drug War.” It deconstructs the fallout from a shoot-out during a drug interdiction raid in Honduras in May, where Honduran Police and DEA agents mistakenly killed four civilians.
As both drug trafficking and interdiction practices expand – even now into Africa – there are increasing dangers and frictions for communities in the crossfire. Resolving such frictions can both limit violence and even help fight trafficking.
The piece applies an insight from my research on Colombia’s indigenous groups (“Shootings and Shamans”)about highly cohesive communities and especially indigenous communities mobilizing to confront the dangers posed by drug violence. In doing so, they reclaim their autonomy and exhibit remarkable resilience.
The Honduran Miskito coast exhibits high participation in community councils. In other words, traffickers could not have picked a worse “ungoverned” area for its potential to mobilize to defend itself, given the right trigger.
Open dialogue and communication—so that security forces work with local communities—can help put the protection of civilians on equal footing with interdiction.
My @ a Glance colleagues will be glad to know that local communities and not just armed actors actors or states states can fill the voids of ungoverned areas, too.
Note: A similar situation is currently exploding in Colombia with the Nasa Indians protesting the presence of both the FARC and the Military in their territories—stayed tuned for my next post!
Barbara F. Walter is a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. Erica Chenoweth is a political scientist at the University of Denver. Together, they started this blog to provide simple, straight-forward analysis of political violence around the world.
