Ideology and armed conflict
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343319826629 |
| Author | Jonathan Leader Maynard |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Ideology and armed conflict
Jonathan Leader Maynard
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford
Abstract
A growing wave of scholarship suggests that ideology has demonstrable effects on various forms of armed conflict.
But ideology remains a relative theoretical newcomer in conflict research, and scholars lack developed microfounda-
tions for analyzing ideologies and their effects. Typically, existing research has primarily presented ideology as either
an instrumental tool for conflict actors or a source of sincere political and normative commitments. But neither
approach captures the diverse ways in which contemporary social science theorizes the causal connection between
ideas and action, and both struggle to reconcile the apparently strong effects of ideology on conflict at the collective
level with the relative rarity of ‘true believers’ at the individual level. This article addresses such problems by
providing key microfoundations for conceptualizing ideologies, analyzing ideological change, and explaining ideol-
ogies’ influence over conflict behavior. I emphasize that ideology overlaps with other drivers of conflict such as
strategic interests and group identities, show how ideologies can affect conflict behavior through four distinct
mechanisms – commitment, adoption, conformity, and instrumentalization – and clarify the role of both conflict
pressures and pre-existing ideological conditions in ideological change. These microfoundational claims integrate
existing empirical findings and offer a foundation for building deeper explanations and middle-range theories of
ideology’s role in armed conflict.
Keywords
frames, identity, ideology, norms, political violence
Does ideology matter in armed conflict? A glance at the
most influential theories of conflict would suggest not,
since few accord ideology much significance (Gutie
´rrez
Sanı
´n & Wood, 2014: 213–214). Yet in recent years, a
growing wave of research has begun to link ideology with
demonstrable effects on multiple forms of organized vio-
lence, including interstate conflict (Haas, 2005; Owen,
2010), civil wars (Balcells, 2017; Cos talli & Ruggeri,
2015; Gutie
´rrez Sanı
´n & Wood, 2014; Hafez, forth-
coming; Oppenheim et al., 2015; Thaler, 2012; Walter,
2017), terrorism (Asal & Rethemeyer, 2008; Ron,
2001), state repression (Scharpf, 2018) and genocides
and mass killings (Harff, 2003; Kim, 2018; Straus,
2015). Ideology’s role can certainly be overstated, since
superficial ideological cleavages sometimes bear little
resemblance to the underlying drivers of violence
(Kalyvas, 2003, 2009). But contentions that ‘ideologies
are an important basis of conflict’ (Cohrs, 2012: 53), and
that ‘neglecting ideology would leave major war-related
phenomena unexplained’ (Gutie
´rrez Sanı
´n&Wood,
2014: 214) are increasingly common.
1
Ideology remains, however, a relative theoretical new-
comer in recent conflict research.
2
By comparison with
ideational phenomena like identity, norms or ethnicity,
conflict scholars do not possess a well-developed theore-
tical literature to inform analysis of ideology, and rarely
reference specialist work from other fields, such as
Corresponding author:
jonathan.leadermaynard@politics.ox.ac.uk
1
This impression is enhanced if one includes work which, though
not oriented around ‘ideology’, investigates related phenomena such
as politicized religion (Juergensmeyer, 2003; Toft, Philpott & Shah,
2011), symbolic politics (Kaufman, 2006), or political narratives and
frames (Shesterinina, 2016; Tezcu
¨r, 2016).
2
Though earlier works include, for example, Owen (1994); Walt
(1996).
Journal of Peace Research
2019, Vol. 56(5) 635–649
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343319826629
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