Localized legacies of civil war
| Published date | 01 November 2016 |
| Date | 01 November 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343316659692 |
| Author | Annekatrin Deglow |
| Subject Matter | Research Articles |
Localized legacies of civil war:
Postwar violent crime in Northern Ireland
Annekatrin Deglow
Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University
Abstract
This study explores the local effects of internal armed conflict on postwar violent crime in Northern Ireland. It argues
that exposure to wartime violence will lead to higher levels of violent crime in the aftermath of conflict. Particularly, it
claims that exposure to violence committed by armed groups challenging the state (anti-government groups) will
have this effect, as it erodes the legitimacy needed for local law enforcement agencies to function effectively. This, in
turn, is expected to contribute to the emergence of a postwar public security gap that lowers opportunity costs to
resort to violent crime for a range of local actors. To evaluate these propositions, spatial statistics on a subnational
dataset covering war-related fatalities for the period 1969–98 and police crime records for the postwar period
2002–06 are employed. The results indicate that the more an area has been exposed to violence, and the larger the
proportion of this violence committed by anti-government groups, the more violent crime on the local level. This
study hence contributes both to the burgeoning literature on the legacies of civil war and to recent research
emphasizing the need to disaggregate non-state actors.
Keywords
anti-government groups, civil war legacies, local level, Northern Ireland, postwar violent crime
Introduction
What are the local effects of civil war on postwar violent
crime? Scholars and policymakers alike commonly stress
the destructive consequences that wars have on a range of
social, economic and political phenomena. Armed con-
flicts are associated with low levels of economic and
human development (Collier et al., 2003), the break-
down of social capital and norms (Colletta & Cullen,
2000) and increases in violence and crime in their after-
math. Societies that have experienced war are either on
average more violent than non-war societies (Ember &
Ember, 1994; Rivera, 2016), or display an increase in
violent crime in the form of homicides compared to
prewar levels (Archer & Gartner, 1976; Collier &
Hoeffler, 2004). These macro-level findings are often
explained by arguments suggesting that armed conflict
creates an environment permissive for the use of
violence.
In recent years a burgeoning literature studying the
consequences of civil wars on the micro-level has
emerged. These studies can be seen as a response to the
observation that macro-level explanations do not always
adequately account for the causes, patterns and conse-
quences of violence (Kalyvas, 2006; Wood, 2008). Con-
ducting micro-level analyses, scholars have yielded a
counter-intuitive, yet interesting finding: armed conflicts
do not necessarily destroy all parts of a country’s social,
economic and political fabric (Bateson, 2013; Bellows &
Miguel, 2009; Blattman, 2009; Gilligan, Pasquale &
Samii, 2013; Voors et al., 2012). While this emerging
strand of micro-level literature has reignited the debate
on the consequences of civil war in relation to a range of
outcomes, it has not yet addressed the issue of postwar
violent crime. Postwar violent crime is here understood
as violence that is a breach of law and results in at least
the injury of a person after conflict termination. This is
surprising, as the effects that armed conflict might have
Corresponding author:
annekatrin.deglow@pcr.uu.se
Journal of Peace Research
2016, Vol. 53(6) 786–799
ªThe Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343316659692
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