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Content archived on 2024-06-18

Conflict, Strategies, and Violence: An Actor-based Approach to Violent and Non-Violent Interactions

Objective

Existing research has tended to equate conflict with violence, lumping all “non-conflict” situations together. This is unfortunate on theoretical and empirical grounds. Definitions of conflict highlight incompatibilities, which may motivate actors to resort to violence, but do not automatically generate violence and can be settled or managed in non-violent ways. Lumping together as “not violence” both cases without incompatibilities or agency and cases where actors pursue different strategies ultimately undermines our ability to understand conflict processes and test core arguments about conflict, strategies, and violence, and leaves us unable to assess whether the observed global decline in violence may reflect increasing use of alternative strategies, more state deterrence/accommodation, or fewer incompatibilities in the first place. This project will examine conflict in terms of incompatibilities between actors, where the specific structure of the incompatibilities and the strategies and interactions determine whether we see escalation to violence as well as alternative outcomes such as accommodation or regime change. It will extend my prior research on civil war and focus more clearly on actor motivations, alternative outcomes to conventional civil war, and take seriously non-violent strategies in conflict and protest. Whereas previous research has tended to study violent and non-violent conflict as separate phenomena, this project will focus on violent and non-violent actions as possible substitutes and compliment and explain variation across a range of alternative outcomes, as illustrated in the so-called Arab spring, where we see both non-violent protest and violent insurgencies, as well as state responses ranging from violent repression to accommodation. The project will also consider how transnational factors can influence the choice of strategies that actors make in conflicts.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

ERC-2012-StG_20111124
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Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-SG - ERC Starting Grant

Host institution

UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX
EU contribution
€ 1 021 028,00
Address
WIVENHOE PARK
CO4 3SQ Colchester
United Kingdom

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Region
East of England Essex Essex Haven Gateway
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Beneficiaries (2)

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