Journal article
Ideology and armed conflict
- 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 microfoundations 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 ideologies’ 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 preexisting 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.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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Access Document
- Files:
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(Preview, Accepted manuscript, pdf, 271.0KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1177/0022343319826629
Authors
- Publisher:
- SAGE Publications
- Journal:
- Journal of Peace Research More from this journal
- Volume:
- 56
- Issue:
- 5
- Pages:
- 635-649
- Publication date:
- 2019-04-08
- Acceptance date:
- 2019-01-02
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1460-3578
- ISSN:
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0022-3433
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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pubs:959666
- UUID:
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uuid:698316a6-ec7d-4d6f-8971-92b6bd4f4e81
- Local pid:
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pubs:959666
- Source identifiers:
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959666
- Deposit date:
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2019-01-15
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Maynard
- Copyright date:
- 2019
- Notes:
- © The Author(s) 2019. This article has been accepted for publication in Journal of Peace Research. This is the accepted manuscript version of the article. The final version is available online from SAGE Publications at: 10.1177/0022343319826629.
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