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All organizations involved in war are concerned with military cohesion. Yet previous studies have only investigated cohesion in a very narrow manner, focusing almost solely on Western state militaries or on micro-level explanations. This dissertation argues for the need to broaden this perspective. It focuses on three classic sources of cohesion – coercion, compensation and constructs (such as identity and ideology) – and investigates their relevance in the Second Liberian Civil War (1999-2003). More specifically, this dissertation consists of an inquiry of how the conflict's three main military organizations – Charles Taylor’s Government of Liberia (GoL), the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) – drew on these three sources to foster cohesion. Based on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with former combatants, this dissertation contains five parts: an introduction, which focuses on issues of theory and method, and four essays that investigate the three sources of cohesion in the three organizations. Essay I focuses on the LURD rebels, and provides an insider account of their strategy. It shows that even decentralized movements like the LURD can execute strategy, and contends that the LURD fought its fiercest battles not against the government, but to keep itself together. Essay II focuses on coercion, and counters the prevailing view of African rebels’ extensive use of coercion to keep themselves together. Since extreme coercion in particular remained illegitimate, its use would have decreased, rather than increased, cohesion. Essay III investigates the government militias to whom warfighting was subcontracted. In a context characterized by a weak state and fragmented social organization, compensation may have remained the only available source of cohesion. Essay IV investigates identities as sources of cohesion. It argues that while identities are a powerful cohesive source, they must be both created and maintained to remain relevant. Taken together, this dissertation argues for a more comprehensive approach to the investigation of cohesion, and one that also takes into account mezzo- and macro-level factors.

This thesis is an attempt to address the surprising lack of study into the question of usurpation in late antiquity. During a period defined by a textual corpus (289-389), the thesis looks at how usurpers and usurpation were presented in the panegyrics delivered to emperors and their courts. That usurpation features very heavily in this corpus should tell us something in itself, but it is a feature of these texts which has hardly been observed. The thesis shows how the panegyrics employed aggressive rhetorical tactics that sought not to bury usurpers in silence but rather to glory in their destruction and to create characters for the usurpers and their regimes that were designed to reinforce the legitimacy claims of the victorious emperor. The language of the panegyrics concerning usurpers and usurpation is thus virtually worthless as a tool to reconstruct the historical actualities of the people and times that they discuss. It cannot be used, as some scholars have done, to give insight into the working of particular usurpations. But the study also demonstrates that the panegyrics are far too valuable a body of sources to simply ignore, as many more scholars have tended to do. The panegyrics demonstrate the beginnings of the processes of memory sanction, or damnatio memoriae, that were imposed upon defeated usurpers and, as such, give us a valuable insight into how imperial Romans recorded their history and conceived of the power structures through which they were governed. Panegyrics are vital to our understanding of usurpers and usurpation because they are the first step in the process of understanding why our narrative sources are so unreliable concerning such men.

The study of intra-state conflict has increased exponentially during the post-Cold War period. This has given rise to a variety of competing approaches, which have (i) adopted differing methodological and social theoretical orientations, and (ii) produced contradictory accounts of the causes and nature of violent conflict. This project intervenes in the debates which have resulted from this situation, and develops a critical realist approach to conflict studies. In doing so it rethinks the discipline from the philosophical ground up, by extending the ontological and epistemological insights which are provided by critical realism into more concrete reflections about methodological and social theoretical issues. In addition to engaging in reflection about philosophical, methodological, and social theoretical issues, however, the project also incorporates the insights of two largely neglected literatures into conflict studies. These are, first, the insights of the gender-studies literature, and second, the insights of decolonial/postcolonial forms of thought. It claims that the discipline is strengthened by incorporating the insights of these literatures, and that the critical realist framework provides us with the philosophical basis which is required in order to do so.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Charles W. Sanders, Jr. / Today, Walt Whitman is considered a famous nineteenth-century American poet. At the outbreak of the American Civil War however, he was underrated and underappreciated by American readers. Three editions of his book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, were not received well by American readers and his future in writing looked bleak. This was despite the fact that Whitman’s literary friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote an encouraging review of the first edition, which Whitman included in the second and third iterations. Ironically, Whitman’s career made a turn for the better when his brother, George Washington Whitman, was reported to be among the wounded or killed in the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862. A dedicated family man, Whitman immediately boarded a train in New York and headed for Falmouth, Virginia, to check on his brother’s wellbeing. Whitman visited several makeshift hospitals before coming across Chatham Mansion, the temporary Union Hospital Headquarters. He saw at the base of a tree a pile of human limbs that had been tossed out of a first floor window following amputations. The scene was horrific and he paused to record what he saw in his diary. This experience forever changed Whitman the man and Whitman the poet and the transformation was evident in his subsequent writing, as Whitman first took on the persona of what I have designated as the Wound Dresser and years after the war the Good Gray Poet. This evolution changed the public perception of Whitman, and it occurred in phases. The initial phase was before the war, his work was considered obscene among American society due to his previous publications. The second transformation in Whitman was initiated by fear of personal loss when his brother was listed among the wounded and dead at Fredericksburg and the sight of the amputated limbs at Chatham Mansion. Had Whitman been exposed to the war slowly over time, the effect might not have been so profound, but Chatham was an earth shattering event in his life, as he admitted. The third phase was the result of daily exposure for years to the wounded and dying in the hospitals. He developed a personal connection with the men and was determined to stay with them, despite direct orders from hospital doctors that he should return home for his own physical and emotional recovery. His experience in the hospitals had transformed from a middle aged healthy man to a frail and brittle shell, evident in photographs of him during these years. The final phase was marked by the transformation in his writing. It was in this phase that Whitman created the most memorable and remarkable Civil War poetry that is still celebrated today. It was this poetry that caused American’s to revere him as the “Good Gray Poet.”

This research analyses the role of multi-stakeholder partnerships in enhancing governance to promote sustainable peace and security. It uses a case study of coltan exploitation and armed conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the two wars between 1996 and 2003 and the ongoing conflict have led to the ‘world’s worst humanitarian crisis’. The current body of knowledge on conflict analyses, particularly ‘resource curse’ theory, emphasises the natural resource endowment and weak governance as the main factors contributing to the DRC conflict, and has been influential in policy formulation. The case study is supported by the collection and analysis of qualitative data from multiple sources using different methods including literature reviews, interviews and observations. In so doing, the research seeks to examine how multi-stakeholder partnerships can help to enhance governance and promote sustainable peace and security, with a focus on the role of the multi-stakeholder partnerships in curtailing revenues for the belligerents from coltan production and trade in the eastern DRC. The analysis of the conflicts and coltan exploitation revealed the intricate multi-layered nature of the conflicts in the DRC and their complex causalities. The examination of the multi-stakeholder partnerships relevant to coltan exploitation in the DRC identified a number of constraints for their implementation and concerns about adverse effects from the implementation, largely owing to the externally driven agenda of the partnerships, which neglects the local perspectives. Through the arguments presented in this thesis, the research contributes to knowledge in three broad areas: it contributes to ongoing academic discussions on conflict analyses, in particular the resource curse hypothesis and the economic agendas of civil war; it provides empirical analysis and data on the coltan industry and partnership initiatives in relation to armed conflicts in the eastern DRC; and it highlights the need to re-assess the concept of participatory governance as one of the key approaches to improving governance.

This project examines source materials, methods, and instruments required for creating an informed period performance of military brass band music from the American Civil War. The rapid development of brass bands in America combined with the volatility of the war meant that much of the development of these styles were not formally documented. To compound this problem an instrumentalist trained on modern instruments who plays on an instrument from the period will produce a sound highly colored and influenced by their sound concept on a modern instrument. Experience with the instrument and attention to their idiosyncrasies will offer the closest possible sound to bands in the Civil War era. This project examines primary musical sources as well as considerations on how to properly approach a period performance of brass band music of this era. Central to this examination is the author's training and experience as a member of the Civil War period performance ensemble Saxton's Cornet Band.

This study develops a leader-centric theory of civil-military relations that expands upon three broad areas of research. Specifically, the study suggests that leaders will evaluate multiple threats to their political survival and will ultimately implement strategy that is most likely to keep them in power. While Downs (1957) has noted such a tendency in democracies, this study expands this rationale to authoritarian regimes by focusing on the primary means of authoritarian removal: the military coup. In contrast to the state-centric nature of traditional international relations theory, this dissertation finds that leaders frequently undermine the power of the state in order to accomplish the self-interested goal of political survival. First, the study carefully describes a number of coup-proofing strategies that leaders can implement. These are broadly defined in terms of influencing either the military’s willingness or its ability to attempt a coup. In addition to testing the effectiveness of these strategies, this study also theoretically explores the implications of coup-proofing for other political development of the state: interstate and intrastate conflict. Second, the study considers the influence of coup-proofing on interstate conflict. This study builds on the diversionary literature by investing coup risk as an incentive to use diversionary tactics as well as coup-proofing as a potential disincentive. The latter can both undermine the necessity of diversion as well as military capabilities, making leaders less capable of utilizing international conflict as a political tool. Third, the dissertation considers the influence of coup-proofing on intrastate conflict. The theory argues that the capability-reducing practice of coup-proofing can have important domestic consequences. Specifically, the practice can increase the mobilizational potential of would-be insurgents, can reduce the mobilizational capacity of the state, and leaders that are particularly fearful of a coup will likely tolerate the rise of an insurgency.

<p>Currently, one of the most dramatic threats to human security is constituted by internal armed conflicts. In 1998, violent conflicts took place in at least 25 countries. Of these armed conflicts, 23 were internal, engaging one or more non-State armed groups. A crucial feature of internal conflicts is the widespread violation of humanitarian law and human rights by armed groups, from rebel groups to private militias. This thesis aimed at identifying various ways of promoting a better implementation of the Geneva Conventions and its Protocols by NSAGs in the Great Lakes Region.</p>

This examination criticises some of the main textual efforts within the self-identified politiography of Algeria that have attempted to help make the last twenty years of violent conflict in Algeria intelligible to Western audiences. It attends to the way in which particular representations of Algerian violence were problematised within, and cross-problematised with, prevailing international security discourses and practices, especially the concurrently emergent litterature on civil wars and armed humanitarian intervention. Unsatisfied with general international response to the conflict in Algeria in the 1990s, particularly the major massacres of 1997 and 1998, this study questions how certain problematisations were used to understand the violence and how those renderings contributed to the troubled relationship between the representation of mass violence in Algeria and international efforts to intervene against it. As a study in politiography, the primary object of analysis here is not the entire discursive field of Algerian violence but rather select yet influential scholarly texts within the genre of late Algerian violence. While these works helped co-constitute the broader discursive formations of Algerian violence that enabled its own representation as such, this examination does not necessarily address them vis-à-vis unique, superior or competing representations drawn from the traditionally privileged sites of initial discursive production of international security. The primary method of critique here is deconstructive in so far as it simply uses the texts — their arguments, their evidence and their archival logic — against themselves. Borrowing insights from currents in recent neopragmatist thought, this study seeks to reverse engineer some of the more dominant international problematisations of Algerian violence, so as to unearth the deeper politics of naming built into specific representations of Algeria and more generic frameworks of international security. After first exploring the conflict’s contested political and economic etiology (chapter three), as well as its disputed classification as a civil war (chapter four), this study closely examines the interpretations of the most intense civilian massacres, those that occurred between August 1997 and January 1998 (chapters five and six). How these representations resulted in the threat of (armed) humanitarian intervention are of particular concern (chapter seven), as are the ways in which foreign actors have attempted to historically contextualise Algeria’s alleged tradition and culture of violence (chapter eight). The aim is not to produce — though it cannot but help contribute to — a new history or account of the politics of the Algerian conflict and its internationalisation. The intent is first to underscore the inherent yet potentially auspicious dangers within all problematisations of mass violence. Secondly, it is to advocate for ironic forms of politiography, given the politics always-already embedded within acts of naming, particularly when it comes to questions of mass violence. A politiography that is able to appreciate the contingency of representation and intervention, and so underscores the need for a more deliberately and deliberative ethical and democratic politics of representation in the face of atrocity.