D4 Unchanneled grievance and armed violence

Topic

Unchanneled grievance and the breakdown of the state’s monopoly on violence constitute the two components of the compound trigger for Anomaly A4—collapse into civil war. Unchanneled grievance acts as the pressure that builds up, while the breakdown of the state’s monopoly on violence—driven by the fragmentation of security forces—creates the armed vacuum that allows that pressure to escalate. Conflict escalates into a collapse into civil war only when unchanneled grievance and the breakdown of the state’s monopoly on violence occur simultaneously; neither factor is sufficient on its own.

The level of unchanneled grievance measures the gap between social demands and the institutional channels available to address them, serving as a direct measure of the aforementioned pressure. When this grievance accumulates to a degree that exceeds the state’s repressive and absorptive capacities, the conflict shifts from a latent state to an escalated one; it is not enough for social demands to simply outpace institutional channels momentarily—the level of unchanneled grievance must build up persistently beyond what the state can contain through repression or absorption.

The intensity of armed violence is measured by the number of casualties and violent incidents involving armed actors. A sudden surge in this intensity, combined with the fragmentation of security forces—the aforementioned breakdown of the state’s monopoly on violence—serves as the direct signal of a collapse into civil war; neither a sudden spike in armed violence intensity nor the fragmentation of security forces is sufficient on its own to trigger this signal. Together, the two indicators make it possible to track the two components of the compound trigger leading to a collapse into civil war: the level of unchanneled grievance tracks mounting pressure and anticipates the shift from latent to escalated conflict, while the intensity of armed violence—viewed alongside the fragmentation of security forces—confirms when that escalated conflict has actually tipped into a collapse into civil war (the path along which the political authority track drags the conflict whenever it shifts to a new phase).

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