Jason Stearns
Biographic Data
| ID | 90043 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jason Stearns |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jason |
| FAMILY NAME | Stearns |
| SIGNATURE | STEARNS J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yale University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Violent orders and coup-proofing
Conflicts on the African continent present a paradox: the number of conflicts and casualties are increasing while at the same time becoming more peripheral and less threatening to governments. This article argues that the rise of a new kind of conflict helps explain this trend: violent political orders in which warfare is used by governments as a means of doling out patronage and managing dissent rather than defeating opponents on the battlefield…
The War That Doesn't Say Its Name
Involution and symbiosis
Literature on conflict duration emphasizes the importance of material factors, commitment problems and information asymmetries. Using the case study of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and drawing on interviews with 138 sources involved in the conflict, this article advances a theory of conflict duration that highlights the role that interests, identities and the social anchorage of belligerents play. Together, they explain how the conflict …
L’ancrage social des rébellions congolaises
Le conflit en République démocratique du Congo a radicalement changé au cours des cent cinquante dernières années. Cet article retrace ces transformations, en les mettant en relation avec les changements dans les structures sociales et politiques, ainsi que dans les normes et les idéologies. Contrairement à la répression de la période coloniale et du début de la période Mobutu, l’État a plus récemment évolué en symbiose avec les groupes armés, le…
Kivu’s intractable security conundrum, revisited
‘The Security Problems of the Democratic Republic of Congo continue to puzzle international peace and policy makers’.1 This is how, in 2009, Koen Vlassenroot and Timothy Raeymaekers set out to explain conflict dynamics in the Kivu in this journal. They argued that while the peace process successfully unified the Congo and produced new, democratic institutions, it also led to the privatization of governance and the entrenching of conflicts. Within…
Causality and conflict
Research on conflict tends to oscillate between two poles: cross-country research using statistical regressions to isolate key variables, and ethnographic research on single countries. I argue that, while the former often fails to capture the political and social dimensions of conflict, the latter can suffer from a lack of causal rigour. I illustrate this argument in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where I suggest a greater focus on the loc…
The trouble with the Congo
Repenser la crise au Kivu
Plusieurs théories ont été avancées pour expliquer la persistance du conflit dans l'Est du Congo, insistant tour à tour sur la faiblesse de l'État, les ressources naturelles abondantes, ou encore l'importance des conflits locaux. L'article soutient pour sa part que de telles approches ne permettent pas de rendre compte des variations internes au conflit et de comprendre comment revendications et intérêts s'expriment à travers la mobilisation armé…
African Conflicts, Western Activism
For much of Africa’s post—cold war history, the question has not been whether humanitarian intervention is a cover-up for big power interests, but why outsiders have been so reluctant to act
In Congo's Conflict, a Surprising Twist
It would be foolhardy to believe ... that a deal between Kigali and Kinshasa will bring an end to battles for power in North Kivu province
The Congo Wars
The Democratic Republic of Congo has been at the heart of the ‘greed vs grievance’ debate popular in academic and humanitarian circles in recent years. Here are two volumes to add to that discussion from Zed Books. ‘The Congo is perhaps the prime example of what happens to a territory that owns minerals wanted by the capitalist West,’ Zeilig, Seddon, and Renton declare at the outset of their book, setting the tone (p. 2). They proceed to span the…
Congo's Peace
Impunity has been to some extent the glue of the peace process. This fact could undermine the country's fragile stability
Economía Exterior
Kivu’s intractable security conundrum, revisited
‘The Security Problems of the Democratic Republic of Congo continue to puzzle international peace and policy makers’.1 This is how, in 2009, Koen Vlassenroot and Timothy Raeymaekers set out to explain conflict dynamics in the Kivu in this journal. They argued that while the peace process successfully unified the Congo and produced new, democratic institutions, it also led to the privatization of governance and the entrenching of conflicts. Within…
Causality and conflict
Research on conflict tends to oscillate between two poles: cross-country research using statistical regressions to isolate key variables, and ethnographic research on single countries. I argue that, while the former often fails to capture the political and social dimensions of conflict, the latter can suffer from a lack of causal rigour. I illustrate this argument in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where I suggest a greater focus on the loc…
Repenser la crise au Kivu
Plusieurs théories ont été avancées pour expliquer la persistance du conflit dans l'Est du Congo, insistant tour à tour sur la faiblesse de l'État, les ressources naturelles abondantes, ou encore l'importance des conflits locaux. L'article soutient pour sa part que de telles approches ne permettent pas de rendre compte des variations internes au conflit et de comprendre comment revendications et intérêts s'expriment à travers la mobilisation armé…
Violent orders and coup-proofing
Conflicts on the African continent present a paradox: the number of conflicts and casualties are increasing while at the same time becoming more peripheral and less threatening to governments. This article argues that the rise of a new kind of conflict helps explain this trend: violent political orders in which warfare is used by governments as a means of doling out patronage and managing dissent rather than defeating opponents on the battlefield…
Involution and symbiosis
Literature on conflict duration emphasizes the importance of material factors, commitment problems and information asymmetries. Using the case study of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and drawing on interviews with 138 sources involved in the conflict, this article advances a theory of conflict duration that highlights the role that interests, identities and the social anchorage of belligerents play. Together, they explain how the conflict …
The trouble with the Congo
Economía Exterior
Congo's Peace
Impunity has been to some extent the glue of the peace process. This fact could undermine the country's fragile stability
The Congo Wars
The Democratic Republic of Congo has been at the heart of the ‘greed vs grievance’ debate popular in academic and humanitarian circles in recent years. Here are two volumes to add to that discussion from Zed Books. ‘The Congo is perhaps the prime example of what happens to a territory that owns minerals wanted by the capitalist West,’ Zeilig, Seddon, and Renton declare at the outset of their book, setting the tone (p. 2). They proceed to span the…
In Congo's Conflict, a Surprising Twist
It would be foolhardy to believe ... that a deal between Kigali and Kinshasa will bring an end to battles for power in North Kivu province
African Conflicts, Western Activism
For much of Africa’s post—cold war history, the question has not been whether humanitarian intervention is a cover-up for big power interests, but why outsiders have been so reluctant to act
The trouble with the Congo
Repenser la crise au Kivu
Plusieurs théories ont été avancées pour expliquer la persistance du conflit dans l'Est du Congo, insistant tour à tour sur la faiblesse de l'État, les ressources naturelles abondantes, ou encore l'importance des conflits locaux. L'article soutient pour sa part que de telles approches ne permettent pas de rendre compte des variations internes au conflit et de comprendre comment revendications et intérêts s'expriment à travers la mobilisation armé…
Causality and conflict
Research on conflict tends to oscillate between two poles: cross-country research using statistical regressions to isolate key variables, and ethnographic research on single countries. I argue that, while the former often fails to capture the political and social dimensions of conflict, the latter can suffer from a lack of causal rigour. I illustrate this argument in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where I suggest a greater focus on the loc…
L’ancrage social des rébellions congolaises
Le conflit en République démocratique du Congo a radicalement changé au cours des cent cinquante dernières années. Cet article retrace ces transformations, en les mettant en relation avec les changements dans les structures sociales et politiques, ainsi que dans les normes et les idéologies. Contrairement à la répression de la période coloniale et du début de la période Mobutu, l’État a plus récemment évolué en symbiose avec les groupes armés, le…
Kivu’s intractable security conundrum, revisited
‘The Security Problems of the Democratic Republic of Congo continue to puzzle international peace and policy makers’.1 This is how, in 2009, Koen Vlassenroot and Timothy Raeymaekers set out to explain conflict dynamics in the Kivu in this journal. They argued that while the peace process successfully unified the Congo and produced new, democratic institutions, it also led to the privatization of governance and the entrenching of conflicts. Within…
The War That Doesn't Say Its Name
Involution and symbiosis
Literature on conflict duration emphasizes the importance of material factors, commitment problems and information asymmetries. Using the case study of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and drawing on interviews with 138 sources involved in the conflict, this article advances a theory of conflict duration that highlights the role that interests, identities and the social anchorage of belligerents play. Together, they explain how the conflict …
Violent orders and coup-proofing
Conflicts on the African continent present a paradox: the number of conflicts and casualties are increasing while at the same time becoming more peripheral and less threatening to governments. This article argues that the rise of a new kind of conflict helps explain this trend: violent political orders in which warfare is used by governments as a means of doling out patronage and managing dissent rather than defeating opponents on the battlefield…
Political science (12 works) · Law (7 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Peacebuilding and International Security (5 works) · Political economy (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · African Studies and Geopolitics (4 works) · Democracy (4 works) · Development economics (3 works)