Corinna Jentzsch, Ph.D.
c.jentzsch@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
Assistant Professor
Leiden University
About Me:
I’m an Assistant Professor (with tenure) of International Relations at the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University. My research focuses on civilian collective action during civil war and conflict transformation and escalation. I’m also broadly interested in social movements, political violence, peacekeeping, African politics, and fieldwork methods and ethics. I’ve conducted extensive fieldwork in southern Africa, including Mozambique, Zambia, and Malawi. My book Violent Resistance: Militia Formation and Civil War in Mozambique, published with Cambridge University Press, came out in January 2022. It has been reviewed in the Journal of Southern African Studies, the Revue d’Histoire Contemporaine de l’Afrique, Perspectives on Politics, International Affairs, and African Affairs, and was shortlisted for the Conflict Research Society Book of the Year Prize 2023. My work has also appeared in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Political Geography, Perspectives on Politics, Civil Wars, Africa, ForeignAffairs.com, African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review, and several edited volumes. I received my PhD from Yale University, and prior to that studied at Free University Berlin and Sciences Po Paris. I’m an associate editor of the International Studies Review, and you can follow me on Mastodon (@coboje@h-net.social) and BlueSky (@corinnajentzsch.com).
Research Interests
Conflict Processes & War
Political Violence
African Politics
Comparative Political Institutions
Pro-government Militias
Social Movements
Civil War
Countries of Interest
Mozambique
Malawi
Congo, Democratic Republic of the (Zaire)
Sierra Leone
Nigeria
Mali
My Research:
I study civil wars and the emergence of informal institutions of security governance. Under what conditions does civil war violence create new informal security institutions that challenge the state monopoly of force? What types of order emerge and why? What are the consequences of new informal institutions of security governance for violence during and beyond civil war? This research lies at the intersection of international relations, comparative politics, and political sociology. I strive for an interdisciplinary approach and combine theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches from political science, sociology, history, and anthropology. I put particular emphasis on in-depth fieldwork and combine qualitative with quantitative research methods.
Publications:
Journal Articles:
The primacy of territorial control in theories of civil war has advanced our understanding of war dynamics, most notably lethal violence, but has hindered our understanding of the distinct ways in which armed groups seek control over people. We propose to complement territorial control by separately conceptualising social control, which we define as the extent to which armed groups have access to people and their resources. Access to people requires different tactics compared to access to territory, because people are mobile. We develop a framework in which state and non-state armed groups choose whether to prioritise territorial or social control first in order to gain sovereignty, which requires both territorial and social control. Alternatively, armed groups choose to pursue territorial control or social control only, resulting in corridors or social networks, respectively. We illustrate the advantages of the framework by showing how it allows us to analyse armed groups’ tactics to control access to people, to connect research agendas on armed group violence, governance, and civilian displacement, and to better conceptualise armed group power and strength.
Why do some communities resist armed groups non-violently while others take up arms to do so? Recent research has advanced our knowledge of the causes and consequences of wartime civilian resistance. Yet, the factors explaining the emergence and outcomes of civilian resistance do not account for how people resist. Despite its important consequences for the politics and geography of war, the issue of why civilians engage in violent or non-violent forms of resistance remains poorly understood. We rely on extensive original fieldwork to examine within-case and cross-case variation in violent and non-violent resistance campaigns during the Mozambican and Colombian civil wars. We argue that forms of resistance are linked to prior experiences of collective action, normative commitments, and the role of local political entrepreneurs. Previous experiences make repertoires of resistance “empirically” available, while prevailing local social and cultural norms make them “normatively” available. Political entrepreneurs activate and adapt what is empirically and normatively available to mobilize support for some forms of action and against others. Our analysis advances emerging research on wartime civilian agency and has significant implications for theories of armed conflict, civil resistance, and contentious politics more broadly.
Who rules during civil war? This article argues that the concept of armed group governance must be expanded to include auxiliary armed forces linked to rebels or the government. Comparing the organization of rebel and government auxiliaries, the article demonstrates that security governance during war is never static, but evolves over time. Evidence from the civil war in Mozambique (1976-1992) shows that the auxiliary’s origin shapes its initial level of autonomy. Second, auxiliary contribution to battlefield success of one side may induce innovations adopted by auxiliaries on the other. Both have distinct consequences for the nature of governance.
(together with Stathis N. Kalyvas and Livia I. Schubiger). Militias are an empirical phenomenon that has been overlooked by current research on civil war. Yet, it is a phenomenon that is crucial for understanding political violence, civil war, post-conflict politics, and authoritarianism. Militias or paramilitaries are armed groups that operate alongside regular security forces or work independently of the state to shield the local population from insurgents. We review existing uses of the term, explore the range of empirical manifestations of militias, and highlight recent findings, including those supplied by the articles in this special issue. We focus on areas where the recognition of the importance of militias challenges and complements current theories of civil war. We conclude by introducing a research agenda advocating the integrated study of militias and rebel groups.
Article analyzing the challenges to the financing of African Union peace operations, including recommendations for future research agenda and policy.
Books Written:
Why do communities form militias to defend themselves against violence during civil war? Using original interviews with former combatants and civilians and archival material from extensive fieldwork in Mozambique, Corinna Jentzsch’s Violent Resistance explains the timing, location and process through which communities form militias. Jentzsch shows that local military stalemates characterized by ongoing violence allow civilians to form militias that fight alongside the government against rebels. Militias spread only to communities in which elites are relatively unified, preventing elites from coopting militias for private gains. Crucially, militias that build on preexisting social conventions are able to resonate with the people and empower them to regain agency over their lives. Jentzsch’s innovative study brings conceptual clarity to the militia phenomenon and helps us understand how wartime civilian agency, violent resistance, and the rise of third actors beyond governments and rebels affect the dynamics of civil war, on the African continent and beyond.
Book Chapters:
Article on the challenges of qualitative fieldwork in polarized societies
Contribution to edited volume, Cahen, Michel, Eric Morier-Genoud, and Domingos do Rosário (eds.), The War Within: New Perspectives on the Civil War in Mozambique, 1976-1992.
Other:
(together with Hatem Kahloun and Souhaïl Belhadj) Report on informal security institutions during and after the uprisings in 2011 in Tunisia's capital Tunis.