4.2.6 - War, Conflict, and Development

Conflict and the development trap

Sociologists do not treat development as economic growth alone. A society is developing when people can rely on stable institutions, public services, physical safety, and the realistic possibility of improving their life chances. War weakens each of these conditions. At the same time, underdevelopment can make conflict more likely because poverty, exclusion, and weak state institutions create grievances and reduce the state's ability to manage tensions peacefully. This is why conflict is often described as both a cause and a consequence of underdevelopment.

Once conflict begins, development is pushed backwards in several connected ways. Roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, electricity systems, and communications networks may be damaged or destroyed. Trade becomes riskier, investment falls, and everyday economic life becomes unpredictable. Governments also divert scarce revenue into military spending, emergency security, and short-term survival rather than long-term welfare, housing, or education. In sociological terms, conflict reshapes the whole social structure: institutions become more coercive, inequality deepens, and people with the fewest resources are usually least able to protect themselves.

Displacement shows why conflict is more than a military event. Families lose homes, income, schooling, and support networks. Children may miss years of education, healthcare systems become harder to access, and whole communities are pushed into temporary survival strategies. This makes future development harder because the social damage lasts well beyond the battlefield.

New wars and colonial legacies

Mary Kaldor (1999) - argued that many contemporary conflicts are best understood as "new wars". These are usually not classic wars between two clearly organised nation-states. Instead, they are often fought within states and involve militias, paramilitaries, warlords, insurgents, terrorist groups, or private military actors. Civilians are often direct targets, and violence is sustained through fear, displacement, and control of territory rather than conventional battlefield victory alone.

Kaldor's idea helps sociologists explain why conflict can become socially embedded. In many such wars, identity politics based on ethnicity, religion, or nationalism become powerful tools of mobilisation. Violence is then used not only to defeat an enemy army but to reshape populations through intimidation, ethnic cleansing, or forced migration.

However, sociologists also evaluate Kaldor critically. Some historians argue that older wars also included civilian massacres, irregular fighters, and economic looting, so the contrast may be less new than Kaldor suggests. Her concept is still useful because it highlights the social organisation of contemporary conflict, especially the way violence, displacement, and informal economies become intertwined.

Colonialism helps explain why some states entered independence with fragile political foundations. Colonial powers often drew arbitrary borders, grouped rival communities together, split others apart, and governed through divide-and-rule strategies. A postcolonial perspective argues that later conflicts cannot be understood simply as ancient ethnic hatred. They are tied to how empires organised territory, power, and resource extraction. Colonial legacies did not make war inevitable, but they often left states with weak legitimacy, uneven development, and unresolved struggles over land, power, and identity.