Conflict and Violence: Exploring the Causes and Consequences of Various Forms of Political Violence, Including Civil Wars, Ethnic Conflicts, and Coups

The modern international system has encountered several forms of political violence which include civil wars, insurgency, ethnic conflicts, terrorism, and military coups. According to recent trends observed in the world, violent conflicts have been on the increase by a sharp margin and 2024 is recorded as one of the most conflict-laden years since 1946 and the number of deaths in the year has been unprecedented. In this paper, Relative Deprivation Theory and Coup-Proofing Theory is used to express the underlying factors of political instability and violence. Relative Deprivation Theory emphasizes the role played by perceptions of inequalities between social groups, especially, horizontal inequalities, founded on ethnicity, religion, or regional identity in creating grievances that can stir collective violence. On the other hand, the Coup-Proofing Theory provides a description of how leaders manipulate the military structures, establish competing security agencies and politicize military forces to deter coups, and in the course of doing so, tend to fuel factional competition in the security world. The interaction between these dynamics to generate instability is empirically demonstrated in countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Myanmar, Ukraine, Haiti, and a number of states in the Sahel. The structural imbalances between groups in most of these incidences generate unresolved grievances, whereas factional rivalry between the political elite and security agencies is a more contributing factor to bouts of violence and coup efforts. Moreover, there has been the increase of instability across regions through the diffusion process whereby conflicts and coups in a particular region have been used to instigate similar acts in other parts. Political violence has very far-reaching consequences. These are social trust erosion, democratic regression, budgetary crises, trade and economic activity derailment, and massive population displacement. The regional and international implications also result in these outcomes, which impact institutions like the ECOWAS and the African Union. These other spillover effects are evident in recent events such as the exit of certain Sahelian military regimes to ECOWAS and the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Sudan. The paper ends by giving recommendations that are aimed at preventing political violence with the major approach being reducing structural inequalities, professionalizing security forces, enhancing mediation mechanisms, and increasing institutional stability as alternatives.