Explaining Variation in Violence after Civil War: A Comparative Analysis of Angola & the DR Congo
This PhD project analyzes why countries that recently have had a civil war experience different levels of collective violence in the postwar period. It does so through a comparative analysis of Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo in the eight years following the end of civil wars in those countries in 2002 and 2003, respectively. While the two cases were similar in many ways, the level of postwar violence was higher in Congo than in Angola. Drawing on the literature on peacebuilding and postwar violence, the thesis explores various factors that might explain this cross-case difference. The altogether eight factors relate to the nature of the civil war, to how it ended, and to developments in the postwar period.
The PhD dissertation was submitted in August 2012 to the University of Bergen, and it was successfully defended on 11 January 2013. While following the doctoral program at the University, Samset was associated with the Department of Comparative Politics. Her supervisors were Professor and Senior Researcher Siri Gloppen (UoB/CMI) and Senior Researcher Astri Suhrke (CMI). The doctorate was part of the project Violence in the post-conflict state, funded by the Poverty and Peace Program of the Research Council of Norway. Core funding was also received from CMI, and fieldwork funding from the Meltzer Foundation and the Nordic Africa Institute. Samset's guest research at Columbia University in 2008 was sponsored by the US-Norway Fulbright Foundation for Educational Exchange.
