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Greed-Grievance Reconsidered: The Role of Power and Survival in the Motivation of Armed Groups

Although the greed-grievance approach has brought significant insight to the causes and conduct of civil wars by providing a coherent explanation of armed group motivations, it is increasingly being called into question. This article reconsiders the approach in light of insights gleaned from International Relations theory, specifically Realism. In particular, it will use the levels of analysis approach and the analytical separation between means and ends and between rhetoric and action to critique both greed and grievance explanations. The paper then proposes that the fungible concept of power and the primary motivation of survival provide superior explanations of armed group motivation and, more broadly, the conduct of internal conflicts. A case study of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), an armed group which is poorly understood in terms of greed-grievance, will illustrate the functional utility of a power-security approach.