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ABSTRACT
In this reflection I argue that the last 25 years have seen three broad ‘waves’ of work on civil conflict, broadly understood. The first responded to the civil wars and ethnic conflicts of the 1990s, while the second expanded dramatically to take on a variety of questions around violence and organisation in civil wars. The current wave is moving the field towards a broader study of political violence writ large, rather than civil wars per se. I situate the evolution of my own work within this broader trajectory, in particular its engagement with both the second and third waves.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. See work by Scott (Citation1976), Popkin (Citation1979), Wolf (Citation1969), Skocpol (Citation1979).
2. I make no claims that the citations here are comprehensive rather than suggestive; given space constraints, the vastness of the field, and my limited expertise, this is an impossible goal. Sincere apologies to those whose work is not referenced here.
3. For instance, Moore (Citation1998) and Davenport (Citation2007); Hoffman Citation2006, Bueno de Mesquita (Citation2005), and Byman (Citation2007). My anecdotal sense is that new researchers on civil war viewed these topics as subsumed under the broad heading of internal conflict in some form. As I discuss below, this is an area where a political violence field might be more productive than a civil war field.
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Paul Staniland
Paul Staniland is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where his research focuses on political violence, international security, and southern Asia.