One Perspective on the Evolution of Civil Wars Research

ABSTRACT

This essay presents a perspective on the intellectual history and development of the field of civil wars. It argues that scholarship on civil wars has its origins in research on revolution and contentious politics. Over time, work on civil wars grew to become its own distinct research programme. The evolution of this programme has been characterised by three broad trends: conceptual and measurement refinement, a search for the optimal unit of analysis, and a reimagining of what is political in the context of civil wars. The intersection of these trends – which measures, assumptions, units, and concepts – tended to produce intellectual traditions within the civil wars field. The author contextualises herself within these traditions, then presents the promises and pitfalls of these underlying trends in the field for future research.

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Notes

1. These are the experiences of a White, straight, American, cisgendered woman.

2. See Kalyvas (2001)

3. This shift could be the result of many factors, such as increased focus on terrorism after September 11, more and better information collection processes, the end of the Cold War which reduced the number of civil wars using a particular technology of guerilla warfare, and an increase in symmetric non-conventional forms of violence (Kalyvas and Balcells 2010).

4. Because civil wars are often simultaneously subnational and transnational, researchers often benefit from bringing insights from both sub-disciplines. That said, some scholars prefer a brighter line dividing International and Comparative politics, which could result in researchers from Comparative Politics explaining sub-national variation within one case, and researchers in International Politics typically considering cross-case comparisons.

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Notes on contributors

Megan A. Stewart

Megan A. Stewart, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy. Her research focuses on the relationship between political violence and redistributive efforts to restructure social, economic, and political hierarchies of power, especially across racial, gender, class or religious/ethnic lines.