Civil Wars Vol. 25, No. 4 (2023) - Editorial Introduction

As our 25th Anniversary draws to a close we write here, in what is our second editorial introduction for regular issues of the journal, to wrap up what has been a year of excitement, engagement and growth for the journal. Back in March we held our 25th Anniversary drinks reception and then an after party during the International Studies Association’s (ISA) annual conference in a rather cold, and somewhat snowy, Montreal. It was fantastic to see such a high turnout and to be able to thank in person so many of our authors, reviewers and supporters, as well as to renew connections and make new ones. We also had meetings with quite a few people about submissions and potential Special Issues and want to reiterate here that as Editors we’re always happy to meet for a coffee at conferences, or indeed have a virtual chat online if you want to pitch ideas, so just drop us a line!

At the British International Studies Association (BISA) in Glasgow in June our indispensible Assistant Editor Megghi represented the journal on an innovative panel, co-organised with our friends over at International Affairs, which explored ways of communicating ‘beyond the article’. This is part of a wider initiative of the journal to both make connections and to think about knowledge production, as well as starting conversations and supporting junior and underrepresented scholars in getting their work published. More details on a series of initiatives in this area are provided towards the end of this introduction.

In September, we held what turned out to be a slightly premature launch of our 25th Anniversary Special Issue at the Conflict Research Society’s annual conference in London during a heat wave. Many thanks to the CRS conference organising committee for kindly giving us such a prominent place on the programme for the launch and a very big hall to do it in! It was lovely to reveal the contents of the issue and to have many of our contributors talk about their articles, thanks also to those who came along to celebrate with us.

Published rather later in the year than we had hoped due to some production issues beyond our control, the 25th Anniversary (Double) Special Issue was a real landmark for us, and we hope also for both the journal and the field of Civil War Studies. As something of a behemoth, it comprised 29 different contributions, including an introduction (Worrall & Waterman, 2023a) and conclusion (Worrall & Waterman, 2023b) from us, four reflections from the previous editorial teams on their period in office, two articles describing the journeys of leading scholars, 11 articles examining the state of the discipline around four key themes, a three article special section on the international peace architecture and five reviews of key works in the field, alongside two essays discussing the role of reviews in the journal from Rebecca and Daniel. In the first fortnight after its online publication it had already attracted 7,500 downloads, despite a holiday in the middle of that period. We hope that this interest continues but more importantly that the Anniversary Special Issue also generates conversation and debates. We warmly welcome contributions in response and also pieces which will add to these discussions. We’d also encourage you to read about our revitalised review section and to contribute there too (2023), there really are a wide array of ways in which you can get involved.

The end of this important year also seems to be an opportune moment to take stock of the past quarter of a century, and while there are probably more fun ways to do this, looking at the data is probably the most appropriate way here. Since its first issue in 1998, and including this issue, the journal has published 679 individual pieces, consisting of 556 research articles, 23 review essays, 74 book reviews, 23 introductions and three conclusions. Amongst these, there have been 22 Special Issues on a diverse range of topics. On an average of 8,000 words per research article, that represents more than 4.5 million words of research. But it is not about mere data alone, it is instead about the breadth, originality, rigour, diversity and the sheer interest of the contributions which these pieces have made to our field.

We begin this issue with a pair of articles on Colombia, that regular test bed and generator of theories for the study of civil war, as ably showcased by Juliana Tappe Ortiz’s (2023) recent article in our 25th Anniversary Special Issue. This duo of articles also share a particular focus on the aftermath of conflict in Colombia examining the complex issues of identity formation and reformation, justice, empowerment and transitional difficulties that societies face even after peace agreements are signed. These complex long-term legacies of civil wars, often rooted in identities and experiences which were forged in, and are consequences of, conflict remind us of the need for detailed ethnographic and biographical work which can make sense of the micro-experiences and identities of individuals, which in turn speaks to wider debates and theory-building in the literature as a whole. While there are of course potential issues for having a few cases, such as Colombia, dominate our field of study, it is clear that these studies offer useful insights, new methods and templates which, when examined with care and sensitivity, do offer much for the wider study of civil wars.

The first of these two articles traces the life of the FARC insurgent Guillermo Torres and his journey from rebel to local politician in the district of Turbaco. In the aftermath of the 2016 peace agreement, the insurgents struggled to transition to a political party which attracted much electoral support. This electoral disappointment, alongside a wider social ostracisation has led some former insurgents to drift into crime, towards insurgent recidivism or indeed to vagrancy. In this rich and exciting study, Julian Cortés-Urquijo, Rafael Quishpe, Laura Malagón and Gemma van der Haar (2023) explore the journey of one former insurgent in a very different direction. Through following this very personal story they are able to challenge perspectives on reintegration of former rebels, especially those with what might be considered to be progressive agendas.

The second article focuses on the reparation and reconciliation process which began even before the deal with the FARC was secured. The Victims and Land Restitution Law of 2011 created a very ambitious framework which aspired to transform the victims of injustice into empowered agents. Through considerable fieldwork in six municipalities in Tolima province, John Uribe, Ulrike Theuerkauf, María Salamancac, Santiago Padilla, Iokiñe Rodriguez and Cristina Sala (2023) are able to demonstrate how struggles to properly implement the law in the face of resource constraints have shaped instead much more complex and contingent identities, thereby demonstrating the ongoing challenges even of well-intentioned transformative justice programmes which perhaps do not fully consider people’s survival strategies and complex patterns of often ambiguous identity formation after the end of conflict. Together, both of these articles show us the continuing richness of the contributions offered by the field’s ‘micro-turn’ even almost two decades after it first gathered pace.

Moving in a very different direction in both space and time, our third article takes us to China and to an examination of the defection mutinies of Nationalist naval vessels to the Communists during the Chinese Civil War. In this sense, it retains a micro focus, and Zi Yang (2023) shows us, through a detailed examination of historical memoirs of those involved the processes, the calculations of individuals and groups in overcoming the collective action problems involved in organising successful mutinies, in which a full fifth of the Nationalist’s naval force defected to Mao’s Communists. This article very much fits with our desire to encourage much greater and systematic re-examination of civil wars in history to both apply theories developed in more recent times, and to see what we can learn from these examples and how they affect our understanding of, in this case, the intersection of covert action, processes of mutiny and defection, as well as the ways in which individuals and small groups make such critical decisions. These themes still have considerable resonance, for instance, in understanding defections from Asad’s forces in Syria during the early phases of the uprising.

Our final article sees us in Africa, again examining the micro-level, this time within a refugee settlement in Northern Uganda. Here, Constanza Torre (2023) focuses on resilience discourses around mental health interventions and their impacts on the community in Palabek. There has been relatively little research on mental health published in Civil Wars thus far. Given its importance both during and after conflict, and especially when it comes to humanitarian engagement, this article offers some useful insights into the pitfalls of these discourses and we hope to see more contributions reflecting on the mental health effects of civil war within more conventional studies.

We round out the issue with four diverse book reviews examining very different types of book within our field. Firstly, Gina Miller Johnson reviews the Principles of Conflict Economics: The Political Economy of War, Terrorism, Genocide, and Peace by Charles Anderton and John Carter which she calls ‘an excellent interdisciplinary contribution that synthesises a vast literature on conflict and peace’ and which reminds us of the enduring importance of political economy for our discipline (Johnson 2024). Secondly, Tiina Hyyppä reviews The Syrian Revolution: Between the Politics of Life and the Geopolitics of Death by Yasser Munif, which ‘explains in a readable manner key underlying features and causes of the present conflict’, which is important given that there are still relatively few book length works focusing on what is remains a surprisingly understudied civil war (Hyyppä 2024). Thirdly, Andrew Bell reviews The Commander’s Dilemma: Violence and Restraint in Wartime by Amelia Hoover Green, an important volume which examines the perennial problem of violence against civilians in civil wars and why some rebels control violence and others do not, in a volume that brings ‘together an original and valuable analysis of the role of armed group ideology, institutions and training in shaping the conduct of combatants in conflict’ (Bell 2024). Finally, Roxani Krystalli reviews A Tyranny Against Itself: Intimate Partner Violence on the Margins of Bogotá by John Bhadra-Heintz, which takes us down once again to the micro level in Colombia, thus bringing this issue of the journal full circle. Asking important questions about webs of violence, this ‘is an intimate book, not only in terms of the violence it examines, but also in its caring-yet-critical proximity to the complex personhood of perpetrators’, which reminds us that ’[r]ather than being a threat to the rigour of social scientific work, that emotion is the kindling that makes this investigation possible in all its ethical and analytic intricacies’ (Krystalli 2024).

All in all, this issue yet again demonstrates the valuable eclecticism of the journal and the importance of its geographical, methodological, theoretical and temporal pluralism in helping us to see civil wars from multiple perspectives, which can only help strengthen our understanding of such a complex social phenomenon.

As we look ahead to 2024, we have a number of exciting plans and events in the pipeline. We shall be holding another Civil Wars drinks reception at ISA in San Francisco, more details to follow on our social media channels in due course. Also at ISA we are very excited about the three innovative roundtables which we are co-sponsoring with International Affairs. These include a book reviews roundtable which explores how and why writing these pieces can benefit you as a scholar at any stage of your career, there will also be a panel on diversity and inclusion in international relations, looking at a range of practices and how journals can help this process. The final panel takes the discussions from Glasgow further in examining ways, for junior scholars especially, to maximise the impact of their research by communicating beyond the research article. Together these roundtables represent important discussions for our discipline and points of inflexion around which we can begin to build pathways and create new initiatives. They also speak to our desire to think about the role of the academic journal today and how it can sit within wider ecosystems of knowledge production and distribution. This is an agenda which we will be pursuing over the coming years, in partnership with other journals, and alongside wider outreach activities to help both emerging and Global South scholars to publish their work.

In this vein, 2024 will also see the launch of a number of changes at the journal, which while individually small, collectively we hope that they will make a larger change. This will include a revised support system for Global South scholars, as well as presentation and submission changes, all of which we hope will both raise standards and make our processes easier. Expect much more detail on this in our next Editorial Introduction as we head into summer but for now you can read more about the wider context to these initiatives in the last part of our conclusion to the Anniversary Special Issue (Worrall and Waterman 2023b, pp. 624–627).

There will also be another event based on our Anniversary Special Issue at Loughborough University in the Spring which, as well as being in person, will also be streamed online, and we will again be at BISA and CRS. Another busy year is therefore in prospect but we’re excited about what is on the horizon.

To conclude, we’d like to again thank everyone who helped the journal reach its 25th Anniversary year, and especially to our team who have helped us organise this year’s celebrations. We very much look forward to hearing from you all during our 26th year!

James and Alex

Leeds and Bradford, December 2023