This chapter examines the causes, prosecution, outcomes, and consequences of civil wars. It defines the concept of civil war, distinguishes between nationalist and secessionist civil wars, and presents several factors thought to drive civil war onset, including grievance, relative deprivation, identity, lootable resources, and state capacity. It then examines factors that might affect the likelihood of ending civil wars once started, including whether the issues under dispute are seen to be indivisible and the severity of commitment problems. It describes the consequences when rebel groups fighting a civil war are fragmented, and relatedly when there are several actors fighting in a civil war. The chapter then lays out possible solutions for ending civil wars and creating lasting peace, including third-party guarantors, power-sharing, and creating integrated police and security forces. It then discusses some of the devastating human consequences of civil wars The chapter applies many of the concepts in the chapter to a quantitative study on whether peacekeepers help prevent civil wars from recurring, and a case study of the Syrian Civil War.

This section focuses on a set of occupied countries whose internal conflicts during and/or immediately after occupation rose to a level of violence that can be described as civil war. Although each of these clashes featured particular characteristics arising from local conditions, participants were usually acutely aware of their connection to the continental and global theaters of warfare as well as to analogous internal conflicts in other occupied countries. One can therefore speak of a sort of archipelago of loosely analogous, temporally overlapping (though not necessarily synchronous), and at least indirectly interconnected civil wars fought across a wide array of lands amidst the overarching global conflict. Indeed, this archipelago extended well beyond Europe, as will be seen in the discussion of the Chinese case.

Over the past few decades, it has become increasingly difficult for major powers to translate battlefield victories into favourable political outcomes. As a result, US military engagements in the Middle East, Russian engagements in its “near abroad” and in Syria, French engagements in sub-Saharan Africa, and the African Union’s war in Somalia have turned into protracted missions with little prospect of decisive victory. This chapter examines the phenomenon of “endless war,” asking why it has become so difficult to bring wars to an end and what can be done about it. It shows that the problem is global, rooted in the changing nature, purposes, and attitudes of war. As wars become less about resolving disputes between states and more about the internal composition of states, and as those contests become ever more internationalized, the capacity of actors to sustain war have increased while incentives to pursue peace have declined. The first part examines the “endless war” thesis that grounds the problem in US liberal hegemony. The second part offers a brief explanation of factors that extend a war’s duration and inhibit peace. The third discusses how these issues might be addressed.

This Chapter examines the scope of this book and a number of essential definitions: rebellions and civil wars, ‘insurrectional movements’ and rebels, conduct (including wrongful acts) of rebels and governments, whether the outcome is the establishment of a new government or the creation of a new State, and the important distinction between Matters of ‘Attribution’ and ‘Responsibility’. This Chapter examines the structure of this book.

Hostile military interventions have been common in postcolonial Africa. Chapter 4 begins with East Africa, the locale of the largest number of hostile military interventions. Central Africa, Southern Africa, North Africa, and West Africa follow. Many of these hostile interventions have targeted transnational rebels operating from neighboring states that pose a challenge to the incumbent regime. Ideological rivalry played a role in state sponsorship of rebel groups and interstate tensions during the Cold War, and local interstate rivalries have been present in the post-Cold War period. Although some regional differences emerged in the historical narrative, results from qualitative comparative analysis suggest that states with prominent foreign policy roles on the continent target rebels in neighboring states, but when rivalries or subsystemic crises are present states without prominent role status intervene as well. Domestic conditions may also pose a challenge to a government’s tenure and compel it to use hostile force, often against targets that represent a tangible threat to the ruling ethnic group. Negative economic growth and inflation are the domestic pressures that most frequently help to explain hostile military intervention in postcolonial Africa, demonstrating that when combined with other conditions the diversionary argument has purchase in this context.

This chapter introduces the book's main theoretical argument: that armed groups are dependent on popular support and accordingly strive to obtain and maintain it, efforts which shape insurgents’ repertoire of contention. It outlines the concept of the 'constituency' (Malthaner 2011) which serves as a relational framework to understand the dynamic relations between insurgent groups and their supporters. It further develops the concept by more explicitly developing its spatial dimensions. It argues for a more nuanced understanding of insurgent movements use of space and how it shapes interactions with their supporters. It embeds this theoretical approach in the broader literatures concerned with insurgent groups’ relations with civilians, ranging from counterinsurgency and social movements to rebel governance. It argues that the paradigm of territorial control (Kalyvas, 2006) is too reductive and cannot account for patterns of support for insurgents in areas they do not control. It also addresses the critical role of the state in shaping insurgent behaviour and how state–insurgent interactions are reciprocally formative. It proceeds to look at issues of insurgent governance, recruitment and civilian agency.

How do conflicts involving rebels that at first appear quite innocuous and small-scale, grow and aggravate? The chapter discusses the concept of the rebel and demonstrates that rebel groups, just like the state, can be seen as political and strategic actors. The rest of the chapter details the approach and the set-up of the study.

nternational lawyers and political economists look at exits from armed conflict from different perspectives. From a legal perspective, the role of law has been to provide a framework to regulate the use of force and to articulate a common vision of the pathways towards constitutional democracies. In the post-Cold War period, the UN and other international actors hoped to end armed conflict through peace agreements, peacekeeping, statebuilding and peacebuilding – summarised as creating a ‘liberal peace’. But armed conflicts have become internal and complex – and there has been widespread recognition that the ‘liberal peace’ has not, and cannot, deliver. From a political economy perspective, the process of forming political settlements gives some explanation: law is less relevant than the reordering of partisan interests of power holders. This questions the viability of attempts to build a ‘liberal peace’. The insights of political economy are thus a reality check to inform the search for viable alternatives to prevent or exit violent conflict.

The rule of law is indispensable for sustained peace, good governance, and economic growth, especially in countries recovering from civil war. Yet for all its importance, the rule of law has received surprisingly little attention from political scientists and international relations scholars. This book proposes a new theory to explain how international organizations can restore the rule of law in the world’s weakest and most war-torn states, focusing in particular on the crucial but underappreciated role of the UN. The book tests the theory by combining analysis of original, highly disaggregated survey data from Liberia with cross-country analyses spanning all post-conflict countries in Africa since 1989. The book combines these quantitative results with qualitative insights gleaned from hundreds of interviews with UN officials, local leaders, citizens, and government and civil society representatives in Liberia and beyond. The book shows that UN intervention can have a deeper, more lasting, and more positive effect on the rule of law than the prevailing pessimism would lead us to believe.