Book Publication by Professor Toft – Civil Wars: A Very Short Introduction

Civil Wars: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2024.

Civil wars are the most common form of large-scale political violence. In the past thirty years, the study of civil wars has been one of the largest growing segments of the international relations field. Civil wars are usually nasty, brutish, and long. Their causes are complex, ranging from fights over access to housing, jobs, and arable land or other resources, to political contests over offices, rights, and representation. Because civil wars tend to drag on, motives and relevant actors may shift. 16 Groups form, collapse, coalesce, align and realign, and then fight amongst themselves. Governments themselves change through elections, coups, military defeats, or revolutions. Understanding the origins of civil wars and their trajectories therefore demands some appreciation of the economic, political, social, cultural, and geographic order of societies. Theories about the causes, the nature, and the termination of civil wars have been adapted from both the international relations and comparative politics disciplines, and there are now many databases, cataloging hundreds of cases of civil war, that enable sophisticated statistical analysis and formal modeling. As a result, we now have a better understanding of the conditions under which civil wars generally emerge, how the fighting evolves (sometimes involving interventions by external actors), and then how civil wars end. However, historical understanding—the human dimensions—remains every bit as critical. This Very Short Introduction explores current debates on civil wars and how the reasons for fighting (and the nature of belligerents themselves) are changing.