Civil wars : a very short introduction

Summary/Review: "Prior to the 1990s most scholars approached civil wars as one-off events, with little general theorizing across them. That is no longer the case. In fact, in the past 30 years, the study of civil wars has been one of the largest growing segments of the international relations field. Civil wars are nasty, brutish and long. Their causes are complex; ranging from fights over access to housing, jobs, access to arable land or other resources, to political contests over offices, rights, and representation. Because civil wars tend to drag on, motives and relevant actors shift. Groups form, collapse, coalesce, align and realign, and then fight among 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. If there is one factor that best predicts why a civil war erupts, it is a prior civil war. That's why knowledge of a country's history of political violence, and associated narratives about who is to blame and why, are critical to understanding where a civil war might next occur. Moreover, once we have an understanding for why civil wars happen where and when they did, we have a much better sense for how a civil war might cross borders or eventually end"--