Description
Civil war remains the dominant form of contemporary armed conflict. While major advances have been made in civil war studies in recent decades, we still know little about how conflicts turn violent, how civil wars unfold over time, and how distinct dynamics of civil war affect the post-war potential for peace. This paper charts an agenda for future research on civil war and introduces the Civil War Paths project funded by a £1.2m UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship. This project makes three departures from the existing literature. First, it views civil war as a complex process that connects the pre-war, wartime, and post-war stages of conflict through evolving interactions between states, non-state armed groups, local populations, and external actors. Second, it seeks to understand the dynamics that link the pre- to post-war stages of conflict to one another by focusing on the different ways in which non-state armed groups form and transform in the course of conflict. Finally, it argues that civil wars follow different paths based on how they emerge, unfold, and end or transform and identifies four typical paths, namely, civil wars that emerge from organized social movements, spontaneous mobilization, clandestine militant groups, and regime fragmentation.
