Description
Civil wars today rarely confine to the ‘internal’ feature of the violence presupposed by their label. This paper argues that the current and future study of civil wars must incorporate, conceptually and theoretically, a key empirical dimension: internationalisation. Our argument distinguishes between two logics of internationalisation in civil wars: (1) substitution, whereby civil wars become proxy wars; and (2) complementarity, whereby civil wars also become inter-state wars. First, we develop our argument theoretically and proceed with a theory-generating effort by discussing the characteristics of the two logics of internationalisation using the Yemeni civil war (2014 – present) as an ideal case study. We show how an under-appreciation of the variation of internationalisation has mischaracterised the internal-external dynamics of the Yemeni civil war across actor- and process-centred dimensions. Second, we trace the theoretical implications of our account of internationalisation onto the current and future of study of civil wars. Specifically, we formulate a series of puzzles for which our theory provides more robust explanations, thereby formulating some metatheoretical premises which correct the debate’s intellectual assumptions and practices, from which future research can benefit, and to which policymakers can appeal. In doing so, we aim both to bridge the past and future of scholarship and bring together academic and policy approaches to understanding the internationalisation of civil wars so that these worlds can speak to one another more coherently.
