| Within the generally under-researched topic of civil war, research on the question of the causes of civil war is in a state of confusion. This is due primarily to the persistence of a false dichotomy between material and social-psychological theories, as well as to a tendency to over-emphasize the role of manipulative political elites. Recent attempts to quantify the causes of civil war have proceeded without first addressing the need for a coherent theory, leading to counterintuitive and misleading findings. This dissertation provides a comprehensive, globalized theory of the causes of civil war, which addresses three questions. First, the social-structural question addresses how an identity fault line takes on the potential to be the division along which a civil war is mobilized. The sociological theory of overlapping vs. cross-cutting social cleavages captures the interaction of material and social-psychological variables, with the former situation raising the likelihood of civil war, while the latter mitigates that likelihood. Second, catalyst variables address the question of why this potential breaks out into civil war at a particular point in time, focusing on the risk-augmenting or risk-mitigating effects of economic growth vs. decline, regime stability vs. change, compromising vs. divisive elites, and recent episodes of violence. Third, the question of whether the extent of violence is sufficient to be defined as a civil war centers on the distribution of military capacity between government and rebel forces and the question of government involvement and restraint. This theory is illustrated through cases of civil war in Yugoslavia and Ivory Coast, and through cases of non-occurrence in Haiti and in India's Hindu-Muslim relations. Implications for research and policy are also discussed. |
