Civil wars vary greatly in their duration. This book argues that conflicts are longer when they involve more actors who can block agreement (veto players) and identifies specific problems that arise in multi-party bargaining. Quantitative analysis of over 200 civil wars since World War II reveals that conflicts with more of these actors last much longer than those with fewer. Detailed comparison of negotiations in Rwanda and Burundi demonstrates that multi-party negotiations present additional barriers to peace not found in two party conflicts. In addition, conflicts with more veto players produce more casualties, are more likely to involve genocide and are followed by shorter periods of peace. Because they present many barriers to peace, the international community has a poor track record of resolving multi-party conflicts. David Cunningham shows that resolution is possible in these wars if peace processes are designed to address the barriers that emerge in multi-party conflicts.

Written for undergraduate students studying the politics of conflict and cooperation, Understanding War and Peace considers the roots of global conflicts and the various means used to resolve them. Edited by Dan Reiter with contributing authors who are all leading scholars in the field, it balances approachable, engaging writing with a conceptually rigorous overview of the most important ideas in conflict studies. Focusing on concepts, policy, and historical applications, the text minimizes literature reviews and technical jargon to engagingly present all major topics in international conflict, including nuclear weapons, peacekeeping, terrorism, gender, alliances, nuclear weapons, environment and conflict, civil wars, public opinion. Enriching the textbook pedagogy, each chapter concludes with a summary of a published quantitative study to introduce students with no prior quantitative training to quantitative analysis. Online resources for instructors include an instructor manual, a test bank and contemporary case studies for each chapter topic regarding the conflict in Ukraine.

"This volume analyzes the impediments that local conditions pose to successful outcomes of nation-building interventions in conflict-affected areas. Previous RAND studies of nation-building focused on external interveners' activities. This volume shifts the focus to internal circumstances, first identifying the conditions that gave rise to conflicts or threatened to perpetuate them, and then determining how external and local actors were able to modify or work around them to promote enduring peace. It examines in depth six varied societies: Cambodia, El Salvador, Bosnia and Herzegovina, East Timor, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It then analyzes a larger set of 20 major post-Cold War nation-building interventions. The authors assess the risk of renewed conflict at the onset of the interventions and subsequent progress along five dimensions: security, democratization, government effectiveness, economic growth, and human development. They find that transformation of many of the specific conditions that gave rise to or fueled conflict often is not feasible in the time frame of nation-building operations but that such transformation has not proven essential to achieving the primary goal of nation-building -- establishing peace. Most interventions in the past 25 years have led to enduring peace, as well as some degree of improvement in the other dimensions assessed. The findings suggest the importance of setting realistic expectations -- neither expecting nation-building operations to quickly lift countries out of poverty and create liberal democracies, nor being swayed by a negative stereotype of nation-building that does not recognize its signal achievements in the great majority of cases."--Page 4 of cover.

Previous research proposes that peace is more likely to become durable if all rebel groups are included in the settlement reached. The argument implies that if actors are excluded and continue to pursue the military course, this could have a destabilizing effect on the actors that have signed an agreement. This article argues that all-inclusive peace deals - signed by the government and all rebel groups - are not the panacea for peace that many seem to believe. Given that the parties are strategic actors who are forward-looking when making their decisions, the signatories should anticipate that the excluded parties may continue to fight. Therefore, the risk of violent challenges from outside actors is likely to already be factored into the decision-making calculus when the signatories decide to reach a deal, and so does not affect their commitment to peace. Implications from this theoretical argument are tested using unique data on the conflict behavior of the government and each of the rebel groups in internal armed conflicts during the post-Cold War period. The results are well in line with the theoretical expectations and show that whether an agreement leaves out some actor does not affect whether the signatories stick to peace. The results demonstrate that even when excluded rebel groups engage in conflict, this does not affect the signatories' commitment to peace. Hence, the findings suggest that partial peace is possible.

Militias have proven to be a consistent and enduring challenge to achieving peace in war zones around the world. Whether armed by embattled governments in defence of their territory or fostered by external actors in the interests of greed or grievance, these groups occupy an uncertain and deeply controversial position in the changing landscape of conflict. Linked variously to atrocities against civilians or international criminal elements, part of what distinguishes them from more traditional combatants is their willingness to engage in violent tactics that defy international norms as well as a proclivity to embrace expediency in alliance-making. As such, their diversity of form, unorthodox nature and sheer numbers make achieving short-term stability and an enduring peace a consistently difficult proposition. Bringing together the lessons learned from four intensively researched case studies - the Democratic Republic of Congo, Timor-Leste, Afghanistan and Sudan - the book argues that the overly rigid 'cookie-cutter' approach to demilitaristation, developed and commonly implemented presently by the international community, is ineffective at meeting the myriad of challenges involving militias. In doing so, the authors propose a radical new framework for demilitarization that questions conventional models and takes into account on-the-ground realities.

What is the idea of ‘peace’? This textbook aims to offer a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to studies of peace and war, from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.

This fascinating collected volume explores the relationship between world conflict, political unrest and the driving forces of Capitalism and Globalization.

This book examines the operational and political challenges facing UN peace operations deployed in countries where civil war and protracted violence have given rise to the complex and distinctive political economies of conflict. The volume explores the nature and impact of such political economies – informal systems of power and influence formed by the interaction of local, national, and region-wide war economies with the political agendas of conflict actors – on the course of UN peace operations. It focuses in detail on the UN’s long-running peace operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Mali, and Somalia. The book is centrally concerned with the interaction of UN missions with the power structures and local conflict dynamics that shape individual mission settings, and the challenges these pose for mediation, protection of civilians, and other tasks. It also offers a critical assessment of the various ways in which the UN ‘system’, from its headquarters in New York to the field, has confronted the policy challenges posed by political economies of conflict-affected states, societies, and regions. It advances a pragmatic set of policy recommendations aimed at improving the UN’s ability to confront predatory and exploitative war economies. At the same time, the volume makes it clear that political and institutional obstacles to more effective UN action are certain to remain profound and are unlikely ever to be fully overcome let alone eradicated. Despite making some progress since the 1990s to better understand the political economy of civil wars, the UN has struggled with how to tackle informal networks of power and their consequences for efforts to end wars. The book will be of special interest to students of war and conflict studies, statebuilding, political economy of conflict, UN interventionism and peacebuilding, and IR/Security in general.

This comprehensive new Handbook explores the significance and nature of armed intrastate conflict and civil war in the modern world. Civil wars and intrastate conflict represent the principal form of organised violence since the end of World War II, and certainly in the contemporary era. These conflicts have a huge impact and drive major political change within the societies in which they occur, as well as on an international scale. The global importance of recent intrastate and regional conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Nepal, Cote d'Ivoire, Syria and Libya – amongst others – has served to refocus academic and policy interest upon civil war. Drawing together contributions from key thinkers in the field who discuss the sources, causes, duration, nature and recurrence of civil wars, as well as their political meaning and international impact, the Handbook is organised into five key parts: Part I: Understanding and Explaining Civil Wars: Theoretical and Methodological Debates Part II: The Causes of Civil Wars Part III: The Nature and Impact of Civil Wars Part IV: International Dimensions Part V: Termination and Resolution of Civil Wars Covering a wide range of topics including micro-level issues as well as broader debates, Routledge Handbook of Civil Wars will set a benchmark for future research in the field. This volume will be of much interest to students of civil wars and intrastate conflict, ethnic conflict, political violence, peace and conflict studies, security studies and IR in general.

There is a sprawling scholarship on violence, crime, and corrupt state rule; yet few have interpreted these challenges as transformative at the global scale and as a potential source of alternative, non-state, legitimacy. This volume challenges "Westphalian conservativism" in a provocative yet plausible manner, shedding light at the ubiquity and diversity of unfolding non-state agendas and at their effect on the imagined state community. Focusing on civil war parties, warlords, commercial providers of security, multinational companies and criminal organizations, the book directs attention to theoretical questions and policy challenges arising from non-state armed expansion. To accomplish this, the contributors present a range of case studies and comparisons within three thematic sections: the first takes stock of how, when, and in what measure state and state-system legitimacy are challenged by non-state violent or criminal activity; the second addresses the nature, effectiveness, and side-effects of different state-mandated reaction to non-state activities; and third focuses on the recombination of state and non-state actors contributing to processes of socio-political transformation. This volume provides a current analysis of different armed and violent actors encroaching on the state's monopoly of violence. It seeks to spark debate about global political change and will be of interest to students and scholars of global governance, global security, and international relations.