International Studies Compendium Project

Extract

Comment on this article   Over the past decade research by social scientists on the conduct and consequences of war has expanded considerably. Previously, scholarly research had been heavily oriented towards the analysis of the causes of interstate war and its onset. Two simultaneous trends, however, have characterized scholarship on war since the 1990s. First, studies of the dynamics of civil war have proliferated. Second, war is conceptualized as a series of interrelated stages in which the onset, conduct, and termination of wars as well as postwar relations are analyzed theoretically and empirically in a more integrated fashion. In this essay we review and assess this body of recent scholarship that has shifted the focus from war onset to questions of how combatants wage war and what are the longer-term social, political, and economic consequences of warfare for countries and their populations. We examine scholarly research on the conduct and consequences of both interstate and civil wars. We organize our analysis into three main sections. We begin with research on how states and rebel groups wage war with particular attention given to questions regarding war expansion, compliance with the laws of war, and war severity. In the following section we turn to the literature on war duration, termination, and outcomes. We discuss different explanations for when and why wars come ... log in or subscribe to read full text