One Perspective on the Evolution of Civil Wars Research

ABSTRACT This essay presents a perspective on the intellectual history and development of the field of civil wars. It argues that scholarship on civil wars has its origins in research on revolution and contentious politics. Over time, work on civil wars grew to become its own distinct research programme. The evolution of this programme has been characterised by three broad trends: conceptual and measurement refinement, a search for the optimal unit of analysis, and a reimagining of what is political in the context of civil wars. The intersection of these trends – which measures, assumptions, units, and concepts – tended to produce intellectual traditions within the civil wars field. The author contextualises herself within these traditions, then presents the promises and pitfalls of these underlying trends in the field for future research.