Conflict Research and the ‘Decline’ of Civil War

Abstract

In recent years a number of scholars have suggested that there has been a decline in the absolute numbers of civil wars since the early 1990s, and this claim is purportedly supported by empirical evidence. This paper explores the methodological challenges which confront the study of conflict trends and identifies a number of problems with prevailing approaches. It argues that a differentiated approach to the concept of civil war is necessary before it is possible to make claims about trends in numbers of conflicts, because even the most sophisticated methodological processes have problems related to the manner in which they define and codify armed conflict. Nevertheless, the paper accepts that there has been a decline in the number of major civil wars, and it proposes – and evaluates – a number of explanations for the decline in such wars. These are: the decline of potent ideology since the end of the Cold War, which had hitherto ignited and/or exacerbated armed violence; the decline in intervention by third parties in civil war, a key feature of ‘proxy’ conflicts during the Cold War; the increasing tendency for secession – or hard partition – to be recognised by the international community, which has defused some ongoing conflicts; the increasingly interventionist nature of peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities by international organisations; the growing tendency for powerful states to view civil war and state failure as a potential security threat, resulting in a more substantial effort to resolve conflict which might have hitherto been regarded as ‘merely’ a humanitarian issue or even completely ignored; and the growing number of consolidated democracies.