War, Sociology of

Abstract

The sociology of war is a central topic in both political and historical sociology, since war is one of the most important policies states can pursue, and the outcomes of wars have often shaped both the formation and the dissolution of states. The literature on war is thus concerned with both its causes and its consequences. Studies of the causes of war can be divided into three broad categories. The first type takes the system as a whole as the unit of analysis and focuses on how characteristics of the interstate system affect the frequency of war. States are the unit of analysis in the second type, which explores the relationships among political, economic, and cultural features of particular states and their propensity to initiate wars. The third type analyzes war as an outcome of choices made by individual and small-group decision making. Theories of the consequences of war tend to focus either on its role in state formation, or on its causal impact on internal revolts and revolutions. Historical sociologists have shown that the frequency, duration, and timing of medieval and early modern warfare were the most important determinants of the size and structure of states. However, just as war can make states, it can break them too. Costly warfare often leads to fiscal crises and state breakdown, facilitating revolutions.