Alliance Formation in Civil Wars

Fotini Christia is Associate Professor of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received her Ph.D. in Public Policy at Harvard University in 2008. Her research interests deal with issues of ethnicity, conflict and cooperation in the Muslim world. She has done extensive ethnographic, survey and experimental research in Bosnia-Herzegovina and is presently working on a field experiment in Afghanistan that addresses the effects of development aid on post-conflict governance and state building. Her current Afghanistan research project, on which she is co-principal investigator, draws upon a randomized impact evaluation of a $1 billion community-driven development program. Professor Christia has received support for her research from the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, the London School of Economics International Growth Center, the UN's World Food Program and the World Bank, among other institutions. She has published work in publications such as Science, Comparative Politics and the Middle East Journal. She has also written on her experiences in Afghanistan, Iran, the West Bank and Gaza and Uzbekistan for Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. She graduated magna cum laude with a joint B.A. in Economics and Operations Research from Columbia College and an MA in international affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

• Part I. Context and Theory: 1. Literature and research design; 2. A theory of warring group alliances and fractionalization in multi-party civil wars; Part II. Afghanistan: 3. The Afghan Intra-Mujahedin War, 1992–8; 4. The Afghan Communist-Mujahedin War, 1978–89; 5. The theory at the commander level in Afghanistan, 1978–98; Part III. Bosnia and Herzegovina: 6. The Bosnian Civil War, 1992–5; 7. The Bosnian Civil War, 1941–5; Part IV. Further Extensions: 8. Quantitative testing on the universe of cases of multi-party civil wars.

'Although some may argue that Christia's neo-realist framework is not comprehensive because it undervalues the ideological and psychological dimensions of civil wars, the author's argument is both persuasive and fundamental to understanding alliance formation and disintegration. The author's observation in the book's conclusion that the alliance shifts in Iraq's Anbar province in favour of the Iraqi government (and then against it) have been driven by relative power considerations seems to be borne out by events since the book's publication. Anyone interested in or responsible for policies aimed at resolving multi-party civil wars stands to gain from close consideration of Christia's argument.' H. R. McMaster, Survival