The Logic of Violence in Civil War

Stathis N. Kalyvas is Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science at Yale, where he directs the Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence. He has taught at the University of Chicago, New York niversity, and Ohio State University, and has been a visiting professor at the Juan March Institute in Madrid. He is the author of The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (1996) which was awarded the J. David Greenstone Prize for the best book in politics and history. He has also received the Gregory Luebbert Award for the best article in comparative politics, and has been a grant recipient of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute.

• Introduction; 1. Concepts and definitions; 2. Pathologies; 3. Barbarism; 4. A theory of irregular war I: collaboration; 5. A theory of irregular war II: control; 6. The logic of indiscriminate violence; 7. A theory of selective violence; 8. Empirics I: comparative evidence; 9. Empirics II: microcomparative evidence; 10. Intimacy; 11. Cleavage and agency; Conclusion.

“While exciting and extensive, the recent literature on civil wars suffers from poorly specified and empirically untested causal mechanisms. Therefore Stathis Kalyvas' important study is a welcome contribution to the field, as it reaches an unprecedented level of specificity and detail without sacrificing analytical cogency. Going beyond simplistic dichotomizations, such as 'greed' and 'grievance,' Kalyvas offers compelling evidence that civil wars often contain micro-level actions that have little to do with the main conflict dimension of the war in question. Reflecting both intellectual curiosity and impressive erudition, The Logic of Violence in Civil War promises to become an instant classic in conflict research in particular, and comparative political analysis in general.” Lars-Erik Cederman, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich