Civil Wars

Catalog description

This course examines factors influencing the onset, duration, severity, termination, recurrence, and consequences of civil wars around the world. PL SC 436 Civil Wars (3) This course provides a broad exploration of the causes, characteristics, and consequences of civil wars. In particular, it investigates what makes civil wars more likely to occur, what influences how long they last, how severe they are, and how likely they are to recur, while also considering their consequences for the states that experience them. It considers the scholarly research on this topic over the past decade or more, and builds an awareness both for what are the known regularities as well as what are the continuing uncertainties about the place of civil war in the contemporary international system. It does this specifically within the context of scientific research about civil wars, and thus also advances student knowledge about how social scientists learn what they know about how the world works. Building on this perspective, and after absorbing the lessons to be learned from the literature, students will gain even greater appreciation for the quality of knowledge about civil wars by conducting their own detailed analysis of a civil war (each student will study one civil war of their choosing) asking how well the civil war they study fits patterns identified by the literature. This course complements, without duplicating, existing political science courses about militarized political conflict, and qualifies as one course majors can take to satisfy their 400-level course hours requirement. In addition to political science majors, it should be of interest to international politics majors, students in other social science majors, and perhaps Masters students in the School of International Affairs as well.