Political Violence and War

Abstract

The atrocities which accompanied the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Rwandan genocide in the mid-1990s provided a major boost to the burgeoning post-Cold War interest in the outbreak and resolution of intra-state conflicts, especially where ethnic identity played a role. A new approach to understanding civil wars emerged in this context, which argued that contemporary, post-Cold War wars constitute a significantly different phenomenon from preceding wars. In fact, its proponents argued, war is now so different in its qualities and frequency, that it is altogether a ‘new’ type of war. The debate that ensued took issue with the ‘new wars’ theories’ claims about the novelty of contemporary warfare and dominated much of the literature on civil wars over the past 15 years.