CIAO DATE: 11/03

The State of International Relations Research and Perspectives in Germany

Gunther Hellmann, editor
August 2003

War and Political Violence: Conceptual Innovation and Theoretical Progress by Christopher Daase

Abstract

There has been progress in the study of war and political violence over the last fifteen years. In particular, where old orthodoxies were relaxed and where intellectual stimuli were accepted from other approaches, methods, or disciplines, new insights were gained about the concept of war, the causes of political violence, and its consequences. In the field of concept analysis a historical understanding of the concept of war, the development of theoretical typologies, and the reformulation of qualitative and quantitative criteria for the coding of wars have lead to more refined and reflective concepts of war and political violence. In the field of etiology, a number of causal patterns significantly increasing the likelihood of war have been discovered through the combination of inductive and deductive theorizing, the analysis of causal mechanisms and the amalgamation of small-n and large-n case studies. The relatively new research on the effects of war has produced a number of hypotheses about learning in war, the consequences of unconventional warfare on actors and structures of the international system, and the privatization and criminalization of political violence in so called civil war economies. The cross fertilization of these research programs will yield additional insights if the interdisciplinary and multi-methodological discourse can be kept alive.