Civil war as a social process: actors and dynamics from pre- to post-war
| Author | Anastasia Shesterinina |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221095970 |
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https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221095970
European Journal of
International Relations
2022, Vol. 28(3) 538 –562
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661221095970
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Civil war as a social process:
actors and dynamics from
pre- to post-war
Anastasia Shesterinina
The University of Sheffield, UK
Abstract
What accounts for overarching trajectories of civil wars? This article develops an
account of civil war as a social process that connects dynamics of conflict from pre- to
post-war periods through evolving interactions between nonstate, state, civilian, and
external actors involved. It traces these dynamics to the mobilization and organization
of nascent nonstate armed groups before the war, which can induce state repression
and in some settings escalation of tensions through radicalization of actors, militarization
of tactics, and polarization of societies, propelled by internal divisions and external
support. Whether armed groups form from a small, clandestine core of dedicated
recruits, broader networks, social movements, and/or fragmentation within the regime
has consequences for their internal and external relations during the war. However, not
only path-dependent but also endogenous dynamics shape overarching trajectories of
civil wars. During the war, armed groups develop cohesion and fragment in the context
of evolving internal politics, including socialization of fighters, institution-building in
the areas that they control, which civilians can collectively resist, competition and
cooperation with other nonstate and state forces, and external influence. After the war,
armed groups transform to participate in continuing conflict and violence in different
ways in interaction with multiple actors. This analysis highlights the contingency of
civil wars and suggests that future research should focus on how relevant actors form
and transform as they relate to one another to understand linkages between conflict
dynamics over time and on continuities and discontinuities in these dynamics to grasp
overarching trajectories of civil wars.
Corresponding author:
Anastasia Shesterinina, Department of Politics and International Relations, The University of Sheffield,
Elmfield Building, Northumberland Road, Sheffield S10 2TU, UK.
Email: a.shesterinina@sheffield.ac.uk.
1095970EJT0010.1177/13540661221095970European Journal of International RelationsShesterinina
research-article2022
Article
Shesterinina 539
Keywords
Civil war, actors, dynamics, interaction, social process, conceptual framework
What accounts for overarching trajectories of civil wars? The dominant form of armed
conflict since World War II, civil wars have attracted significant academic attention.1
Early quantitative studies examined the distinct phases of onset, duration, and termina-
tion of civil war, with a focus on civil war recurrence and other challenges of post-war
recovery in the aftermath. Looking at factors that affect outcomes at the macro-level,
this research formed the basis for our understanding of the structural determinants of
civil war. More recent turns in the literature to the micro-foundations of individual and
group behavior, organizational structure, and legacies of civil war have seen increas-
ingly sophisticated research designs with the use of fine-grained data collected and
analyzed at the subnational level. Scholars have asked questions of not only why and to
what extent but also and primarily how and enriched our understanding of the dynamics
of civil war. By extending the scope of analysis beyond binary start and end points,
expanding the range of actors beyond state-nonstate dyads, and shifting the focus from
factors to dynamics, this literature has started to depict civil war as a process with blurry
boundaries between pre-war, wartime, and post-war periods of conflict. Critical inter-
ventions on peace and conflict have reaffirmed this trend. While a consensus has
emerged on the continuing need to bridge the different phases and explanatory logics of
civil war (Cederman and Vogt, 2017), questions remain about how to explore such link-
ages. How do civil wars unfold from pre- to post-war? How do different dynamics of
civil war shape one another and change over time? How should we approach civil war
in processual terms?
This article contributes to the efforts to grapple with the complexity of civil war by
developing an account of civil war as a social process that incorporates dynamics of
conflict from pre- to post-war periods. These dynamics, I argue, unfold through evolving
interactions between the actors involved. Multiple nonstate, state, civilian, and external
actors, which are more or less relevant for specific dynamics, form and transform as they
relate to one another in the context of conflict. The dynamics that their interactions
engender emerge at different points in the conflict, intersect, and shift over time to shape
overarching trajectories of civil wars in path-dependent and endogenous ways. Tracing
these dynamics from pre- to post-war periods can help illuminate central questions in the
study of civil war, namely, how armed conflict originates in different ways and how these
origins condition the progression of civil wars and impact war-to-peace transitions
together with wartime and post-war developments.
In adopting this actor-centered and relational, in other words, social approach to the
process of civil war, the article draws on the literature on contentious politics and
advances calls to put civil war studies in closer conversation with this literature (Tarrow,
2007; Wood, 2015). This literature recognizes the contingent character of actors and their
interactions, problematizing the linear progression of contention, but seeks to identify
regularities in trajectories of contention and views recurrent mechanisms, such as bro-
kerage, as a source of these regularities (McAdam et al., 2001). I similarly start from a
nonlinear view of civil war, where it is not predefined actors engaging in interactions that
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