The subject of this book is very important: how governments can extend security for their populations without becoming a major threat to their well-being during and after civil wars. Its central theoretical argument is that a particular form of deterrence theory is more useful in explaining such situations than the idea of a security dilemma.

The editors begin by laying out the theoretical argument—that the security dilemma assumes no government, making it useful in explaining failed states. However, in most cases of civil war the government is the most important player. The question thus becomes how the government can 1) deter large-scale violence among and against its population, and 2) assure the population that it is not itself a major threat to their well-being in the particularly challenging situation of an ongoing or recent civil war. Security is seen not as a good with a fixed value but as a continuing bargain between the government and the population, centering around the delicate balance between deterrence and assurance.

Stathis Kalyvas tests the security dilemma and deterrence arguments with microlevel data from Vietnam and Greece. David Armstrong and Christian Davenport note that the state is the greatest threat to human life and suggest that our focus on war, civil war, and strong states is misplaced. Mansoob Murshed revisits the role of inequality (internally and externally) in causing civil wars. He then expands the conventional argument that civil wars are more difficult to settle because the goals are indivisible, and he considers in particular the issue of short time horizons. Aysegul Aydin and Scott Gates test the hypothesis that institutional constraints are more important in preventing genocide than democracy per se. Roger Petersen and Paul Staniland discuss the significance of the ethnic makeup of the military in explaining its behavior. André Lecours looks at the Basque situation as an example of how a government doing a reasonable job of deterrence and assurance can greatly reduce the violence but perhaps not eliminate it altogether. The late and deeply lamented Donald Rothchild argues that power sharing weakens the state, making it harder to successfully deter violence. Yasemin Akbaba, Patrick James and Zeynep Taydas discuss the conditions under which neighbors will be encouraged or deterred from intervening, using Minorities at Risk data. Sarah-Myriam Martin-Brûlé shows how great powers are significantly more able to replace the deterrence and assurance of failed states than other international actors, although obviously this influence is not unlimited.

In the conclusion, the editors suggest a number of tentative ideas that stem from the idea of security as a balance between deterrence and assurance. They note that violence is often launched by confident majorities rather than threatened minorities. Strengthening the state may thus cause more violence than leaving it weak. They also point out that state weakness at the national level may have different impacts on different regions. The largest threat to populations, they suggest, is not the absence of government but a government intent on their destruction. States with high levels of inequality are likely to be weak, which means that their capabilities will be limited and that they will be more likely to stress deterrence rather than assurance. If the political and military systems are dominated by different ethnic groups, the likelihood of renewed violence may be reduced. Conventional disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) strategies, which focus primarily on establishing deterrent capabilities, should be balanced with strategies of assurance, such as power division. Power sharing may be useful in the short run, but it is not a useful long-term foundation for a solid state. It is not at all clear that outside intervention, even if aimed at reestablishing the security bargain, will in fact succeed; major powers have major advantages, but even these may not be enough. The central insight is that the government remains the key actor in such situations—once again the state has been brought back in.

Aside from the content, this book includes a number of examples of the many different methodologies that have been developed in this rapidly expanding field. Case studies remain important. Lecours looks at the Basque situation in depth, drawing conclusions that can be applied to other cases. Martin-Brûlé looks at Sierra Leone and Liberia to tease out the advantages of great powers in trying to reestablish the deterrence/assurance bargain. The quantitative analyses use a wide variety of data. Murshed works with game theoretic ideas and economic data. Aydin and Gates employ institutional analysis based on different data sets and statistical analysis. Petersen and Staniland use a data set of the militaries of 30 multiethnic countries. Rothchild develops a data set on power-sharing experiences in Africa and suggests three different trajectories and an alternative strategy of power-divided institutions. Akbada, James, and Taydas use Minorities at Risk data to explore cross-state linkages and their implications for intervention. Kalyvas's chapter is particularly important because he uses microlevel data from two major civil wars, Vietnam and Greece, breaking away from the focus on state-level data that is increasingly seen as problematic.

In terms of theory, Rothchild summarizes power division, the clearest alternative to power sharing, which he and Philip Roeder developed. Armstrong and Davenport's work moves toward linking the study of various forms of violence together both empirically and theoretically under the general term of “human security,” perhaps the most exciting theoretical development in the field. And, of course, the theoretical thrust of the book itself is a major step forward.