This is the third in a series of edited volumes that seeks to survey the field of conflict studies. In the first two volumes (published in 1989 and 2000), the focus was on war between states, but this one addresses intrastate conflict. Editor Manus Midlarsky justifies the focus on intrastate conflict on the basis of two developments: Civil war has become the more prevalent form of conflict, and researchers have devoted increasing attention to it. While the first development predated the second, both are important, and a volume devoted to a survey of the field of civil war studies is certainly warranted.

Midlarsky has assembled an all-star cast of researchers for the book, which is divided into three sections. The first, “Perspectives on Interstate and Civil Strife,” includes two essays, one by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on rational choice approaches to war and one by Rose McDermott on research on emotions and war. The second part, “The Onset and Termination of Civil Wars,” includes an article on the development of theory on civil war and revolution by T. David Mason, a survey of rational choice institutionalist approaches to “contentious politics” (Mark Lichbach), an empirical study of the relationship between democracy and civil war (Nils Petter Gleditsch, Håvard Hegre, and Håvard Strand), and a study of outcomes in civil war (Roy Licklider). The final section includes three essays on “Ethnic Conflict, International Relations and Genocide,” with chapters by Monica Duffy Toft on ethnic conflict, Stephen Saideman and Erin Jenne on international dimensions of ethnic conflict, and Midlarsky on genocide.

While most of these essays are surveys or literature reviews, concrete suggestions are offered in each for areas where further research is needed. Licklider, for example, is quite critical of studies of civil war outcome, arguing that most of our findings are quite uncertain, and because of this, the implications for policymakers interested in resolving civil wars are unclear, if not outright wrong. Toft suggests that recent scholarship on civil war has erred by shifting the focus away from ethnicity and toward economics as the main cause of conflict.

In addition to the literature reviews, the book includes one chapter that presents new empirical findings. Gleditsch and his coauthors present a series of statistical analyses concerning the impact of democracy on the outbreak, duration, and severity of conflict. While the “democratic peace” is a widely studied phenomenon in interstate war, relatively little attention has been paid to the impact of democracy on civil conflict. The authors show that democracy reduces the likelihood and severity of civil conflict, but appears to have little impact on its duration. The analyses are comprehensive, well conducted, and well presented, and the chapter represents a significant contribution to the study of political institutions and civil war.

All in all, this is an important collection of essays. Virtually every chapter presents a good synthesis of an important strand of literature. I will certainly use selections from this book in graduate seminars I teach on international relations, comparative politics, or civil war, as the chapters provide very good introductions for students about the state of the literature.

That said, the book would have been much stronger if, instead of a collection of independent essays, it had served as a forum for these authors to engage one another. This is apparent in the first four chapters, in which Bueno de Mesquita, McDermott, Mason, and Lichbach discuss different theoretical approaches to the study of conflict. In the first two, Bueno de Mesquita and McDermott each present different approaches to the study of war/crisis behavior, and these are not specific to the study of intrastate conflict at all. The focus then shifts to an article by Mason on the development of theory on the onset of civil war and revolution, and that chapter makes virtually no reference to the theoretical approaches presented in the first two. It is unclear what to take from this. Has the literature on civil war completely ignored the issues raised in Bueno de Mesquita's and McDermott's contributions? Is this problematic? If so, it should be addressed. If not, why are these chapters presented? The book would have been much stronger if these issues had been addressed by the authors or by the editor.

The fourth chapter, by Lichbach, is more integrative in that it attempts to show broadly how “rational choice institutionalists” across a variety of subdisciplines contribute to our understanding of conflict behavior and state building. At the very least, Lichbach and Bueno de Mesquita appear to approach the study of conflict in very similar ways.

No edited volume can do everything, and asking this one to present a rigorous theoretical debate between different approaches in which the authors engage one another is a tall task. It is, however, something that needs to be done. Most importantly, I would like to see a discussion about the extent to which civil war is a unique phenomenon that should be studied independently or one that can be studied together with other forms of political violence. The inclusion of Bueno de Mesquita's and McDermott's essays seems to suggest that interstate and intrastate war can be usefully studied through the same theoretical lens. Lichbach, whose analysis incorporates insights from James Fearon's “Rationalist Approaches to War” (1995)—a piece firmly within the international relations field—along with Barrington Moore's classic work of comparative politics, appears to agree.

In other places, however, the book suggests that phenomena should be separated out and studied more independently. The essays by Toft and by Saideman and Jenne, for example, argue that ethnic conflict is a phenomenon that is at least somewhat separate from intrastate conflict more broadly and worthy of independent study. Midlarksy presents a compelling chapter on genocide without addressing whether genocide is something that should be studied separately from, or together with, other forms of substate violence, such as civil war.

While I find the lack of discussion in this book about what we are studying and how we should study it frustrating, it is certainly endemic to the field as a whole. Studies of “interstate war” “civil war,” “ethnic conflict,” “genocide,” “one-sided violence,” “communal conflict,” “terrorism,” and so on often begin with little or no justification as to why that phenomenon in particular should be the focus of study. There is often little attention in these studies to whether the theoretical arguments tested are unique to the phenomena being studied or should apply to a wider set of cases. Identifying the population of cases that a theoretical argument applies to, however, is crucial for properly testing any implications of that argument.

The individual essays, then, provide a service. Most are excellent summaries of large bodies of literature by prominent researchers in these areas, along with concrete suggestions for further research. Collectively, however, the book would have been much stronger if these scholars had engaged with one another and addressed how their arguments are related.