Civil War Recurrence

Abstract Chapter 2 maps existing studies on the occurrence and recurrence of conflict and identifies the need for more comprehensive, generalizable, and empirically derived insights into whether, and especially how, civil war recurrence can be prevented. The chapter highlights persisting epistemological divides between case-based and variance-based methods and identifies three lines of argument to explore and explain civil war recurrence and non-recurrence (focusing on contextual factors, the characteristics of the previous conflict, and the crafting of peace agreements, respectively). Subsequently, this chapter presents the ontological debate between linear views of peacebuilding and approaches rooted in cyclical and iterative understandings of peace processes. We suggest that as a result of these epistemological and ontological tensions, the field lacks generalizable and comprehensive findings on which factors are most conducive to preventing civil war recurrence, and how. The chapter concludes by presenting our twin strategy to bridge these divides: tracing the iterative trajectories of protracted peace processes through a complex systems theoretical approach and applying the Multi-Stage Mixed Methods Framework.