![]() ![]() This enormous diversity of theoretical, methodological, and epistemological perspectives on the study of war complicates the task of providing a concise assessment of the field. 2There is no consensus as to what the causes of war are, what methodologies are most useful for discovering and validating those causes, what general theories of world politics and human behavior a theory of war might be subsumed within, what criteria are appropriate for evaluating competing theories, or even whether it is possible to generalize about anything as complex and contextually dependent as war. However, we have few lawlike propositions, limited predictive capacities, and enormous divisions within the field. We are more explicitly theoretical in our general orientation, more rigorous in theory construction, more attentive to the match between theory and research design, more sophisticated in the use of statistical methods, and more methodologically self-conscious in the use of qualitative methods. That view was somewhat overstated at the time, because the field of international relations had made significant progress since its emergence by the end of World War II as an autonomous field of study, and it is certainly incorrect today. ![]() Nearly 20 years ago two leading international relations scholars argued, from different perspectives, that our systematic knowledge of international conflict had progressed very little since Thucydides wrote his History of the Peloponnesian War ( Gilpin 1981, p. My aim in this review is to assess the state of the art in our understanding of the causes of war. Each of these perspectives rests on some critical assumptions and theoretical propositions about the causes of war. Some foresee an “end of history” ( Fukuyama 1992) and gradual obsolescence of war, or at least of great power war ( Mueller 1989), whereas others see an explosion of low-intensity warfare and “clash of civilizations” ( Huntington 1996). The nuclear revolution, the end of the Cold War, the rise of ethnonational conflicts, and the spread of global capitalism and democracy have led to considerable speculation about a turning point in the history of warfare. ![]()
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