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Civil wars are the dominant form of violence in the contemporary international system, yet they are anything but local affairs. This book explores the border-crossing features of such wars by bringing together insights from international relations theory, sociology, and transnational politics with a rich comparative-quantitative literature. It highlights the causal mechanisms - framing, resource mobilization, socialization, among others - that link the international and transnational to the local, emphasizing the methods required to measure them. Contributors examine specific mechanisms leading to particular outcomes in civil conflicts ranging from Chechnya, to Afghanistan, to Sudan, to Turkey. Transnational Dynamics of Civil War thus provides a significant contribution to debates motivating the broader move to mechanism-based forms of explanation, and will engage students and researchers of international relations, comparative politics, and conflict processes

Part I. International Institutions as Community Builders: 1. International institutions and socialization in Europe: introduction and framework Jeffrey T. Checkel -- Part 2: The Socializing Power of European Institutions": 2. Strategic calculation and international socialization: membership incentives, party constellations and sustained compliance in central and eastern Europe Frank Schimmelfennig -- 3. Several roads lead to international norms, but few via international socialization: a case study of the European Commission Liesbet Hooghe -- 4. Multiple embeddedness and socialization in Europe: the case of council officials Jan Beyers -- 5. The Janus face of Brussels: socialization and everyday decision making in the European Union Jeffrey Lewis -- 6. Security institutions as agents of socialization" NATO and the 'New Europe' Alexandra Gheciu -- Part III. Critique, Conclusions and Extensions: 7. Conclusions and extensions: toward mid-range theorizing and beyond Europe Alastair Iain Johnston -- 8. Getting socialized to build bridges: constructivism and rationalism, Europe and the nation-state Michael Zürn and Jeffrey T. Checkel.

Since the path-breaking work of Karl Deutsch on security communities and Ernst Haas on European integration, it has been clear that international institutions may create senses of community and belonging beyond the nation state. Put differently, they can socialize. Yet the mechanisms underlying such dynamics have been unclear. This volume explores these mechanisms of international community building, from a resolutely eclectic stand point. Rationalism is thus the social theory of choice for some contributors, while others are more comfortable with social constructivism. This problem-driven perspective and the theoretical bridge building it are the cutting edge in international relations theory. By providing more fined-grained arguments on precisely how international institutions matter, such an approach sheds crucial light on the complex relationship between states and institutions, between rational choice and social constructivism, and, in our case, between Europe and the nation state

Preface: Capturing Complexity, Explaining Change -- 1. Ideas and Policy Change -- 2. Policymaking in an Authoritarian State -- 3. Entrepreneurs Looking for a Window -- 4. Windows Opening? -- 5. Open Windows, New Ideas, and the End of the Cold War -- 6. A Post-Cold War Cold Peace? Ideas and Institutions in the New Russia -- 7. Ideas and Foreign Policy -- Appendix. Schedule of Interviews

This article sets the stage for a special issue exploring group-level dynamics and their role in producing violence. My analytic focus is socialization, or the process through which actors adopt the norms and rules of a given community. I argue that it is key to understanding violence in many settings, including civil war, national militaries, post-conflict societies and urban gangs. While socialization theory has a long history in the social sciences, I do not simply pull it off the shelf, but instead rethink core features of it. Operating in a theory-building mode and drawing upon insights from other disciplines, I highlight its layered and multiple nature, the role of instrumental calculation in it and several relevant mechanisms – from persuasion, to organized rituals, to sexual violence, to violent display. Equally important, I theorize instances where socialization is resisted, as well as the (varying) staying power of norms and practices in an individual who leaves the group. Empirically, the special issue explores the link between socialization and violence in paramilitary patrols in Guatemala; vigilantes in the Bosnian civil war; gangs in post-conflict Nicaragua; rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo, El Salvador, Sierra Leone and Uganda; post-conflict peacekeepers; and the US and Israeli military. By documenting this link, we contribute to an emerging research program on group dynamics and conflict.

The past decade has seen a sustained move by students of international institutions and organizations to viewing their subject matter as independent variables affecting state interests and policy. Conceptually, this has put a premium on identifying the mechanisms connecting institutions to states; methodologically, there has been a growing concern with measuring process. In this paper, I survey empirical applications where international institutions are claimed to be influencing state-level action through various processes and mechanisms. The move to process and to the method of process tracing has been salutary, I argue, producing rich and analytically rigorous studies that demonstrate the multiple roles - good and bad - institutions play in global politics. At the same time, challenges remain. In terms of design, scholars often fail to address the problem of equifinality - where multiple causal pathways may lead to the same outcome - and instead conduct process tracing only on their preferred argument. Theoretically, the power and generalizability of arguments about institutions seem to decrease as the focus shifts to process. Finally, the potential for process tracing to help scholars produce integrative frameworks about international institutions - combining insights from different social-theoretic toolkits - remains unfulfilled. ; Das letzte Jahrzehnt war geprägt von einem andauernden Wandel im Forschungsbereich der internationalen Institutionen und Organisationen. Diese werden zunehmend wie unabhängige Variablen behandelt, welche die staatlichen Interessen und Politiken beeinflussen. Konzeptionell wird damit die Möglichkeit geboten, Mechanismen zwischen Institutionen mit Staaten zu identifizieren. Methodisch rückt die Erforschung von Prozessen zunehmend in den Fokus. In diesem Ansatz untersuche ich einige empirische Studien, in denen behauptet wird, dass Institutionen das Handeln auf der staatlichen Ebene durch unterschiedliche Prozesse und Mechanismen beeinflussen. Den Übergang zur Analyse von Prozessen und der Methode des "process tracing" sind eine erfreuliche Entwicklung, denn wie ich argumentiere, sind solche Studien bereichernd und analytisch präzise und demonstrieren die vielseitigen Rollen - gute wie schlechte - die Institutionen in der globalen Politik einnehmen können. Gleichzeitig ist festzustellen, dass es noch einige Herausforderungen gibt. Im Hinblick auf Design scheitern Forscherinnen und Forscher häufig am Problem der Äquifinalität - wenn multiple kausale Pfade zum gleichen Ergebnis führen - und wenden process tracing nur bezüglich ihres präferierten Arguments an. Theoretisch scheinen die Stärke und die Generalisierbarkeit der Argumente hinsichtlich der Institutionen mit der Fokusierung auf Prozesse zu sinken. Das Potenzial von process tracing hinsichtlich der Konstruktion integrativer Analyserahmen über internationalen Institutionen unter Zuhilfenahme verschiedener sozialtheoretischer Instrumente bleibt unausgeschöpft.