War, Sociology of
possible explanation, which is yet to be tested empiri-
cally, is that a key element in membership of para-
military groups may be the development of a morality
of loyalty which in turn is related to the development
of a relevant situated social identity.
This is obviously a very difficult to area in which to
get hard evidence. The existing evidence therefore
comes from atypical group members, is largely an-
ecdotal, and has mostly been gathered by journalists
rather than social scientists. It could be argued,
however, that scholars could make more use of these
as primary sources. Probably the only thing we can
claim to have any firm evidence on is that children and
young people who join nationalist\separatist guerrilla
movements are not psychopaths and come from no
particular social strata of society. Other hypotheses
including ideas of ‘terrorist personality types’ or
psychodynamic explanations will always be very hard
to substantiate.
6. Children and Peace
One of the problems, it has been suggested, in bringing
peace to societies that have experienced political
violence is that the next generation will have either
begun to believe that there is no future, or that they
will be able to think of the future only in negative
terms.
Given that we know little about the way in which
children develop concepts of peace and war it could be
argued that it is premature to try to educate children to
be peace makers (see Peace Promotion, Psychology of).
Despite this lack of basic knowledge this process has
already begun in some societies and some people
apparently believe it is effective. However, there is
virtually no empirical evidence to substantiate their
claim. A major problem would appear to be that too
much of what passes for peace education focuses on
interpersonal conflict as opposed to intergroup con-
flict. In future, curriculum designers need to produce a
more effective peace education program and also to
overcome the problem that peace education per se is
not always politically acceptable.
It could also be argued that school-based peace
education is always bound to be ineffective because it
targets the wrong people in the wrong setting. For
example, there is speculation, if not evidence, that
children’s ideas about peace and war may be more
influenced by what they learn from their parents than
from their schools. There is definitely evidence, which
is now often forgotten, that learning about such things
as peace and war involves emotions primarily and that
providing facts may not alter these emotions. This is
obviously an area which is in need of much more
research which develops what is known and makes it
amenable for use in applied settings.
The alternative to peace education which is most
often advocated is bringing children together from
opposing groups in order to foster positive intergroup
attitudes—the contact hypothesis. This has been a
well-researched area for many years and now boasts
an extensive literature. What this literature indicates is
that for contact to be even minimally effective it has to
take place under highly prescribed conditions. How-
ever, what advocates of the contact hypothesis appear
to be reluctant to accept is that while there is evidence
that bringing groups together promotes interpersonal
contact satisfactorily, it does not necessarily promote
intergroup contact.
There is also good evidence that intergroup conflict
can be reduced by manipulating the process of social
categorization in order to alter group boundaries. This
is a strategy that both social scientists and policy
makers should consider more often. The evidence also
suggests it is not possible to bring social categorization
to an end entirely. Rather it is better to concentrate on
altering the content of stereotypes or manipulating
who gets put in which social category by altering
intergroup boundaries.
See also: Coping across the Lifespan; Disasters,
Coping with; Stress and Coping Theories; Violence
and Effects on Children
Bibliography
Cairns E 1996 Children and Political Violence. Blackwell, Oxford,
UK
Dawes A, Donald D 1994 Childhood and Ad
ersity: Psycho-
logical Perspecti
es from South African Research. David
Philip, Cape Town
Freud A, Burlingham D T 1943 War and Children. Medical War
Books, New York
Garbarino J, Kostelny K, Dubrow N 1991 No Place to be a
Child. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco
Leavitt L, Fox N 1993 The Psychological Effects of War and
Violence on Children. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ
Machel G 1996 Impact of Armed Conflict on Children. United
Nations Children’s Fund and United Nations Department of
Public Information, New York
Raviv A, Oppenheimer L, Bar-Tal D 1999 How Children
Understand War and Peace. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco
E. Cairns
War, Sociology of
The sociology of war is a central topic in both political
and historical sociology, since war is one of the most
important policies states can pursue, and the outcomes
of wars have often shaped both the formation and the
dissolution of states. The literature on war is thus
concerned with both its causes and its consequences.
Studies of the causes of war can be divided into
three broad categories. The first type takes the system
as a whole as the unit of analysis and focuses on how
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War, Sociology of
characteristics of the interstate system affect the
frequency of war. Debates focus on characteristics of
the interstate system that are thought to increase or
decrease war, such as global economic cycles, balances
of power, and the increasing role of transnational
organizations such as the United Nations. States are
the unit of analysis in the second type, which explores
the relationships among political, economic, and
cultural features of particular states and their pro-
pensity to initiate wars. Social scientists disagree about
the effects of political systems (democracy vs. auto-
cracy) and economic systems (capitalist, socialist, or
other) within states on war. The third type analyses
war as an outcome of choices made by individual and
small-group decision making. There is also no con-
sensus on which model of individual decision making
is most appropriate for the study of war. Is the
decision to go to war based on a rational calculation of
economic costs and benefits, or is it an irrational
outcome of distortion in decision making in small
groups and bureaucracies?
Theories of the consequences of war tend to focus
either on its role in state formation, or on its causal
impact on internal revolts and revolutions. Historical
sociologists have shown that the frequency, duration,
and timing of medieval and early modern warfare were
the most important determinants of the size and
structure of states (Tilly 1975, 1990, Ertman 1997).
However, just as war can make states, it can break
them too. For example, Skocpol (1979) argues that
costly warfare often leads to fiscal crises and state
breakdown, facilitating revolutions.
1. Causes of War: The Interstate System
Most studies of war that take the interstate system as
the unit of analysis begin with assumptions from the
‘realist’ paradigm. States are seen as unitary actors,
and their actions are explained in terms of structural
characteristics of the system. The most important
feature of the interstate system is that it is anarchic.
Unlike politics within states, relations between states
take place in a Hobbesian ‘state of nature.’ Since an
anarchic system is one in which all states constantly
face actual or potential threats, their main goal is
security. Security can only be achieved in such a
system by maintaining power. In realist theories, the
distribution of power in the interstate system is the
main determinant of the frequency of war.
Although all realist theories agree on the importance
of power distribution in determining war, they
disagree about which types of power distributions
make war more likely. Balance-of-power theories
(Morgenthau 1967) suggest that an equal distribution
of power in the system facilitates peace and that
unequal power distributions lead to war. They argue
that parity deters all states from aggression and that
an unequal power distribution will generally result in
16364
the strong using force against the weak. When one
state begins to gain a preponderance of power in the
system, a coalition of weaker states will form to
maintain their security by blocking the further ex-
pansion of the powerful state. The coalitions that
formed against Louis XIV, Napoleon and Hitler seem
to fit this pattern.
Hegemonic stability theory (Gilpin 1981) suggests
exactly the opposite, that unequal power in the system
produces peace and that parity results in war. When
one state has hegemony in the world system, it has
both the incentive and the means to maintain order in
the system. It is not necessary for the most powerful
state to fight wars, since their objectives can be
achieved in less costly ways, and it is not rational for
other states to challenge a hegemon with overwhelm-
ing power. For example, the periods of British and US
hegemony were relatively peaceful and World Wars I
and II occurred during intervening periods in which
power was more equally distributed. A related attempt
to explain great-power war is power transition theory
(Organski 1968). Power transition theory suggests that
differential rates of economic growth create situations
in which rising states rapidly catch up with the
hegemonic state in the system, and that this change in
relative power leads to war.
Debates about power transitions and hegemonic
stability are of much more than theoretical interest in
the contemporary world. Although the demise of the
USSR has left the USA as an unchallenged military
hegemon, its economic superiority is being challenged
by the European Union and emerging Asian states
(Japan in the short run, perhaps China in the long
run). If power transition and hegemonic stability
theories are correct, this shift of economic power could
lead to great power wars in the near future.
Another ongoing debate about systemic causes of
war concerns the effects of long cycles of economic
expansion and contraction. Some scholars argue that
economic contraction will increase war, since the in-
creased scarcity of resources will lead to more conflict.
Others have suggested the opposite: major wars will
be more frequent during periods of economic expan-
sion because only then will states have the resources
necessary to fight. Goldstein’s (1988) research suggests
that economic expansion tends to increase the severity
of great-power wars but that economic cycles have no
effect on the frequency of war.
One significant change in the last half of the
twentieth century which will require substantial
revisions in realist systemic theories of war is the
development and increasing power of transnational
organizations (such as the United Nations), since their
assumption that the interstate system is anarchical
may no longer be valid. If the military power of the
United Nations continues to grow, it could become
more and more effective at preventing wars and
suppressing them quickly when they do start. Of
course, it remains to be seen whether powerful existing

states will choose to cede more power to such
institutions.
Theoretical debates about the systemic causes of
war have not been resolved, in part because the results
of empirical research have been inconclusive. Each
theory can point to specific cases that seem to fit its
predictions, but each must also admit to many cases
that it cannot explain. Part of the problem is that
systemic theories have not incorporated causal factors
at lower levels of analysis, such as internal economic
and political characteristics of states. Since the effects
of system-level factors on war are not direct but are
always mediated by the internal political economy of
states and the decisions made by individual leaders,
complete theories of the causes of war must include
these factors as well.
2. Causes of War: Capitalism and Democracy
One of the longest and most heated debates about the
causes of war concerns the effects of capitalism.
Beginning with Adam Smith ([1776]1976), liberal
economists have argued that capitalism promotes
peace. Marxists (Lenin [1917]1939), on the other hand,
suggest that capitalism leads to frequent imperialist
wars.
The Smithian liberal argument suggests that since
capitalism has both increased the benefits of peace (by
increasing productivity and trade) and the costs of war
(by producing new and better instruments of de-
struction), it is no longer rational for states to wage
war. The long period of relative peace that followed
the triumph of capitalism in the nineteenth century
and the two world wars that came after the rise of
protectionist barriers to free trade are often cited in
support of liberal economic theories (but the same
facts can be explained by hegemonic stability theory as
a consequence of the rise and decline of British
hegemony).
In contrast, Marxists (Lenin [1917]1939) argue that
economic problems inherent in advanced capitalist
economies create incentives for war. First, the high
productivity of industrial capitalism coupled with a
limited home market due to the poverty of the working
class result in a chronic problem of ‘underconsump-
tion.’ Capitalists will thus seek imperial expansion to
control new markets for their goods. Second, capital-
ists will fight imperialist wars to gain access to more
raw materials and to find more profitable outlets for
their capital. These pressures will lead first to wars
between powerful capitalist states and weaker per-
ipheral states, and next to wars between great powers
over which of them will get to exploit the periphery.
With the increasing globalization of economics, and
the transitions of more states to capitalist economies,
the debates about the effects of capitalism, trade, and
imperialism on war become increasingly significant. If
Adam Smith is right, our future is likely to be more
peaceful than our past; but if Marxist theorists are
War, Sociology of
right, we may see economically based warfare on an
unprecedented scale.
The form of government in a country may also
determine how often it initiates wars. Kant
([1795]1949) argued that democratic states (with con-
stitutions and separation of powers) will initiate wars
less often than autocratic states. This conclusion
follows from a simple analysis of who pays the costs of
war and who gets the benefits. Since citizens are
required to pay for war with high taxes and their lives,
they will rarely support war initiation. Rulers of states,
on the other hand, have much to gain from war and
can pass on most of the costs to their subjects.
Therefore, when decisions about war are made only by
rulers (in autocracies), war will be frequent, and when
citizens have more control of the decision (in democ-
racies), peace will generally be the result.
Empirical research indicates that democratic states
are less likely than nondemocratic states to initiate
wars, but the relationship is not strong (Kiser et al.
1995). Perhaps one reason for the weakness of the
relationship is that the assumption that citizens will
oppose war initiation is not always correct. Many
historical examples indicate that in at least some
conditions citizens will support war even though it is
not in their economic interests to do so, due to
nationalism, religion, ethnicity, or other cultural fac-
tors.
Perhaps the most interesting current debate about
democracy and war surrounds the proposition that
democratic states never fight each other. There is
clearly a strong empirical generalization to be explain-
ed, since all agree that democratic states rarely fight
each other—depending on exactly how ‘democracy’
and ‘war’ are defined, some argue they never do
(Weart 1998). However, scholars disagree about the
causal mechanism responsible for this association.
Some stress the role of political culture, arguing that
the norms of toleration and mutual accommodation
that prevent conflicts within democracies from escalat-
ing to violence have the same effect in limiting violent
conflicts between democracies. These states consider
each other part of the same ‘ingroup’ sharing the same
values, and are thus very unlikely to fight. In contrast,
others suggest that ‘democratic peace’ could be the
result of rational self-interest. Democratic politicians
may simply fear the negative impact that losing a war
might have on their prospects for re-election. Further
research, probably at the level of detailed case studies
that can reveal precise causal mechanisms, will be
necessary to resolve this debate.
3. Causes of War: Decision Making
Few theories of war focus on the individual level of
analysis; their assumptions about individual decision
making are usually implicit or undeveloped. Notable
exceptions include rational choice theories (Bueno de
Mesquita 1981, Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman 1992)
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War, Sociology of
and arguments about organizational and small group
decision making (Allison 1971).
Bueno de Mesquita begins by assuming that the
decision to initiate war is made by a single dominant
ruler who is a rational expected-utility maximizer.
Rulers calculate the costs and benefits of initiating
war, and the probability of victory, so wars will be
initiated only when rulers expect a net gain from them.
These assumptions generate several counterintuitive
propositions. For example, common sense might
suggest that states would fight their enemies and not
their allies, but Bueno de Mesquita (1981) argues that
war will be more common between allies than between
enemies. Wars between allies are caused by actual or
anticipated policy changes that threaten the existing
relationship. The interventions of the USA in Latin
America and of the USSR in Eastern Europe since
World War II illustrate the process. Other counter-
intuitive propositions suggest that under some con-
ditions a state may rationally choose to attack the
stronger of two allied states instead of the weaker, and
under some conditions it is rational for a state with no
allies to initiate war against a stronger state with
allies.
Other analyses of the decision to initiate war focus
on how the social features of the decision-making
process lead to deviations from rational choice.
Allison (1971) argues that standard operating proce-
dures and repertoires within states tend to limit the
flexibility of decisions and make it difficult to respond
adequately to novel situations. Others focus on the
small groups within states (such as executives and their
cabinet advisers) that actually make decisions about
war. The cohesiveness of these small groups often
leads to a striving for unanimity that prevents a full
debate about options and produces a premature
consensus. In spite of these promising studies, work on
the deviations from rational choice is just beginning,
and we are still far short of the general microlevel
theoretical model of the decision to initiate war.
4. Consequences of War: State Formation and
Bureaucratization
How and to what extent does war affect the formation
and the structure of states? Tilly (1975, 1990) argues
that ‘war made states’ in the early modern era. Warfare
(along with the repayment of debts from past wars)
cost far more than any other state policies in early
modern Europe. Moreover, the timing and the nature
of war shaped the structures of these developing states.
One of the most interesting ongoing debates con-
cerns whether war facilitates or hinders bureaucratiza-
tion. Weber ([1922]1978) argued that states involved in
military competition with other states (e.g., Western
Europe) would be more likely to bureaucratize than
those that were more isolated (e.g., China, Japan).
Although he does not use this terminology, he basi-
16366
cally argues that states not facing the threat of war
would be satisfied with existing administrative arrange-
ments, whereas those competing militarily would be
forced to adopt the more efficient bureaucratic form.
In contrast to this, Levi (1988) views war as a
consistent impediment to bureaucratization. She
argues that war raises the discount rates of rulers,
causing them to pursue policies that provide immediate
gains even if they are costly in the long term. Thus,
rulers facing war would be unlikely to pay the high
start-up costs of bureaucratization, but would instead
do things like selling offices which would make
bureaucracy much more difficult to implement.
Ertman (1997) suggests a related argument in which
the timing of war is important. When states experi-
enced early sustained warfare (prior to about 1450)
they developed patrimonial administrations (due to
lack of trained personnel and the dominance of
‘cultural models’ derived from feudal and Catholic
institutions). These institutions were very difficult to
bureaucratize due to the power of entrenched officials
to block reform. Ertman argues that states that were
able to avoid frequent war until later were able to
develop more bureaucratic administrations.
Finally, wars that result in severe losses may
facilitate bureaucratic reforms. One of the main
barriers to bureaucratization is the entrenched officials
in the state administration who have both the incent-
ives and the power to block reform (Ertman 1997).
These officials will not be dislodged by most wars, but
their power will be broken by a severe loss at war,
especially one that results in foreign occupation.
5. Consequences of War: Re
olt and Re
olution
Since the classic work of Simmel ([1908]1955, pp. 98–9)
and Coser (1956, pp. 19, 95), the conventional wisdom
has been that wars decrease the probability of revolts
by increasing the internal cohesion of societies (the
‘ingroup–outgroup’ or ‘conflict–cohesion’ hypothesis).
However, the results of empirical tests of the re-
lationship between revolt and war have been mixed, at
best.
In contrast to the ‘conflict–cohesion’ hypothesis,
historical sociologists focusing on the early modern
period (Tilly 1975, p. 74) argue that fighting wars
increased the likelihood of revolts. Tilly argues that
since subjects had few institutionalized mechanisms
available to stop rulers from initiating wars contrary
to their interests, the only option they had to try to
limit war was revolt. In addition, Tilly (1975, p. 74)
notes that since participating in wars weakens rulers, it
increases the likelihood of a revolt.
Theda Skocpol (1979) has made the most com-
pelling argument that war is a primary cause of major
‘social revolutions.’ Her argument about the origins of
the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions stresses
the importance of factors that weaken the state,

making it more vulnerable to overthrow. The main
factor that tends to weaken states is war, especially in
the context of strong peasant communities and an
alienated dominant class. This work has been the
primary inspiration for the development of a ‘state-
centered’ approach to historical sociology.
6. Conclusion
This short summary has only been able to scratch the
surface of the voluminous literature on war. Future
research should attempt to link the several topics
discussed here, by bringing together the micro and
macro causes of war, and by tying the causes more
closely to the consequences of war. The increasing
development of technologies of mass destruction and
the rise of transnational political units will also
challenge existing theoretical frameworks. Like most
of sociology, the sociology of war is still in its infancy.
See also: Conflict and War, Archaeology of; Conflict:
Anthropological Aspects; Conflict Sociology; Geo-
politics; Military Geography; Military History; Na-
tional Security Studies and War Potential of Nations;
Peace; Peacemaking in History; War: Anthropolo-
gical Aspects; War: Causes and Patterns
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Bueno de Mesquita B 1981 The War Trap. Yale University Press,
New Haven, CT
Bueno de Mesquita B, Lalman D 1992 War and Reason. Yale
University Press, New Haven, CT
Coser L 1956 The Functions of Social Conflict. Free Press,
Glencoe
Ertman T 1997 Birth of the Le
iathan. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, UK
Gilpin R 1981 War and Change in World Politics. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, UK
Goldstein J 1988 Long Cycles. Yale University Press, New
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enue. University of California
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E. Kiser
Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Warfare in History
This article divides the history of warfare into five
periods: the classical era (including the wars of Greece
and Rome); the Middle Ages (roughly from AD 500 to
the Turkish conquest of Byzantium in 1453); the age of
gunpowder (from 1453 to the American and French
Revolutions beginning in 1776); the ‘long nineteenth
century’ (from 1776 to 1918); and finally the con-
temporary period (covering World War II and the
Cold War). Each of these periods will be defined by
changes in three dimensions. First and most obviously,
each period is associated with a general group of
military technologies. Second, each period also in-
volves a shift in the nature of military organization.
Finally, this periodization demonstrates changes in
the reasons why people have gone to war.
1. The Classical Period
1.1 Technology
The Classical period deserves consideration on its own
merits and in the context of an historical debate over
the influence of Greco-Roman warfare on later Euro-
pean patterns. In the field of technology, some
historians argue that the Greeks and Romans began a
pattern of using superior technology to compensate
for having to fight wars against numerically superior
enemies. The Persian Wars of the fifth century BC
demonstrated the need for Greek city-states to combat
the much larger armies of Persian kings Darius and
Xerxes. Needing to slow the Persians, Spartan general
Leonidas threw his much smaller force into a moun-
tain pass near Thermopylae in 480 BC knowing that it
would be destroyed to a man. Aware that his army
would not return, Leonidas took with him only those
men who had children to succeed them, an important
consideration because the army and the citizenry were
closely linked.
To avoid future Thermoplyaes, the Greeks devel-
oped both offensive and defensive technologies. Even-
tually, the typical Greek soldier wore nearly seventy
pounds of armor and carried spears and swords that
16367
ISBN: 0-08-043076-7