This book argues that political and economic inequalities following group lines generate grievances that in turn can motivate civil war.

Lars-Erik Cederman is Professor of International Conflict Research at the Center for Comparative and International Studies at ETH Zürich. His research interests include conflict processes related to ethnicity, nationalism, democratization and state formation. He is the author of Emergent Actors in World Politics: How States and Nations Develop and Dissolve (1997), the editor of Constructing Europe's Identity: The External Dimension (2001) and co-editor of New Systems Theories of World Politics (with Mathias Albert and Alexander Wendt, 2010). He is the winner of the 2012 and 2002 American Political Science Association's Heinz I. Eulau Awards (in 2012 with Kristian Skrede Gleditsch and Nils B. Weidmann), the 2000 Furniss Award for Emergent Actors in World Politics, and the Horace H. Rackham Distinguished Dissertation Award from the University of Michigan.

1. Introduction; Part I. Theories and Concepts: 2. Inequality and grievances in the civil war literature; 3. From horizontal inequality to civil war via grievances; Part II. Analyzing the Outbreak of Civil War: 4. Political exclusion and civil war; 5. Economic inequality and civil war; 6. Transborder ethnic kin and civil war; 7. Country-level inequalities and civil war; Part III. Beyond Civil War Onset: 8. Political exclusion and the duration and outcomes of civil war; 9. Conclusions for theory and policy.