Popular participation and the changing character of war : revisiting Clausewitz's hypothesis

Abstract

These last twenty years, from 1989 until 2009, the number of major armed conflicts has been declining significantly. Interstate wars and civil wars have been lower in number across the period and, despite their brutality, these conflicts have killed fewer people compared with major conventional wars. Why? Why is it that wars at the beginning of the Twenty-First century have been comparatively more limited and restrained? Taking as a starting point the key Clausewitzian insight that the conduct war is shaped in part by the domestic societal and political make-up of polities, I explore the idea that the wars and strategies of the last twenty years, from 1989 until 2009, have been affected by the overall decline of popular participation in politics and in war.