Towards a practitioner-centric definition of civil war

This paper argues that current academic definitions of civil war are largely inadequate for international relations practitioners. While these casualty-based standards have the methodological consistency needed for quantitative research, they do not capture the dynamics most important to policymakers, including the degree of threat to national interests, the level of disruption to the international system, and the political implications of labelling a conflict a civil war. This paper explains how academics and practitioners use civil war definitions in different ways, creating the need for an additional but non-exclusive practitioner-centric definition of civil war. Its purpose is not to replace the existing academic standard, but rather to provide an additional tool for policymakers tailored to their specific needs – identifying when a civil war has emerged in order to implement a policy response.