ABSTRACT
Analysis of intra-state conflict, its types, causes and possible peace strategies, is highly topical. However, research deficits prevail regarding many issues and problems in this vast field. Research on the causes of wars was mainly concerned with classic types of conflicts between states but does not easily apply to intra-state conflicts. Compared to the tremendous increase in intra-state warfare and non-military types of mass violence such as genocide and mass murder, the Clausewitzean type of inter-state conflicts was in recent decades an exceptional phenomenon. In two-thirds of all contemporary conflicts the ethnic factor (e.g. ethnic nationalism) is a dominant or influential component.
The struggles of ethnic and national groups for survival, rights or recognition dominate contemporary warfare to an increasingly large extent and result in 'anarchy' in the state system. In the South there are a growing number of states which cannot claim to have an effective monopoly on violence. Depending on the criteria employed about half of those states are failed states and potentially become dangerous states (repression, war, genocidal policy).
The lacunas of global surveys on mass violence can be identified. Present war registers overlook certain categories and types of violence such as genocide, mass murder, communal violence and post-modern types of conflicts that do not necessarily involve state actors, e.g. gang war. Most registers are constructing static entities instead of expressing the permanent 53mutation of conflicts in the real world. There are very few 'pure types'. Conflicts develop over time and may change in quality, with a new type becoming dominant over the other(s).
The high frequency and huge potential of ethnic types of conflict are decisive factors in regard to the possibilities of structural prevention of violence, conflict management and transformation as well as regarding the role of multi-lateralism in preventing violence. State failure and violent ethnic conflict are closely linked.
