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56 J. Conflict Resol. 3 (2012)

handle is hein.journals/jcfltr56 and id is 1 raw text is: journal of Conflict Resolution 56(1) 3-15 @ The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Fragmen tati on, and DOI: 10.1177/0022002711429669 http://jcr.sagepub.com Conflict Processes OSAGE Wendy Peariman and Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham2,3 The most prominent form of violent conflict in the world today occurs within states rather than between them. Since 1945, over 75 percent of militarized disputes have been civil conflicts.' From the African continent to the Balkans, civil wars have raged and self-determination movements have mobilized for collective violence. Conflict over identity has emerged as a central problem for nations and the internal community as nationalist groups battle the state and each other in places like Iraq and Sudan. The comparative decline of conventional interstate war casts a spotlight on the myriad of conflicts involving nonstate actors, be they in conflict with each other or with existing states. We define a nonstate actor as an organized political actor not directly connected to the state but pursing aims that affect vital state interests. The dominant approach to analysis of conflicts involving nonstate actors views them, like interstate conflicts, as the outcome of bargaining between antagonists (Fearon 1995; for review, see Walter 2009). This bargaining framework entails identifying key players-typically just two-and specifying their preferences, the limits of their capabilities and resolve, and the information they have about each other.2 Given such information, analysts derive predictions about when their strategic interaction will result in conflict, as well as the characteristics of that conflict. 'Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA 2University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA 3Peace Research Institute Oslo, Oslo, Norway Corresponding Author: Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, 3140 Tydings Hall College Park, MD 20742, USA Email: kgcunnin@umd.edu

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