How Civil Wars Start There is a lot to digest here. It is perhaps the first book on "Political Science" that I have found that can make a claim to being "Scientific" - based on evidence and capable of making predictions. Analysis of hundreds of civil wars and factional violence show repeated patterns for those willing to look for them. Ironically, "democracy" seems to be a way to guarantee, rather than prevent civil war.   Rule by "headcount" is a recipe for the discontent that can boil over into civil war. The US dipped deeper (back) into autocracy during the Trump era, following a pattern that started with Johnson's abandonment of the "South" to support civil rights (the South is now Republican). The pattern is fleshed out by many examples taken from other countries that fell off the same cliff,   such as India.   America has not recovered from the "dip" and continues to slide into a factional power struggle, predicted b