In recent years, explanations for the occurrence of civil war have mainly emphasized state weakness as providing an opportunity for greed-based rebellions. Yet, this explanation leaves many questions open, as it cannot distinguish between weak states that do and those that do not experience civil war. In this paper, I argue that abuses of personal integrity rights, committed or sponsored by the government, provide this missing link. The theory is illustrated and formalized in a game-theoretic model and then tested empirically, building on earlier work by Fearon and Laitin (2003a) and Sambanis (2004). The results show that repression is highly significant in both statistical and substantive terms. According to one model, the probability of civil war onset increases by a factor of almost 16 in highly repressive countries compared to countries with no repression. Further robustness tests across alternative civil war lists largely confirm the importance of human rights abuses in explaining the occurrence of civil war.

This thesis attempts to provide a critical perspective on state failure together with its consequences, and how the reconstruction of state is carried out in the aftermath of failure. The thesis commences by discussing the emergence of &lsquo / modern&rsquo / nation-states, and proceeds by analyzing how current patterns of statehood respond to the classic nation-state denominations. Examining the concept of state failure, the thesis aims to verify whether established characteristics of statehood are applicable in view of contemporary dynamics of state weakness. The thesis then observes the difficulties for upholding inherent weaknesses in a state against the pressing nature of the contemporary dynamics of international relations / and, thus explores avenues for frameworks preventive to state failure, as well as postfailure resuscitation of states when these frameworks fail to take effect. Putting this analysis into perspective, the thesis discusses various aspects of international community&rsquo / s engagement for reconstruction of the state in Afghanistan, a country which represents an example for state failure and collapse par excellence, in the frame of a case study. Drawing from this case study, the thesis highlights the shortfalls and successes of state reconstruction in Afghanistan, in an attempt to provide useful hints for similar future engagements elsewhere.