This paper suggests that societies exhibiting a large degree of educational polarization among its populace are systematically more likely to slip into civil conflict and civil war. Intuitively, political preferences and beliefs of highly educated citizens are likely to differ fundamentally from...

The bulk of social science theories explaining civil war focus on endogenous factors, generally ignoring the systemic effects of superpower rivalry during the Cold War. This study directly estimates US and Soviet rivalry by assessing the impact of CIA and KGB support to surrogates in proxy wars....