The excessive violence that has spread across virtually all of Syria since the 2011 uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Assad has so far prevented a serious debate about feasible solutions. Most political factions fear that any talk of a compromise solution will undermine their own position...

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...