Advance praise: 'Jeff Checkel has assembled an excellent group of authors with on-the-ground expertise on civil wars and sensibility to standards of social-science method and research design. [This] book should enjoy a wide readership of scholars of civil war and students taking courses on international relations, transnationalism, and civil conflict.' Matthew Evangelista, Cornell University 'Featuring the workings of various causal mechanisms, this volume contributes invaluably to our understanding of dynamic processes at work during civil war.' Scott Gates, Director, Centre for the Study of Civil War, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) 'With more than half of all post-1945 civil wars spilling across state borders, this new volume offers a welcome introduction into the often overlooked transnational dynamics of 'local' wars. Taken as a whole, these chapters also provide compelling evidence for the importance of qualitative process-tracing that moves beyond just-so stories to the much tougher challenge of rigorously testing the mechanisms that underpin our explanations of civil war dynamics.' Jason Lyall, Yale University.