Barbara F. Walter

Barbara F. Walter is an American political scientist. She is known for her work on bargaining theory and political violence, especially the outbreak and resolution of civil war, and the logic of terrorist violence. Since 2012, she has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Education

Walter received her B.A. in political science and German from Bucknell University in 1986, and her M.A. in 1991 and Ph.D. in 1994 in political science, both from the University of Chicago. She completed post-doctoral fellowships at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, and at the War and Peace Institute at Columbia University.

Career

Walter joined the faculty at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego in 1996. From 2012 until 2014 she was Associate Dean. In 2012, Walter co-founded (with Erica Chenoweth) the blog Political Violence @ a Glance, winner of the International Studies Association’s Most Promising Blog of the Year in 2013, Best Group Blog of the Year in 2014, and Best Blog Post of the Year in both 2013 and 2014.

Walter is on the editorial boards of the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, International Organization, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and International Studies Quarterly. She is the recipient of awards from the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Guggenheim Foundation, the United States Institute of Peace, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

• Reputation and Civil War: Why Separatists Conflicts are So Violent (2009)
• Globalization, Territoriality, and Conflict (co-edited with Miles Kahler) (2006)
• Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars (2002)
• Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (co-edited with Jack Snyder) (1999)
• “Why Bad Governance Leads to Repeat Civil War,”Journal of Conflict Resolution(2014)
• “Ethnicity and Civil War,”with Elaine Denny. Journal of Peace Research (2014)
• “The Gender Citation Gap in International Relations,”with Daniel Maliniak and Ryan Powers. International Organization (2013)
• "The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement," International Organization (1997)