James Fearon

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James D. Fearon is Theodore and Francis Geballe Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and a political scientist known for his work on civil wars, international bargaining, and audience costs.

In his paper co-authored with David D. Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War" (2003) Fearon casts doubt on three conventional beliefs concerning political conflict: that the prevalence of civil war in the 1990s was due to the end of the Cold War, that a greater degree of ethnic of religious diversity alone makes a country more prone to civil war and that ethnic of other broad political grievances cannot accurately predict where a civil war will occur. They also argue that defining insurgency is key to understanding civil war.