Civil conflicts tend to break out “within nation-states and threaten their governments, social order, and the pace and path of their development” (Anastasion et al. 17). Over the years, there have been many debates surrounding the definition of the underlying cause(s) of civil conflict. There are many theories that have evolved over time that suggest an explanation for the emergence of civil conflict. Yet there is still no concrete definition of the cause. However, there was a theorist and scholar named Thomas Malthus who offered a considerably plausible argument for the cause of the Civil War. Malthus produced a theory called Malthusianism; this theory expressed the potential underlying effects that can result from rapid population growth combined with resource scarcity (Anastasion et al.). In particular, one of the likely negative effects that seems to emerge from Malthusianism is civil war. It is assumed that the citizens of a nation-state become unstable when resources begin to become scarce due to rapid population growth and when there are no longer enough resources available to compensate for the growth experienced by the nation. nation-state. Crops are specific examples of important resources that trigger distress and tumult when they become insufficient, given that food is a substantial resource for sustaining human life and harvesting crops is a means of producing income. There is evidence that there is a significantly low amount of arable land in the world; however, in the Global South, it is evident that developing countries in this region tend to suffer from an extreme lack of access to arable land (Map 5.1). Yet there is... middle of paper ...... achieving change comes through civil disobedience in the form of riots, protests, regimes, wars, etc. (Anastasion et al.). “Pinker's law of power distribution suggests that all wars are generated by the same process. Thus, if war in the South is caused by x, then the absence of war in the North must not be caused by x. The United States experienced its own civil war as its economy transitioned from an agricultural to an industrial economy. The war grew from the Southern states, driven by fear of economic instability, not social differences. It is often assumed that civil war is caused by ethnic, social, or religious issues, because rebel groups tend to derive from already organized groups. Malthus' argument is true to the extent that civil conflicts are based on shocks linked to economic deficit (Anastasion et al..).