The State of the Field: Demography and War

At its root, the importance of the link between demography and war is the relative capacity of a given political unit’s population to aid in its defense or to threaten other political units. For this reason, population increase and decrease have always been identified as vital security issues; however, the importance of raw population as an increment of state power has waxed and waned across time in response to technological innovations and broad normative social changes