Let be clear: The Eastern Roman empire had more civil wars than Poland have been divided or the germans and the french got into war. The list goes on and on to the point that makes victoria 2 blush the the huge number of rebels trying to take over power.
Now, leaving the irony apart and moving to something more concrete, I talked with a friend recently about the Komnenos and the Palailogos dynasty, and how the civil wars were not so frequent during that time. According to our understanding that most surely is wrong since we didn't made any intense research about the ERE, one of the reasons why the civil wars became rarer is something very simple: There was less territory under control of byzantine nobles, so they couldn't raise their armies to try to take over. Based on this (probably fault, if it is, correct me please) assumption, if the byzantine empire rises as a phoenix on a very early date, maybe during the late palailogos dynasty, could this lead to a end of the never ending civil wars? The newly reconquered territory in anatolia, greece, bulgaria, etc, could be given to the house of palailogos and led to a more centralized, Russian-ish ERE being formed. What do you think?