  We investigate the quantum mechanical origin of resistive phase transitions
in solids driven by a constant electric field in the vicinity of a
metal-insulator transition. We perform a nonequilibrium mean-field analysis of
a driven-dissipative anti-ferromagnet, which we solve analytically for the most
part. We find that the insulator-to-metal transition (IMT) and the
metal-to-insulator transition (MIT) proceed by two distinct electronic
mechanisms: Landau-Zener processes, and the destabilization of metallic state
by Joule heating, respectively. However, we show that both regimes can be
unified in a common effective thermal description, where the effective
temperature $T_{\rm eff}$ depends on the state of the system. This explains
recent experimental measurements in which the hot-electron temperature at the
IMT was found to match the equilibrium transition temperature. Our analytic
approach enables us to formulate testable predictions on the non-analytic
behavior of $I$-$V$ relation near the insulator-to-metal transition. Building
on these successes, we propose an effective Ginzburg-Landau theory which paves
the way to incorporating spatial fluctuations, and to bringing the theory
closer to a realistic description of the resistive switchings in correlated
materials.
