| Streszczenie: | <p>How do civil wars begin? And does the type of onset impact how conflicts unfold? While the study of <i>why</i> civil wars start has been a central focus in the literature on civil war, the study of <i>how</i> civil wars start has received limited attention so far. In this thesis, I contribute to this scholarship with a novel conceptualisation of civil war onset as a varied political event. I argue that different types of onset represent different forms of political challenge to state sovereignty and, as such, set countries in distinct conflict trajectories.</p>
<p>Theoretically, I propose a novel typology to account for the variation across onsets. I identify four ideal-typical forms of civil war onset: <i>peripheral challenge</i>, <i>state disintegration</i>, <i>coup</i>, and <i>insurrectionary protests</i>. I then build on this original typology and develop a path-dependent explanation for several macro-level wartime dynamics, including warfare, intensity, and conflict duration, that originate in the form of onset. In that sense, the types of civil war onset reflect different initial conditions that set conflicts onto patterned trajectories. Given how civil wars begin, I expect that some conflicts will be more likely to be fought through symmetric modes of warfare, some will be more severe, or last longer than others.</p>
<p>Empirically, I build a novel dataset of civil war, DatOnset, that accounts for the variation in the form of onset in all civil wars between 1944 and 2020, and validate the proposed classification through an extensive expert survey. Next, I use the typology of civil war onset empirically in two complementary ways. First, I replicate several landmark studies of the causes of civil war and provide evidence that the correlates of onset that we know about are clustered by types of onset. Second, to test my theory of civil war trajectories, I conduct cross- national regression analysis using the typology of onset as the main independent variable. I find clear empirical patterns in how civil wars unfold, which originate in the form of conflict onset. Lastly, I complement the cross-national findings with original archival material from Burundi’s civil war (1993-2006) to describe in depth the dynamics at play during onset in the form of state disintegration. I demonstrate that state disintegration onsets occur in highly fragmented political landscapes, paired with weak institutions, and the existence of private militias mobilised by political elites.</p>
<p>Overall, the thesis makes several important contributions. Among these, distinguishing between civil wars based on the type of onset provides clear scope conditions and insightful case selection strategies, which is essential for robust comparative analyses of civil wars.</p>
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