Are civil wars shaped by how they start? While existing literature points to the path-dependent nature of conflict, the link between the type of onset and wartime dynamics have been largely overlooked. Building on a recent typology capturing the dynamics of civil war onset (1944–2020), I analyze conflict trajectories, focusing on three macro-level wartime dynamics: warfare, intensity, and duration. This article shows that how large-scale armed conflicts begin (e.g., whether they start as peripheral conflicts or are fought centrally) helps us predict how intensely they will be fought or how long they will last. These findings show that onset matters beyond signaling the start of large-scale conflict and tells us about the dynamics that will likely follow. Altogether, this article establishes a new process-oriented macro-level research program in the field of conflict analysis.

中文翻译：

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为什么发作很重要：内战中的战争、强度和持续时间


内战的开始方式是否影响了内战？虽然现有文献指出了冲突的路径依赖性质，但冲突的发生类型与战时动态之间的联系在很大程度上被忽视了。基于最近捕捉内战爆发（1944-2020 年）动态的类型学，我分析了冲突轨迹，重点关注三个宏观层面的战时动态：战争、强度和持续时间。本文表明，大规模武装冲突是如何开始的（例如，它们是从边缘冲突开始还是集中进行）有助于我们预测冲突的激烈程度或持续时间。这些发现表明，爆发的重要性不仅仅是大规模冲突的开始，还告诉我们可能随之而来的动态。总之，本文在冲突分析领域建立了一个新的面向过程的宏观研究计划。