ABSTRACT

This introductory chapter states the main puzzles, conceptualizes social movements in civil wars, builds a theoretical model by bridging literature on civil wars and social movements as well as democratization and nonviolence, justifies the research design of the empirical work, and presents the contents of the volume. Combining explanations addressing the radicalization of social movements, the onset of civil wars, and the failure of democratization as well as of nonviolent repertoires, the chapter will introduce some main mechanisms in the trajectory from social movements to civil wars: the reciprocal adaptation between movement and state strategies, the fragmentation of protest networks, organizational encapsulation, and polarization in the framing of the conflict. Considering trajectories of escalation as moments of time intensification, the introductory chapter will point to the need to consider contingent and open-ended processes. In the methodological section, the research design is justified. In particular, the search for robust mechanisms oriented the choice of relevant cases of trajectory from social movements to civil war within a most-different research design. The chapter ends by presenting the contents of the volume.