By Hannah Bray and Kaitlyn Andreala

Abstract: Buhaug (2006) contributes both empirically and theoretically to the literature on civil war onset by disaggregating civil wars into two types based on rebel motivations determined by their capability. The puzzle Buhaug (2006) addressed relates to the mixed findings of ethnic fractionalization as a variable in the previous civil war onset literature, wherein some found it to
be significant and others did not. Buhaug (2006) argued that this is because prior studies mostly failed to distinguish between territorial (secessionist) and governmental (state takeover) conflicts, instead treating civil war as a single category (e.g., Fearon and Laitin 2003). Ultimately, he finds evidence for his preferred method of disaggregating civil wars. While valuable, we argue that Buhaug (2006)’s work is limited because it fails to account for the possibility of outside actors’ influence on potential rebel capabilities and objectives, specifically, foreign aid’s potential to raise rebel capability if it is co-opted. We find evidence that foreign aid does have an impact on the likelihood of civil war onset, but the direction and magnitude of that relationship are dependent on both the type of conflict and type of aid. This implies it is worthwhile to disaggregate both types of civil wars as posited by Buhaug (2006), but it is likewise valuable to include and disaggregate foreign aid inflows.