What determines the pace at which conflict breaks out?  After leaders form organizations for the purpose of fighting the state, the range of time until conflict breaks out varies from a couple of months to more than 10 years.While the extant literature on conflict onset have identified several risk factors for where it may occur, the timing of the onset process has not been fully explored. However, the timing of conflict has not been fully explored. The timing of civil conflict onset is a function of the interplay between organizational dynamics and environmental conditions. I argue that this interplay is influenced by a rebel leader's social capital. Rebel organizations are particularly vulnerable in the first years of their existence. Growth in capabilities is essential to a rebel organization’s goal attainment, but increases a state’s need to repress. Leaders with access to diverse social networks can select for committed supporters, thus form organizations based on trust, and can buy time until environmental conditions are permissive and organizational capabilities are consolidated. The analysis of all civil conflict onset processes 1946-2013 finds that the rebel leader's social capital influences the duration between foundation and fighting. Leaders, with social capital one standard deviation higher from the mean, are associated with a delay in fighting on average by 22\% or 319 days. The highest social capital leaders are on average 133\% slower to fighting compared to mean social capital leaders.

Elite-level social capital facilitates both the mobilization and retention of participants in social movements and insurgencies. Well-connected rebel leaders perceived as credible have advantages in constructing a functioning organisation and ensuring loyalty among followers. We argue that leaders from reputable and elite families have several advantages when it comes to organizing insurgency. They can build on the social capital amassed by earlier generations and thus have greater visibility, credibility, and access to key networks facilitating more viable rebel organizations. Consequently, we expect these organizations to establish a dominant position as the opposition to the regime and deter rival attempts of rebel group formation. Following an analysis of all civil conflicts 1946-2018, we find robust support for our argument that intergeneratioal social capital creates more cohesive insurgencies. We also identify a substitution effect as social capital serves similar purposes as previous political engagement, but that the most cohesive insurgencies are formed by leaders that have either of these two features in combination with military skills. 

Why do some rebel leaders engage in secret negotiations and others do not? Why do some rebel leaders engage in public negotiations and others do not? In this article, I examine the impact of rebel leader variation between rebel organizations, particularly how the social capital of leaders influences a leader's propensity to engage in secret and public negotiations. I argue that social capital is a resource associated with a rebel leader which forces rebel group factions to support costly policy decisions such as negotiations. Using data on  secret negotiations, peace negotiations and rebel leaders social capital from 1975--2013, I find that social capital is not consistently, or robustly correlated with either secret or public negotiations. Conflict level variables (e.g. duration) and organizational level variables (e.g. rebel strength) are robustly correlated with different types of negotiation. However, when interacted with organizational and contextual level variables, social capital does seem to influence negotiation onset categories.