Civil conflicts are a major obstacle to economic progress and one of the main causes of human suffering and welfare loss. This thesis develops a methodology for measuring the intensity and dynamics of civil conflicts and applies it to the study of the Colombian civil conflict. Two empirical applications based on the dataset built following such methodology are presented. One application studies for the first time the relationship of state actions and paramilitary actions in the context of a guerrilla war, finding a large and significant substitution effect. The other application studies the relationship with the overall level of violence and conflict violence dynamically, finding that conflict violence causes a large variation in homicidal violence. The novel methodology introduced here has a double pillar for measuring conflict: events and victims. On this basis, a typology of conflict action types and forms of victimisation is developed and presented here, after careful consideration of alternative measurement approaches and available data. The method presented is compatible with other types of measurement, but it gives a much more accurate depiction of conflict activities and its effects. It is also appropriate for measuring conflicts in which several armed groups participate, as is usually the case. The methodology is applied to the Colombian case. The construction of an original, detailed, high-frequency data set on the civil conflict in Colombia is presented for the period 1974-2005. The Colombian case is introduced before presenting a study of the characteristics of the conflict, its dimensions, evolution and nature, based on the dataset. A detailed analysis of the victimisation of civilian casualties in the Colombian conflict by the different armed groups is presented. To this objective, a new quantitative approach to the analysis of human security during armed conflict is developed and applied to the Colombia war for the period 1988-2003. In addition, a typology of the armed groups is inferred from their actions. The quality of the methodology is tested by comparing the treatment of the case of Colombia in large cross-country conflict datasets and with other sources for shorter periods. We find that our database outperforms both with cross-country datasets and alternative micro- data for Colombia.

Cette thèse contribue à une sociologie historique du surgissement révolutionnaire en Égypte, à travers une approche localisée et à l'échelle individuelle. Le surgissement révolutionnaire renvoie à une séquence d'interactions dont l'issue, contingente, peut donner lieu à un basculement général de l'ordre politique. Afin de rendre compte des mécanismes concrets dont sont faits ces séquences, cette recherche se fonde sur l'étude des engagements de révolutionnaires et de novices dans la deuxième ville d'Égypte, Alexandrie, lors de la « révolution du 25 janvier 2011 ». Ces engagements sont analysés à l'aune des transformations politiques, économiques et culturelles que l'Égypte a connues depuis les années 1980 et, plus précisément, le renouveau protestataire qui marque la décennie 2000. Faisant usage d'une multitude de sources et de données (entretiens, observations, traces numériques, revues de presse, corpus de photographies et de vidéos), cette thèse permet de renouveler notre compréhension des phénomènes révolutionnaires et de la manière dont ils émergent. Plus précisément, on y voit comment, à rebours des analyses globalisantes et réifiantes des processus révolutionnaires, on ne peut comprendre la dynamique d'émergence d'une crise sans en revenir aux paramètres situationnels et, surtout, aux dynamiques locales de chaque cas. Par ailleurs, en focalisant l'attention sur la ville d'Alexandrie, cette thèse contribue à ouvrir un chantier de recherche sur cette grande métropole méditerranéenne qui reste sous-étudiée. / This thesis contributes to a historical sociology of revolutionary emergence in Egypt, through a localized and micrological approach. The revolutionary emergence refers to a sequence of interactions, always contingent, which can give rise to a sudden breakdown of a political regime. ln order to give an account of the concrete mechanisms constituting these sequences. This research is based on the study of the careers of revolutionaries and novices in Egypt's second city, Alexandria, during the "revolution of 25 January 2011". These political commitments are analyzed in the light of the political, economic and cultural transformations that Egypt has undergone since the 1980s and, more specifically, the renewal of protest activities that marked the decade 2000. Using a multitude of sources and data (interviews, observations, digital traces, press reviews, photographs and videos), this thesis allows us to renew our understanding of revolutionary phenomena and how they emerge. More precisely, we see how, against the background of globalizing and reifying analyses of revolutionary processes, we cannot understand the dynamics of the emergence of a crisis without returning to the situational parameters and, above all, to the local dynamics of each case. Moreover, by focusing attention on the city of Alexandria, this thesis contributes to opening a research avenue on this important Mediterranean metropolis which remains under-studied.

Régulièrement décrite comme le fruit d'un conflit identitaire déclenché par des interventions extérieures, la guerre civile irakienne est d'abord le résultat d'une intense compétition partisane. À travers une enquête de terrain menée de 2010 à 2017 au sein du gouvernorat de Kirkouk, cette thèse montre la manière dont les partis irakiens pénètrent l'État et produisent la société. En particulier, notre travail interroge la manière dont les partis captent les ressources étatiques qui leur permettent la mise en place de politiques d'ingénieries démographiques, la violence étant par ailleurs une modalité d'action centrale du jeu politique. En conséquence, une nouvelle hiérarchie communautaire s'installe qui modifie les structures socio-économiques et la vie quotidienne de la population. À partir de 2011, les inégalités qui résultent de ces transformations encouragent des protestations unanimistes (et non communautaires), mais la violence interdit le développement de ce mouvement et la marginalisation des Arabes sunnites facilitera finalement l'émergence de l'État islamique. Entre 2014 et 2017, la guerre contre l'EI radicalise encore les projets politiques de l'ensemble des partis, mais aboutit paradoxalement à un renforcement de l'État qui revient par le biais d'une politique de décharge milicienne et parvient à reprendre Kirkouk aux partis kurdes irakiens en octobre 2017. / Regularly described as the result of an identity conflict triggered by external interventions, the Iraqi civil war is first and foremost the result of intense partisan competition. Through an investigation conducted from 2010 to 2017 in the Kirkuk governorate, this thesis demonstrates how Iraqi parties penetrate the state and produce society. In particular, my work questions how parties capture the state resources that enable them to implement demographic engineering policies, violence being also a central modality of action in the political game. As a result, a new identity hierarchy is emerging that is changing the socio-economic structures and daily lives of the population. From 2011, the inequalities resulting from these transformations will encourage unanimous (and not sectarian) protests, but violence ultimately prohibits the development of this movement and the marginalization of Sunni Arabs will ultimately facilitate the emergence of the Islamic State. Between 2014 and 2017, the war against lS further radicalizes the political projects of all political parties, but paradoxically leads to a strengthening of the State, which returns through a devolution of power in favor of militias and, in October 2017, manages to take Kirkuk back from the Iraqi Kurdish parties.