Belgin San-Akca

Koc University

It has been more than five decades since Ted Robert Gurr asked the question, “Why Men Rebel” (1970), in the most popular scholarly work of political rebellion and protest. The subsequent research often focused on grievances as the main motivation behind collective mobilization (Collier and Hoeffler 1998; Fearon and Laitin 2003). Yet the questions o...

This forum provides an outlet for an assessment of research on the delegation of war to non-state armed groups in civil wars. Given the significant growth of studies concerned with this phenomenon over the last decade, this forum critically engages with the present state of the field. First, we canvass some of the most important theoretical develop...

Human history has been shaped by armed conflicts. Rather than large-scale interstate wars, low-intensity attacks have been more prevalent in the post-World War era. These attacks are often carried out by non-state armed groups (NAGs), which are supported by host states (HSs). We analyze the global bipartite network of NAG-HS support and its evoluti...

This article advances theoretical and empirical knowledge at the nexus of energy politics and conflict intervention by analyzing the complex dynamics connecting energy resources, civil war, and outside state support of rebel groups. It focuses on the role of global energy supply competition in states’ decision to support armed groups that are invol...

How does the anticipation of external support for both opposition groups and governments affect the likelihood and form (violent vs. nonviolent) of uprising within states? We develop a novel approach to address these issues, building on a network perspective. Our model suggests that both opposition groups and governments’ strategies are affected by...

This chapter presents empirical findings about the Rebels’ Selection Model and de facto support by state supporters. Beginning with a brief case study of Chad and the rebel groups located there, such as MOSANAT and FROLINAT, since the nation’s founding, the chapter reiterates the hypotheses and presents a multivariate statistical analysis. An analy...

Öz • tr • en demonstrate to Turkish academics how an event dataset could be used and be useful for explaining certain foreign policy issues. An example could be the Turkish Cyprus issue. Everybody out there has written on this, so everybody knows the basics of it, but using concrete data to actually analyze and pose questions about this issue mak...

The research on the influence of democracy on terrorism renders support for two causal mechanisms. One is that democracy reduces terrorism because it creates an environment in which dissenters can pursue their interests through peaceful means. The other argument states that democracy encourages terrorism due to the intrinsic liberties and freedoms...

Maoz, Zeev and Belgin San-Akca. (2012) Rivalry and State Support of Non-State Armed Groups (NAGs), 1946–2001. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2478.2012.00759.x © 2012 International Studies Association This study examines the conditions under which states engaged in strategic rivalries choose to support Non-state Armed Groups (N...

How do Non-state Armed Groups (NAGs) including ethnic and religious insurgents, terrorists, and guerrilla groups choose the states that they obtain safe havens, arms and logistics, and funds from? I argue that we need to distinguish between intentional support provided by states that create channels to help NAGs and de facto support that is obtaine...

States have suffered equally, if not more, from violence generated by Non-state Armed Groups (NAGs), such as ethnic and religious insurgencies and terrorists, than violence directly generated by their counterparts. This does not undermine the fact that states occasionally provide support to these groups in the form of safe havens, weapons, and fund...