Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond
... To this end, researchers predominantly focus on how the following conflict-level factors influence rebel fragmentation: battlefield outcomes (Woldemariam 2018), state repression against the rebel groups' civilian supporters (Fjelde and Nilsson 2018;Schubiger 2015), sexual violence by rebel actors (Nagel and Doctor 2020), or external support from third parties for rebels (Ives 2019;Lidow 2016;McLauchlin and Pearlman 2012;Tamm 2016). Others suggest that rebel fragmentation is influenced by the group's organizational features or ethno-political roots (Asal, Brown, and Dalton 2012;Sinno 2008Sinno , 2011, and founding ideology or social base (Fjelde and Nilsson 2018;Staniland 2012;Weinstein 2006). Recent work also posits that the experience of rebel leaders or their response to battlefield outcomes and external pressure from outside patrons prompts lieutenants and subcommanders -who operate "under the rebel leader" (Doctor 2020, 5) -to break away and form a new rebel group (e.g., Ives 2019, 5;Lidow 2016;Nagel and Doctor 2020). ...
... Rebel groups, however, often split "in which a segment of a rebel organization formally and collectively exits that rebel organization and establishes a new, independent rebel organization" (Doctor 2020, 2; Fjelde and Nilsson 2018;Pearlman and Cunningham 2012;Tamm 2016;Woldemariam 2018). Accordingly, researchers have primarily focused on how "within-group" characteristics or conflict-level factors mentioned in the introduction influence rebel fragmentation (e.g., Lidow 2016; Nagel and Doctor 2020;Sinno 2008Sinno , 2011Tamm 2016;Woldemariam 2018). These studies undoubtedly provide rich insights and we control for them in our empirical analysis below. ...
... The internal organizational structure of rebel groups vary in terms of how much command-and-control the top-tier leadership exerts over "day-to-day activities of the organization" (Cunningham, Gleditsch, and Salehyan 2013, 523). Following existing studies, we conceptualize the level of command-andcontrol centralization within rebel groups as high, moderate, and low (Asal , Brown, and Dalton 2012;Lidow 2016;Sinno 2008Sinno , 2011. Rebel groups that have a highly centralized command-and-control structure are led by few toptier leaders, including the supreme leader who occupies the organization's highest position (Asal , Brown, and Dalton 2012;Jo 2015;Sinno 2008). ...
Fractious splits of rebel groups debilitate the military capacity of
these organizations which increases their vulnerability to antirebel
operations. Despite the risks of disunity and the battlefield
advantages of remaining cohesive, our new global sample of
rebel groups (1980–2014) reveals that two-fifths of these (but
not the remaining) groups have split into distinct, competing
factions. Why and when do some rebel groups split, while other
groups remain cohesive? Unlike previous research on rebel
fragmentation, we argue that the extent of centralization of
the rebel groups command-and-control structure together
with the group’s “age” influences the propensity of rebel
group splits. The organizational features of rebel groups with
high command-and-control centralization lead to internal
blame-game politics when these groups age, which encourages
the supreme leader to amass power and curtail the other leaders’
decision-making authority. This induces the alienated leaders
to split the parent rebel organization to form a new rebel
group. In contrast, the organizational structure of moderate and
weakly centralized rebel groups promotes mutual interdependence
among leaders as well as between these leaders and subcommanders
over time. This reduces the likelihood of splits of
these groups. Results from our new rebel-group-year data provide
robust statistical support for these predictions.
... Stanford: Stanford University Press, p. 139. 79 AbdulkaderSinno (2008). Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond. ...
... Sinno (2008). Organizations atWars, p. 295-297. ...
... Research on fragile statehood and civil war has explored the fragmentation of armed groups (Sinno 2008, Bakke et al. 2012, the emergence of alliances between armed actors to influence war outcomes (Christia 2012, Seymour 2014, 'wartime institutions' that govern civilians (Arjona 2014) or 'armed politics' that shape how states and armed groups interact (Staniland 2017). I build on this research to analyse change in alliances and their implication for security governance. ...
... Despite their crucial function in the internal organisation of rebel groups and systems of rebel governance, rebels' auxiliary armed forces have so far received little attention in scholarly research. Most recent work on armed group fragmentation focuses on competition between different armed groups or units on the rebel side (Bakke et al. 2012, Christia 2012, Sinno 2008. In contrast, this article analyses how different units within the same organisation complement each other. ...
Who rules during the civil war? This article argues that the concept of armed group governance must be expanded to include auxiliary armed forces linked to rebels or the government. Comparing the organization of rebel and government auxiliaries, the article demonstrates that security governance during war is never static, but evolves over time. Evidence from the civil war in Mozambique (1976–1992) shows that the auxiliary’s origin shapes its initial level of autonomy. Second, auxiliary contribution to battlefield success of one side may induce innovations adopted by auxiliaries on the other. Both have distinct consequences for the nature of governance.
... Although we know more about the impact of balance of power on rebel interactions, little empirical research exists on how different configurations of foreign sponsors influence rebel propensity for cooperation and conflict. This is a serious omission given that previous studies show that foreign sponsors can decisively affect the organization, effectiveness and survival of rebel groups (Fjelde and Nilsson 2012;Salehyan 2010;Salehyan et al. 2014;Sinno 2008). ...
... Looking at foreign sponsors offers a new way to address rebel alliances. This approach acknowledges that sponsors play a decisive role in rebel behavior, organization and survival (Salehyan et al. 2014;Sinno 2008). As Salehyan et al. (2014) show, foreign support from multiple governments encourages rebel groups to be more violent toward civilians because no single state can effectively restrain the organization. ...
From the Patriotic Front struggle against the minority rule in Rhodesia to the seven-party mujaheddin alliance in Afghanistan, inter-rebel alliances make the armed opposition more resilient and successful in the face of government repression. Why then do some rebel groups cooperate with each other while others do not? Drawing on the principal-agent theory, I argue that the presence of foreign sponsors is likely to encourage alliance formation in civil wars especially when two rebel outfits share a state sponsor. Shared sponsors may demand cooperation between their agents and credibly threaten to punish them for non-compliance. They may also insist on the establishment of umbrella institutions to improve their monitoring and sanctioning capacity, and to increase the legitimacy of their agents. I test this argument using the UCDP Actor dataset with new data on alliances between rebel groups. I find strong evidence that shared sponsors increase the probability of inter-rebel alliance.
... Although we know more about the impact of balance of power on rebel interactions, little empirical research exists on how different configurations of foreign sponsors influence rebel propensity for cooperation and conflict. This is a serious omission given that previous studies show that foreign sponsors can decisively affect the organization, effectiveness and survival of rebel groups (Sinno 2008;Salehyan 2010;Fjelde and Nilsson 2012;Salehyan et al. 2014). ...
... Looking at foreign sponsors offers a new way to address rebel alliances. This approach acknowledges that sponsors play a decisive role in rebel behavior, organization and survival (Sinno 2008;Salehyan et al. 2014). As Salehyan et al. (2014) show, foreign support from multiple government encourages rebel groups to be more violent toward civilians because no single state can effectively restrain the organization. ...
... The most successful Islamist rural-guerrilla proto-state to date was constructed by the Taliban, who initially administered territories under their control through sharia courts and a special police force for maintaining Islamic virtue (Sinno 2008, chapter 8; W. Strick van Linschoten 2016, chapters 1, 4, and 6). ...
This article explores “revolutionary etatization,” defined as the process of revolutionary organizations evolving into embryonic proto-states even before they have seized power. The article focuses on the period between the end of World War I and the present day. While the situation of inescapable violent competition (Tilly) represents the Darwinian driver of the process, we need the ideologicaland strategic dimensions to account for the variety of revolutionary proto-states. Embryonic revolutionary states come in two main types: the multi-department civil-administration apparatus, and the agglomerate of organs of popular representation, corresponding, respectively, to “constructive” and “co-optive” modes of state formation. Revolutionary etatization is a universal experience holding true not only for rural guerrillas controlling “liberated territories” but also for urban guerrillas and urban insurrectionists.
... Much of the literature that builds on Kalyvas' seminal work focuses on the cohesion of armed organizations (e.g. Sinno 2008;Staniland 2012;Pearlman and Cunningham 2012), including the conditions for fighters to desert or defect to rival organizations McLauchlin 2010;Oppenheim et al. 2015;Koehler, Ohl, and Albrecht 2016) and those that underpin the incidence of selective or indiscriminate violence (Kalyvas 2012). Arjona (2016, 174-176) finds that armed groups vying for control of Colombian communities took popular norms into account, killing social deviants in an effort to 'bootstrap' their legitimacy and that local populations, in turn, exercised agency over denunciations to authorities (Arjona 2016). ...
“Loyalty trials” are common to a range of conflict settings, with consequences that range from harassment to imprisonment, torture, or death. Yet, they have received little if any attention as a general phenomenon in studies of state repression, civil war, or rebel governance, which focus on particular behaviors that authorities use to put people on trial, such as dissent, defection, and resistance. Using a computational model and data on the German Democratic Republic and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, we focus on the dynamics of “loyalty trials” held to identify enemy collaborators—the interaction between expectations, perceptions, and behavior. We use our framework to explore the conditions under which trials result in widespread defection, as in the German Democratic Republic, or in conformity as illustrated by our study of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The polarizing nature of loyalty trials and the propensity to over- or under-identify threats to political order have notable implications for democratic and non-democratic societies alike.
... In this versatile environment of conflicts, resources play a pivotal role. Resources in the theaterbelonging to the internal and external actors present in the theater (Sinno 2008)vary as well in terms of quantity and quality; this also applies to logistics as an enabler of resource management. Resources encompass military and civilian assets; in this chapter, natural resources originating from or required by the theater are not considered. ...
Military logistics can be seen as a set of processes that supports military organizations in their development into a capable and functional sustaining military force. Thus, the objective of this chapter is to bring to the forefront and elaborate on some of the foundational premises of military logistics as it is portrayed in its body of literature. To guide this presentation, a generic model is presented which relates logistics’ process and structure sides to its generic and mission specific sides. After these generic foundations, two deep dive themes are explored: strategic alignment of resources and logistics management and strategic defense supply chain security management . Recent historic cases illustrate the two themes. The chapter concludes with new ideas on military logistics innovation and draws attention to innovation and performance challenges in the context of military organizations cooperation.
... Comme le constate Maynard (2019) (ou Cohrs (2012)), le facteur idéologique suscite un regain d'intérêt depuis quelques années dans l'analyse de différentes formes de violences armées (Moore, 2019;Nilsson, 2018;Schori-Eyal et al., 2019) 20 . Bon nombre de travaux ont contribuéà la construction de données relatives aux groupes armés (Acosta, 2019;Buhaug et al., 2008;Cederman & Gleditsch, 2009;Hou et al., 2020;Walsh et al., 2018;Wilkenfeld et al., 2011) 21 et différents cadres théoriques alliant idéologie et guerre civile ontété développés (Arjona, 2010;Mampilly, 2011;Sinno, 2008;Ugarriza & Craig, 2013). ...
En présence d'un intérêt conflictuel relatif à l'appropriation d'une ressource (territoire, pétrole, etc.) ou de luttes hégémoniques, la résolution des différends interétatiques peut passer par la médiation des organisations internationales qui peuvent jouer le rôle d'arbitre et de plateforme de négociation.En cas d'inefficacité ou d'échec de ces modes pacifiques de règlement des différends, et plutôt que d'engager une confrontation armée directe particulièrement coûteuse et contraignante juridiquement, les pays en conflit peuvent chercher à user de stratégies alternatives telles que les financements des insurrections pour déstabiliser leurs rivaux.Ainsi, les conflits armés se caractérisent par une certaine dynamique dans la mesure où ils prennent des formes variées et incluent une multitude d'acteurs étatiques et non-étatiques au niveau interne, régional et international.Les zones de conflits sont dans ce cas étendues et les possibilités de ciblage des civils plus élevées.L'intérêt de ce travail doctoral qui réunit – dans une perspective théorique et appliquée – l’économie des conflits et le droit international, est d'offrir une analyse variée de l'étude des conflits armés à partir de 4 essais.Le premier chapitre de notre thèse a pour objectif de poser les fondements d'une approche interdisciplinaire dans l'étude des conflits armés.Sur cette base, nous apportons un éclairage quant au rôle des différents instruments juridiques nationaux et internationaux dans l'apparition ou la résolution des conflits armés.Le second chapitre, en s'appuyant sur le cas des « Guerres de la morue », vise à analyser les relations d'influences réciproques existantes entre le droit et le conflit observé sous le prisme de l'économie.Dans un troisième chapitre, nous nous intéressons au phénomène de rivalités interétatiques en tenant compte des réseaux de rivalités indirects.Enfin, dans un dernier chapitre nous cherchons à évaluer l'effet des cadres idéologiques des groupes armés sur la probabilité de ciblage des civils.
... "The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win" 1 Henry Kissinger Nekonvenciniai (partizaniniai) karai tampa lemiamu didelių karinių konfliktų veiksniu -tai matyti išstudijavus daugumą XX a. antrosios pusės karų, aprašytų įvairiuose istoriniuose šaltiniuose. Kalbant apie nekonvencinių karų reikšmę, galima teigti, kad silpnesnioji (dažniausiai -besiginančioji) pusė po savo šalies operacinių pajėgų pralaimėjimo turi šansą laimėti karą, remdamasi nekonvencinėmis pajėgomis ir tęsdama kovą partizaninio karo metodais. ...
The study analyzes selected unconventional wars from World War II to the present day according to specific criteria. The main goal of the study is to find similarities between unconventional wars and to determine the regularities of victory or defeat, also according to the possibility formulating conclusions for Lithuania.
... Organizational studies of political violence and civil wars argue that armed groups' external environments (Weinstein, 2007;Metelits, 2009;Christia, 2012;Hazen, 2013;Cunningham, 2014;Daly, 2016;Krause, 2017;Woldemariam, 2018) and internal dynamics (Sinno, 2007;Shapiro, 2013;Staniland, 2014;Daly, 2016) present important constrains and opportunities on their tactical and strategic choices. Each research accordingly analyzes one type of variableincluding armed groups' resources, in-war dynamics, war and pre-war mobilizing structures, and patterns of recruitment-and their consequences on armed groups' organizational cohesion, use of violence, behavior at war, and post-war success. ...
Institutionalizing Violence offers a detailed focus on the two most influential Egyptian jihadi groups—al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya and Islamic Jihad. From the killing of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981 to their partial association with al-Qaeda in the 1990s, the two groups illustrate the range of choices that jihadis make overtime including creating political parties. Jerome Drevon argues that these groups’ comparative trajectories show that jihadis embracing the same ideology can make very different strategic decisions in similar environments. Drevon’s analysis of these groups’ histories over the past four decades illustrates the evolution of jihadism in Egypt and beyond. Institutionalizing Violence develops an institutional approach to radicalization to compare the two Egyptian groups’ trajectories based on ethnographic field research and hundreds of interviews with jihadi leaders and militants in Egypt. Drevon provides a unique perspective on how jihadi groups make and implement new strategic decisions in changing environments, as well as the evolution of their approaches to violence and non-violence.
... For example, right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia that were formed during the country's civil war continued engaging in criminal activities following the signing of the peace agreement (Daly, 2016;Nussio and Howe, 2016). Many of the armed groups that have operated in Afghanistan since the early 1990s have financed their activities through opium production and smuggling (Sinno, 2011). To distinguish purely criminal violence from political violence that is financed by criminal activity, it is necessary to carefully assess the role played by the actors involved. ...
Quantitative research on the “durability” of peace following civil wars typically captures the breakdown or survival of “peace” in a binary manner, equating it with the presence or absence of civil war recurrence. In the datasets that underpin such studies, years that do not experience full-scale civil war are implicitly coded as “peaceful.” Yet, post-civil war environments may remain free from war recurrence, while nevertheless experiencing endemic violent crime, state repression, low-intensity political violence, and systematic violence against marginalized groups, all of which are incongruent with the concept of peace. Approaches to assessing post-civil war outcomes which focus exclusively on civil war recurrence risk overestimating the “durability” of peace, implicitly designating as “peaceful” a range of environments which may be anything but. In this article, we discuss the heterogeneity of violent post-civil war outcomes and develop a typology of “varieties of post-civil war violence.” Our typology contributes to the study of post-civil war peace durability, by serving as the basis for an alternative, categorical conceptualization of “peace years” in conflict datasets.
... Given the social 1 The World Bank (2019) Doing Business (Report), available at https://www.doingbusiness. org/en/reports/global-reports/doing-business-2019 and political system of the society, the organizational structures of businesses follow a traditional hierarchy (Sinno, 2011). Therefore, communication mostly flows from the top to the bottom, resulting in limited engagement and collaboration between employees and top managers. ...
The major concern of employees during times of war and conflict is apparently physical survival. But how are top managers of small‐sized companies enhancing the generation of novel and useful ideas by their employees in such physically dangerous business environments? In Afghanistan, as a war‐torn country, this research examined for the first time how getting closer to employees—which is conceptualized as internal marketing orientation culture in our study—directly affects the generation of novel and useful ideas by employees in the workplace. Our analysis is based on survey data from 81 newly established small‐sized companies in Afghanistan. Results indicate a mediating role of employees' perceived psychological safety on the relationship between internal market orientation culture and employees' creative work involvement. Moreover, we discuss the impact of employees' creative work involvement on small‐sized firm competitiveness improvement in general. Finally, we extend our implications in the context of the componential theory model of creativity, which might also serve as a framework for future research.
... Commanding and deploying complex weapon and IT systems, it experienced the accompanying logistical challenges such as acquiring insight into military operations" demands for logistics services, into developing the transparency of supply chains, and into managing risks. In addition, the volatile social and security situation in this complex theater called initially for security operations rather than the anticipated reconstruction efforts (Sinno, 2008). Military logistics to support expeditionary operations differs from commercial supply chains and is more complex. ...
... Neighborhood elites are one kind among a universe of non-state political authorities. As prominent research has found with respect to US street gangs (Sánchez-Jankowski, 1991), the Sicilian mafia (Gambetta, 1993), Latin American guerrillas (Wickham-Crowley, 1987), and Afghani chieftains (Sinno, 2008), neighborhood elites at least sometimes oppose the state organization. However, neighborhood elites are distinct from each of these other forms of non-state political authority. ...
... As a result of these shortcomings, scholars have begun to shift their attention towards organizations that carry out violence during episodes of conflict (Carey et al. 2015;Humphreys & Weinstein 2006;Mitchell 2004;Wood 2003). Most of this work has focused on the role of rebel groups in conflict (Bloom 2004;Sinno 2008;Staniland 2014;Wood 2014Wood , 2010 and ignored violent non-state actors fighting on the side of the government (Carey et al. 2013). This omission is problematic given that PGMs are often linked with conflicts that are more violent, target more civilians, last longer, and contain more sexual violence Cohen and Nordås, 2015). ...
This paper introduces the African Relational Pro-Government Militia Dataset (RPGMD). Recent research has improved our understandings of how pro-government forces form, under what conditions they are most likely to act, and how they affect the risk of internal conflict, repression, and state fragility. In this paper, we give an overview of our dataset that identifies African pro-government militias (PGMs) from 1997 to 2014. The data set shows the wide proliferation and diffusion of these groups on the African continent. We identify 149 active PGMs, 104 of which are unique to our dataset. In addition to descriptive information about these PGMs, we contribute measures of PGM alliance relationships, ethnic relationships, and context. We use these variables to examine the determinants of the presence and level of abusive behavior perpetrated by individual PGMs. Results highlight the need to consider nuances in PGM–government relationships in addition to PGM characteristics.
... Many focus on goals and means, for example, those aspects of the state that the group challenges (Harbom, Melander, & Wallensteen, 2008), whether goals are religious or ethnic (Sambanis, 2001), or on the technologies used in warfare ( Kalyvas, 2005). Sinno (2008) and Weinstein (2007) have proposed other organizational approaches. Sociologists like MaleševicMaleševic´Maleševic´(2015) and King focus more on the social composition of armed groups. ...
Previous studies of the cohesion of organized armed groups (OAGs) have made great progress, but they have mostly focused on units fighting for modern Western states. I argue that the study of OAGs that contain their own legitimacy requires a broadened theoretical framework. Such groups may be conceptualized as “ruling organizations” in Max Weber’s terminology. Examples of such groups range from early medieval warbands to modern militias and guerrillas. Members of ruling organizations obey commands for a combination of three reasons: rational, traditional, and charismatic—these in turn form the basis of the legitimacy of the organization. Pinpointing the foundations of obedience in a group provides us with another way of emphasizing weak points that we want to either target or reinforce. This study contributes theoretically to the study of cohesion by linking it to theories of legitimacy in political orders.
... Matthew and Shambaugh (2005) build on insights found in research on collective action and conclude that terrorists must evolve into more cohesive and hierarchical organizations to effectively achieve their goals, but they also argue that decentralized networks are more difficult to defeat. In-depth studies of the strengths and vulnerabilities associated with centralized and decentralized militant groups, informed by an organizational studies perspective, are found in books by Sinno (2008) and Shapiro (2013). ...
We present a novel explanation for the group polarization effect whereby discussion induces shifts toward the extreme. In our theory, rhetorically-induced asymmetry preferentially facilitates majority formation among extreme group members thereby skewing consensus outcomes further in the extreme direction. Additionally, heuristic issue substitution can shift the effective reference point for discussion from the policy reference, yielding differential polarization by policy side. Two mathematical models implementing the theory are introduced: a simple rhetorically-proximate majority model and the accept-shift-constrict model of opinion dynamics on networks which allows for the emergence of enduring majority positions. These models produce shifts toward the extreme without the typical modeling assumption of greater resistance to persuasion among extremists. Our online group discussion experiment manipulated policy side, disagreement level, and network structure. The results, which challenge existing polarization theories, are in qualitative and quantitative accord with our theory and models.
19. yy. ve erken 20. yy. boyunca Britanya ve Çarlık Rusya’nın Afgan toprakları üzerindeki nüfuz mücadelesi, Afgan yöneticilerinin bu iki büyük güç arasında denge politikası izlemelerine neden olmuştur. 1. Dünya Savaşı sırasında gerçekleşen Ekim Devrimi ile Rusya'da iktidarı ele geçiren Bolşeviklerin kurduğu genç SSCB, seleflerinin izinden giderek güneydeki komşularıyla, kadim Rus-Afgan ilişkilerini sürdürmüştür. İki ülke arasındaki ilişki zaman zaman sekteye uğrasa da hiçbir zaman tamamen kopmamıştır. Sovyetlerin, Afganistan'ın hâkim etnik grubu ve yönetici elitini oluşturan Peştun milletiyle yakın teması, bu çalışmanın sorusuna kaynaklık etmiştir; Sovyetler, Afganistan’da niçin Peştun merkezli bir siyasi ajandayı takip etmiştir? Çalışmanın ana sorusunun daha açık hale gelebilmesi için Sovyet-Peştun ittifakının tarihsel arka planı ana hatlarıyla sunulacaktır. Akabinde çalışmanın ana sorusu olan Sovyet Peştu ittifakının sebepleri, yani 1. Bölgedeki diğer etnik gruplar olan Tacikler ve Hazaraların Sovyetler tarafından niçin müttefik olarak seçilmediği 2. Komünist ideolojinin alıcısının Peştun etnik grubu olması 3. Başkent Kabil’in hükümdarlarının Peştun aşiretleri arasında yer değiştirmesi 4. Hint Okyanusu’na Açılan Peştunistan Tezini değerlendirmek suretiyle Sovyetlerin Afganistan’da niçin Peştun merkezli bir dış siyaset takip ettiği ortaya konmaya çalışılmıştır.
La tesis sostiene que los conflictos armados internos no implican un caos total, proponiendo la aplicación de la teoría de arreglos políticos (Khan 2010) para entender cómo, en el Alto Huallaga durante el conflicto armado interno, se establecieron instituciones que aportaron orden en ciertos periodos. Mediante la revisión documental del acervo de la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, se identificaron dos arreglos políticos en el periodo 1980-1989 y1989-2000. En el primero, Sendero Luminoso reguló la vida social y política junto con el mercado de coca. El segundo, dominado por el ejército y narcotraficantes, permitió el cultivo y tráfico de cocade manera poco intrusiva. Este análisis complementa la teoría de arreglos políticos, destacando sus particularidades en situaciones de guerra civil y proponiendo nuevos contextos de aplicación.
Resumen de tesis ganadora del XXVIII Concurso Anual de Investigación CIES 2023.
In recent years we have faced huge uncertainty and unpredictability across the world: Covid-19, political turbulence, climate change and war in Europe, among many other events. Through a historical analysis of worldviews, Peter Haldén provides nuance to the common belief in an uncertain world by showing the predictable nature of modern society and arguing that human beings create predictability through norms, laws, trust and collaboration. Haldén shows that, since the Renaissance, two worldviews define Western civilization: first, that the world is knowable and governed by laws, regularities, mechanisms or plan, hence it is possible to control and the future is possible to foresee; second, that the world is governed by chance, impossible to predict and control and therefore shocks and surprises are inevitable. Worlds of Uncertainty argues that between these two extremes lie positions that recognize the principal unpredictability of the world but seek pragmatic ways of navigating through it.
Organizational learning in armed forces during and after the war in Afghanistan.
How do United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions influence the use of conflict related sexual violence (CRSV) by armed non-state actors? This study argues efficacy is influenced by conditions that precede deployment and the composition of UN forces. Poor intragroup cohesion within rebel ranks incentivizes CRSV, putting peacekeepers in a precarious position upon deployment. UN police improve law enforcement capabilities, build relationships with local communities, and promote information diffusion mechanisms. As a result, UN police are associated with a decrease in CRSV, even in the most difficult environments.
Building on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article draws from military sociology to revisit past portrayals of Liberian former combatant networks and assesses four central assumptions connected to them: that formal wartime command structures continue as informal networks long after the end of the war; that former combatants are united by a wartime identity and form a community to an extent separated from the surrounding society; that wartime experiences have had a major disciplining effect on former combatants; and that former combatants are both good mobilisers and easy to mobilise in elections and armed conflict alike. Finding limited evidence close to two decades after the end of war to support these assumptions, I ultimately ask whether it would be more productive to both theory and Liberians alike to widen investigation from former combatants to structural issues that affect many more in the country.
In the context of modern civilization, the ecology of infectious disease cannot be described by interacting populations alone, as much of the modeling literature presumes. As a matter of first principle, formalisms and their statistical applications must account for the anthrosphere from which pathogens emerge. With that objective in mind, we first formally examine strategies for controlling outbreaks by way of environmental stochasticities human institutions help set. Using the Data Rate Theorem, we next explore disease control regimens under asymmetric conflicts between agribusiness interests rich in resources and State public health agencies and local communities constrained by those very resources. Military theory describes surprising successes in the face of such an imbalance, a result we apply here. Abduction points to strategies by which public health can defeat agribusinesses in its efforts to control agriculture-led pandemics, the heavy health, and fiscal costs of which multinationals routinely pass off to the public.KeywordsNeoliberal land usePandemicStochasticity
Dimensions of Ethnicity in Afghanistan
This article examines the role of junior cadres in rebel group fragmentation. I argue that in a centralised rebel group factions will emerge when leaders block junior cadres’ access to senior decision-making bodies. Junior cadres who want to influence the organisation’s politics therefore face a choice between remaining within the rebel group and exiting it. Factionalising is a way to redress grievances by aggrieved junior cadres who deem peaceful mechanisms for upward mobility ineffective. Using original datasets and personal interviews, I find strong evidence supporting my argument in the case of Palestinian Fatah.
This chapter briefly reviews and analyzes the key contributions on
organized violence within historical sociology. It explores both the
macro- and micro-level studies that have influenced recent debates
within the field. The first section looks at war and warfare, the second
section analyzes the clandestine political violence, the third section
explores the revolutions, and the final section engages with the
scholarship on genocides.
Rebels groups adopt different organisational structures, emerging in various shapes and sizes. Some rebel groups construct distinct military and political wings, delegating their military and political operations to specialised units. While recent studies have made great strides towards understanding militant groups’ activities on and off the battlefield, the literature has been less attentive to the root causes of the structural arrangements which groups form for these purposes. I argue that rebel leaders’ pre-war military and political experiences shape the structure of the organisations they lead into war. Using original data, I find that differences in leaders’ pre-war military experience, rather than political experience, are associated with discernible probabilities of rebel operational specialisation. In addition to offering practitioners and academics a comparative framework with which to evaluate the patterns of militant leadership, this study demonstrates how leaders wield independent agency over group structure and operations in the civil war environment.
While research on interstate rivalries is abundant, scholarship examining nonstate rivalries remains limited. To address this shortcoming, in this article we introduce the Armed Nonstate Actor Rivalry Dataset (ANARD) – a dataset which captures dyadic rivalries and militarised disputes among armed nonstate actors in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) between 1993 and 2018. We begin by explaining why fine-grained data on militarised interactions between armed nonstate organisations are needed for a comprehensive understanding of conflict. We then provide details of the data collection process and coding practices. Finally, we identify the contributions that ANARD can make to conflict research.
Why do rebel organizations splinter into competing factions during civil war? To explain this outcome, I leverage variation in rebel leadership. I argue that rebel leaders draw on their pre-war experiences—i.e., their military and political experiences—to manage their organizations during conflict. These experiences bear unique patterns of rebel management and, thus, corresponding risks of fragmentation. Empirical evidence comes from a two-stage research design and original data featuring over 200 rebel leaders from 1989 to 2014. In the first stage, I estimate the probability of group fragmentation with a series of logistic regression models. In the second stage, I use Cox proportional-hazards models to estimate leadership effects on the rate of group fragmentation. Results indicate that variation in rebel leadership corresponds with unique risks of fragmentation. In particular, the results suggest that leaders with real military experience are best equipped to maintain group cohesion. This study offers insight into the processes by which rebel groups splinter into armed factions. In addition, it makes an important contribution to the broader discussion on the roles of structure and agency in shaping the dynamics of civil war.
Conventional wisdom holds that great power patrons prop up client dictatorships. But this is generally assumed rather than systematically analyzed. This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the relationship between foreign sponsorship and authoritarian regime survival, using an original data set of all autocratic client regimes in the postwar period. The results demonstrate that patronage from Western powers—the United States, France, and the United Kingdom—is not associated with client regime survival. Rather, it’s only Soviet sponsorship that reduced the risk of regime collapse. The author explains this variation by considering the effects of foreign sponsorship on the likelihood of military coups d’état. He argues that the Soviet Union directly aided its clients by imposing a series of highly effective coup prevention strategies. By contrast, the US and its allies didn’t provide such aid, leaving regimes vulnerable to military overthrow.
Disengagement from militant groups has often been explained in individual terms such as battle fatigue or the desire to rejoin family and friends. We seek to examine empirically which other factors, beyond individual-level determinants, have influenced disengagement processes among militants belonging to different types of Chechen militant organisations. Drawing empirical insights from unique in-depth interviews with former members of the Chechen insurgency, their relatives, eyewitnesses to the Chechen wars and experts with first-hand knowledge of the researched phenomena, this study examines disengagement among jihadist and nationalist Chechen militants. Focusing on group-level factors, such as the capacity to resist external pressures, the use of violence, in-group social bonds and group cohesion, this article demonstrates that disengagement has been a less viable course of action for Chechen jihadists than for nationalist militants.
Despite the existence of humanitarian rules binding upon armed non-state actors (ANSAs) in armed conflict, ensuring their respect still remains an important challenge. When dealing with ANSAs, this can be linked to several factors, such as their lack of knowledge of the law, the absence of an incentive to abide by the applicable rules, their fragmented structure, their lack of a centralized command authority and a lack of capacity to implement international humanitarian law (IHL). Certain humanitarian organizations have attempted to tackle these difficulties by recognizing that engaging with ANSAs is essential in order to enhance the protection of civilians in conflict situations. This chapter aims at presenting the methodology employed by Geneva Call, an international non-governmental organization, when trying to persuade ANSAs to respect humanitarian norms. The following pages will provide an overview of this process, describing Geneva Call’s approach and discussing some of its achievements and challenges, in particular in the context of its child protection program.
Scholars are increasingly investigating the effectiveness of removing militant groups’ leaders; to date, their findings have been mixed. Rather than seeking consistent evidence, this article explains why some militant organizations demonstrate resilience to leadership targeting while others do not. The author argues that organizational context, especially the initial endowment set, determines the extent of institutionalization and ease of leadership succession. Organizations formed by appealing to shared identity and norms are less likely to implement institutionalized systems, instead depending heavily on charismatic leaders; conversely, groups with access to economic resources develop highly structured functions, leading to the routinization of leadership succession. Analysis of 153 militant organizations between 1970 and 2008 shows that organizations based on economic endowment show high resilience to this strategy. Groups that employ negative strategies against local communities as the product of their initial economic endowment are much less likely to be affected by forced leadership removal.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/quagmire-in-civil-war/78AB0026045D94567605E372AA76BBCA
Our understanding of civil war is shot through with the spectre of quagmire, a situation that traps belligerents, compounding and entrenching war's dangers. Despite the subject's importance, its causes are obscure. A pervasive “folk” notion that quagmire is intrinsic to certain countries or wars has foreclosed inquiry, and scholarship has failed to identify quagmire as an object of study in its own right. Schulhofer-Wohl provides the first treatment of quagmire in civil war. In a rigorous but accessible analysis, he explains how quagmire can emerge from domestic-international interactions and strategic choices. To support the argument, Schulhofer-Wohl draws upon field research on Lebanon's 16-year civil war, structured comparisons with civil wars in Chad and Yemen, and rigorous statistical analyses of all civil wars worldwide fought between 1944 and 2006. The results make clear that the “folk” notion misdiagnoses quagmire and demand that we revisit policies that rest upon it. Schulhofer-Wohl demonstrates that quagmire is made, not found.
Objectives
This study seeks to further strengthen extant knowledge regarding terrorist group involvement in organized criminal activity through two means. First, it measures a set of environmental and organizational characteristics for a sample of well-known terrorist organizations based on the crime-terror literature. Second, it illustrates the utility of inductive research designs for examining patterns in the criminal behavior of terrorist groups for theory building and the potential risk classification of new terrorist organizations in the future.
Methods
The authors utilize a random forest classification algorithm to examine three sources of information about a broad set of environmental and organizational factors determined to be of potential importance in predicting when a terrorist organization will engaged in organized criminal behavior. First, it examines out-of-sample accuracy through bootstrap cross-validation estimation. Second, it quantifies the predictive efficacy/importance of each measured factor. Finally, it utilizes partial dependence functions to examine the relational trend between the most important predictive factors and variation in the presence of organized criminal behavior.
Results
The study finds three results. First, predictive accuracy using readily quantifiable factors about the criminal behavior of terrorist organizations is good but could be improved upon. Second, organizational factors such as group size, ideology and attack behavior out perform environmental factors in terms of predictive performance. Third, it finds that the most important predictor variables have a predominately non-linear relationship with whether the algorithm would classify a group as engaging in organized criminal behavior or not.
Conclusions
The study finds that theory building should seek to examine temporal variation in the organizational structure of terrorist groups as a fruitful way forward for further understanding when a group is likely to engage in organized criminal behavior. It also suggests that scholars should seek to engage more critically with concepts surrounding the potential non-linear pathways in which groups end up engaging in organized crime. Finally, the results illustrate the utility of modern machine learning algorithms and inductive research processes for both academic and practitioner needs alike. Especially when dealing with a complex phenomenon with imperfect data.
I examine the relationship between organizational stability, lethality, and target selection, and attack method of Southeast Asian insurgency. I do so by comparing the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), using data of their activities between 1994 and 2015. I make two arguments. First, organizationally unstable insurgency groups tend to see their members increase generate more casualties, while stable groups often experience reduction of violence. Second, organizational instability makes it more likely for groups to target civilian populations and business infrastructure than government, military and police forces, and transportation buildings. In contrast, organizational stability has limited explanatory power on its attack methods.
Syria, Productive Antinomy, and the Study of Civil War - Volume 16 Issue 4 - Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl
This article investigates the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) through a revised Weberian framework that focuses on legitimacy and offers a thick description of the different phases of this armed group. The article argues that the key to fostering cohesion is the harmonization of the micro, meso, and macro levels. This proved a difficult undertaking for the MODEL. Not only did the MODEL lack material resources but it also relied on different and evolving kinds of legitimacy on these levels. With its sources of legitimacy exhausted after the war, the MODEL ceased to exist.
Legal pluralism has vast policy and governance implications. In developing countries, for instance, non-state justice systems often handle most disputes and retain substantial autonomy and authority. Legal pluralism's importance, however, is rarely recognized and dramatically under theorized. This article advances scholarly understanding of legal pluralism both theoretically and empirically. It proposes a new typological framework for conceptualizing legal pluralism through four distinct archetypes – combative, competitive, cooperative, and complementary – to help clarify the range of relationships between state and non-state actors. It posits five main strategies used by domestic and international actors in attempts to influence the relationship between state and non-state justice systems: bridging, harmonization, incorporation, subsidization, and repression. As post-conflict situations are fluid and can feature a wide range of relationships between state and non-state actors, they are particularly instructive for showing how legal pluralism archetypes can be shifted over time. Case studies from Timor-Leste and Afghanistan highlight that selecting an appropriate policy is vital for achieving sustainable positive outcomes. Strategies that rely on large scale spending or even the use of substantial military force in isolation are unlikely to be successful. The most promising approaches are culturally intelligible and constructively engage non-state justice networks of authority and legitimacy to collectively advance the judicial state-building process. While the case studies focus on post-conflict states, the theory presented can help understand and improve efforts to promote the rule of law as well as good governance and development more broadly in all legally pluralist settings.
Promoting the rule of law in Afghanistan has been a major U.S. foreign policy objective since the collapse of the Taliban regime in late 2001. Policymakers invested heavily in building a modern democratic state bound by the rule of law as a means to consolidate a liberal post-conflict order. Eventually, justice-sector support also became a cornerstone of counterinsurgency efforts against the reconstituted Taliban. Yet a systematic analysis of the major U.S.-backed initiatives from 2004 to 2014 finds that assistance was consistently based on dubious assumptions and questionable strategic choices. These programs failed to advance the rule of law even as spending increased dramatically during President Barack Obama's administration. Aid helped enable rent seeking and a culture of impunity among Afghan state officials. Despite widespread claims to the contrary, rule-of-law initiatives did not bolster counterinsurgency efforts. The U.S. experience in Afghanistan highlights that effective rule-of-law aid cannot be merely technocratic. To have a reasonable prospect of success, rule-of-law promotion efforts must engage with the local foundations of legitimate legal order, which are often rooted in nonstate authority, and enjoy the support of credible domestic partners, including high-level state officials.
Terms like ‘support’ and ‘collaboration’ are often used interchangeably to denote a loose set of acts or attitudes that benefit non-state armed groups (NSAGs). However, these terms are seldom defined, and the alternatives available to civilians are rarely identified. Moreover, existing approaches overlook that the interaction between civilians and NSAGs is often one between ruler and ruled, which makes obedience and resistance central. This paper proposes to conceptualize the choices available to civilians as forms of cooperation and non-cooperation, offers a typology, and discusses the implications for theory building on civilian and NSAG behavior, and on the functioning of armed social orders.
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