Organizing for violence : the politics of militant group formation and fragmentation in armed conflict
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Non-state armed groups fuel much of the world's ongoing armed conflict. Though often weaker than their government adversaries and forced to operate in secret, many armed groups have shown a surprising ability to emerge, survive, and even thrive in challenging environments. What explains the strength and durability of these groups? Drawing on several sources of original data, I show that armed groups and their leaders gain strength from the founding support of international actors and from the consolidation of organizational control. These internal and external sources of strength enable armed groups to emerge and endure in environments where group formation is difficult and organizational fragmentation is likely. In the first paper, I show that a primary threat to the survival of armed groups is leadership transition. To thwart internal challenges to group cohesion, group leaders must actively employ managerial tools to discourage splintering within their organizations. In the second and third papers, I show that international actors play a central role in creating highly violent armed groups. Seeking trustworthy and capable proxies, foreign states can facilitate the formation of new armed groups to serve as their partners. I argue that states engage in this behavior as a way to mitigate the principal-agent problems that often plague sponsor-proxy relationships. I find that states are more likely to employ "founding" support under certain conditions, particularly when the menu of potential partners in a target state is small. Sponsors may perceive their "foreign founded" proxies as more trustworthy and thus may be willing to invest significantly in the military capabilities of these groups. I find that foreign founded groups conduct more attacks in civil war compared to armed groups receiving other types of non-founding state support. Overall, the findings of this dissertation demonstrate that international and organizational politics directly influence the emergence and strength of armed groups and patterns of violence in civil war.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2022; ©2022 |
| Publication date | 2022; 2022 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Robinson, Kaitlyn Nicole |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Fearon, James D |
| Thesis advisor | Fearon, James D |
| Thesis advisor | Schultz, Kenneth A |
| Thesis advisor | Weinstein, Jeremy M |
| Degree committee member | Schultz, Kenneth A |
| Degree committee member | Weinstein, Jeremy M |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Political Science |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Kaitlyn Robinson. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Political Science. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2022. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/cg652tn7522 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2022 by Kaitlyn Nicole Robinson
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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