Competitive Alliances and Civil War Recurrence

Zeigler, Sean M.

doi:10.1093/isq/sqv002

Cited by 47 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Atlas and Licklider (1999) investigate a form of this dynamic as it unfolds between formerly allied groups after political settlements in civil wars. Zeigler (2016) studies the problem with particular attention to military victories by rebels when there is competition among groups within the winning alliance.…”

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confidence: 99%

On-Side fighting in civil war: The logic of mortal alignment in Syria

Schulhofer-Wohl

2020

Rationality and Society

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On-side fighting – outright violence between armed groups aligned on the same side of a civil war’s master cleavage – represents a devastating breakdown in cooperation. Its humanitarian consequences are also grave. But it has been under-recognized empirically and therefore under-theorized by scholars to date. This article remedies the omission. Existing research can be extrapolated to produce candidate explanations, but these overlook spatial and temporal variation in on-side fighting within a war. I provide a theory that accounts for this ebb and flow. On-side fighting hinges on belligerents’ trade-offs between short-term survival and long-term political objectives. Enemy threats to survival underpin on-side cooperation; in their absence, belligerents can pursue political gains against on-side competitors. I evaluate this threat-absence theory using evidence from the ongoing Syrian Civil War’s first years. Fine-grained fatalities data capture fluctuating enemy threats to on-side groups’ survival and situate on-side fighting and its absence. Findings support threat-absence theory and contribute to research on warfighting and political competition in civil wars and to the study of coalition dynamics in other settings, including elections and legislatures.

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confidence: 99%

On-Side fighting in civil war: The logic of mortal alignment in Syria

Schulhofer-Wohl

2020

Rationality and Society

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“…This is important because militias in many contexts are used for repressive purposes even after a civil war has ended, and a failure to effectively manage them (or dissolve them) can lead to continual human rights violations (Carey and González 2020) and significant threats to future domestic stability (Steinert, Steinert, and Carey 2019;Reno 2011). We argue that social and organizational constraints motivate states to refrain from terminating these groups despite the competitive politics that can emerge after a civil war even among allies (Zeigler 2016). Second, we find strong evidence for our theoretical claim that governments use the ethnic identity of their militia partners as a heuristic to assess their trustworthiness and operational value after a war has ended.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 60%

“…When a civil war has subsided, a dilemma arises between the (new) government and its armed militias over the distribution of power and/or resources (Zeigler 2016). The ruling elite seeks to implement its political and ideological state-building goals (Staniland 2015), and militias with incompatible interests may detract from those objectives, using their power to pursue independent goals that dilute the power of the ruling elite or even directly contradict them (Carey and Mitchell 2017).…”

Section: Ethnic Differences and Militia Disintegrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Security Consolidation in the Aftermath of Civil War: Explaining the Fates of Victorious Militias

Bolte

Joo

Mukherjee

2021

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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Policymakers and peacebuilding research often focus on rebel groups when studying demobilization and integration processes, but post-war governments must also manage the non-state militias that helped them gain or maintain power. Why do some post-war governments disintegrate their militia allies, while others integrate them into the military? We argue that when a salient ethnic difference exists between the (new) ruling elite and an allied militia, a process of mutual uncertainty in the post-war period will incentivize governments to disintegrate the group. However, governments will be most likely to integrate their militias when the military has sufficient coercive capabilities but few organizational hindrances to re-organizing. Using new data on the post-war fates of victorious militias across all civil conflicts from 1989 to 2014, we find robust support for these claims. The results suggest that a government’s optimal militia management strategy is shaped by both social and organizational constraints during the post-war period.

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“…Yet few studies on postconflict societies have explored the role of new actors in postconflict violence, as the main assumption in the peacebuilding literature is that only the parties involved in the first episode of fighting constitute a risk to take up arms again (Hartzell and Hoddie 2003;DeRouen and Bercovitch 2008;Walter 2009;Toft 2010;Caplan and Hoeffler 2017). Indeed, even studies focusing on civil conflicts featuring multiple rebel organizations assume that all actors are present already during the first phase of fighting (Nilsson 2008;Olson Lounsbery and Cook 2011;Driscoll 2012;Zeigler 2015;Rudloff and Findley 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Rebels in Postconflict Settings: The Principal–Agent Dilemma of Peacebuilding

Kreutz¹

2018

Peace & Change

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This article explores the processes that lead to different types of civil war outbreak in postconflict societies, combining quantitative analysis with case studies of Myanmar and Sierra Leone to disaggregate situations in which former rebels resume fighting from those when new rebels emerge in the postconflict environment. The analysis, based in principal-agent theory, illuminates how relations between the government and exrebel elites, group cohesion among rebels, and the relationship between the government and the excombatants all can lead to resumed civil war. Its findings suggest that victories and settled conflicts are the most important outcome for preventing conflict recurrence by former rebels, but do not prevent the rise of new insurgencies. Moreover, the absence of government repression emerges as the factor most likely to reduce the risk of new rebellion. * I acknowledge the support from the Swedish Research Council grant 2016-05734, and for the fieldwork in Myanmar Riksbankens Jubileumsfond grant M10:0100:1.

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Competitive Alliances and Civil War Recurrence

Cited by 47 publications

References 61 publications

On-Side fighting in civil war: The logic of mortal alignment in Syria

On-Side fighting in civil war: The logic of mortal alignment in Syria

Security Consolidation in the Aftermath of Civil War: Explaining the Fates of Victorious Militias

New Rebels in Postconflict Settings: The Principal–Agent Dilemma of Peacebuilding

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