Money Talks: Discourse, Networks, and Structure in Militant Organizations

Parkinson, Sarah

doi:10.1017/s1537592716002875

Cited by 26 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 77 publications

(36 reference statements)

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“…Mampilly (2012: 81) points to the potential for the allocation of power within institutions of rebel governance to either defuse or spark factionalism within an armed group. Parkinson (2016) shows how "informal discursive practices" among group members can be used to create harden factional divisions and carry them forward into the future. 59.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

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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Section: Resultsmentioning

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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“…Blattman and Annan (2015), Cohen (2013), Hoover Green (2016), Mampilly (2011), Parkinson (2016, Shesterinina (2016), Straus (2006), Weinstein (2007), Wood (2003), and others highlighted the complexities of participation in violence. Berry (2018), Fujii (2010), and Thomson (2013) provided illuminating testimonies of political persecution.…”

Section: Can We Do Better?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some of the most valuable research in political science has come from careful research across methodological traditions in exactly the settings described in this article. Blattman and Annan (2015), Cohen (2013), Hoover Green (2016), Mampilly (2011), Parkinson (2016), Shesterinina (2016), Straus (2006), Weinstein (2007), Wood (2003), and others highlighted the complexities of participation in violence. Berry (2018), Fujii (2010), and Thomson (2013) provided illuminating testimonies of political persecution.…”

Section: Can We Do Better?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethics Abroad: Fieldwork in Fragile and Violent Contexts

Cronin-Furman

Lake

2018

APSC

111

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The diversity of political spaces, availability of cheap labor, ease of access to powerful figures, and safety net of a foreign passport attract researchers to the developing world. However, environments of extreme state weakness and ongoing conflict permit research behavior that would be frowned on in the global north. We suggest that weak regulatory authority in conflict-affected states offers foreign academics opportunities that are not available when states have greater reach or capacity. Qualitative researchers may find requests to interview victims or perpetrators of wartime violence granted with ease. Experimenters can coerce under-resourced NGOs to pursue interventions at odds with their organizational mandates. We posit that conflict contexts can constitute permissive environments in which researchers can engage in conduct that would be considered deeply problematic at home. Because studying political violence can require firsthand research on aspects of political life not easily observed elsewhere, this article offers a set of guidelines to foster more ethical and responsible research practices.A political scientist conducting interviews on wartime sexual violence finds herself at a health clinic being introduced to patients who are obviously younger than 18. A team of researchers running a behavioral experiment wonders if its local partner organization is endangering participants to randomize treatment in its conflict-adjacent villages. A graduate student working on a shoestring budget in a refugee camp is relieved to find an educated, passionate research assistant (RA) who is eager for work experience and will set up, conduct, translate, and transcribe politically sensitive interviews for only $60 a month.All of these academics are benefiting from the unparalleled access to research subjects, local partners, and labor that often are present in environments of extreme state fragility or conflict. As the volume of field-based research in such contexts increases, it is difficult to ignore the fact that these settings pose challenges not present elsewhere. In countless discussions at conferences, in graduate-student seminars, and in the field, we have heard fellow social scientists echo a common theme regarding research in these contexts: concerns about the ethical implications of their fieldwork and uncertainty about how to mitigate them. 1 Nearly every researcher we spoke with described at least one instance in which they were called on to make an on-the-spot decision involving ethical issues that they had not anticipated, without time to fully consider the consequences. On subsequent reflection, they often wished they had made different decisions.This article explores the ethical pitfalls presented by conflict field research by drawing on our own experiences and those of our colleagues. 2 Following a brief discussion of some common features of these settings, we explain how fragility and conflict can generate ethical dilemmas involving research subjects and partners not present elsewhere. We ...

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“…Generating long-term, trust-based relationships was essential to getting past many interlocutors’ “stock responses” to researchers and journalists, particularly those who they believed had not bothered to learn history. Instead, working through these intersecting cleavages aided Parkinson in developing questions that subsequently uncovered, for example, the role of cross-confessional brokerage in militant parties’ evolution (Parkinson 2013) and narratives regarding financial wrongdoing among elites (Parkinson 2016).…”

Section: Research In “Exotic Areas” and “Research Tourism/voyeurism”mentioning

confidence: 99%