Why Factions Switch Sides in Civil Wars: Rivalry, Patronage, and Realignment in Sudan

Abstract

Side switching by armed groups is a prominent feature of many civil wars. Shifts in alignment have far-reaching consequences, influencing key outcomes such as civil war duration and termination, military effectiveness, levels of civilian victimization, and state-building prospects. In Sudan's wars, ideological and ethnic cleavages have not influenced factional alignments nearly as much as one might expect given the prominence of clashing political projects and ethnically organized violence in southern Sudan and Darfur. Recent explanations highlighting the role of territorial control, factional infighting, or relative power considerations also have limited value. In many wars fought in weak states characterized by low barriers to side switching, two mechanisms explain patterns of collaboration and defection: first, political rivalries that lead actors to collaborate in exchange for military support in localized struggles; and second, patronage-based incentives that induce collaboration for material gain. A nested analysis drawing on original data from wars in southern Sudan and Darfur supports this argument. The findings have implications for understanding alignments in civil wars, the role of weak states in counterinsurgency, and ethnic politics more generally, as well as policy relevance for factionalized civil wars.

The Ties That Bind: Ethnicity, Pro-government Militia, and the Dynamics of Violence in Civil War

“…Conflicts fought over ethnic motivations are often both more deadly and last longer than ideological or opportunistic disputes. Yet the mechanisms through which ethnicity influences conflict remain contested (Lyall 2010;Kalyvas 2008;Seymour 2014;Warren and Troy, 2015).…”

Auxiliary Armed Forces and Innovations in Security Governance in Mozambique’s Civil War

“…Given the limits of many states to address security threats and other governance challenges under wartime conditions, alternative, localised arrangements often emerge through which those in power coordinate the implementation of policies with other actors, delegate tasks to them or merely tolerate their involvement in service provision and conflict resolution (Arjona 2014, Staniland 2012. This multi-actor, multi-layered nature of wartime governance 1 empowers non-state actors and nurtures opportunistic political and economic interests, which may pose significant challenges to stateand peacebuilding (Seymour 2014).…”

“…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.…”

A study on rebel group dynamics and third party intervention

“…Relative capability, economic interests and institutional capacity influence chance of armed incidents between the rebels and the chance of violent group splits (Fjelde et al, 2012;Warren et al, 2014;Christia, 2008;Seymour, 2014 Some studies try to provide a more comprehensive framework for understanding both cooperation and competition between rebel groups. For example, Bakke et al (2012) suggest a theoretical framework that explains a general pattern of rebel's infighting, with the number of groups, the capability distribution and the degree of institutionalization.…”

“…On the sub-state level, the distribution of capabilities among rebel groups, number of rebel groups, the sub-group leader's role, and local level rivalries are suggested as accounting for the rebel cooperative and competitive interactions (Warren et al, 2011;Christia, 2008;Seymour, 2014;Bakke et al, 2012). Though those factors are relevant in predicting inter rebel dynamics, the dataset containing information collected by year is limited at this time point.…”