Interactions among Non-State Armed Groups in Civil War

• In Event: Complex Interactions in Civil Wars

Abstract

Many states play host to multiple militant organizations. More than a quarter of conflicts recorded in the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset involve at least two non-state armed groups. Existing literature has examined the interactions (e.g., coalition-building) between non-state actors in multiparty conflicts. This literature, however, ignores important group characteristics that affect both the depth and tone of a group’s relationships with other non-state actors in the conflict. Crucially, existing studies take for granted that groups participating in the same conflict share similar and compatible goals (i.e., the destruction of the state). Moreover, existing work assumes that militant organizations operate and seek to control the same geographic areas when, in reality, armed groups may have entirely separate regions of operation. In this article, I argue that variation in intergroup characteristics, namely the similarity between groups’ goals and the degree of overlap in their areas of operation, affects both the depth and tone of interactions among non-state actors in civil war. Using geospatial analysis, I test this claim with data from the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset and from Bapat and Bond’s (2012) analysis on militant group alliances.

Author

• Kaitlyn Robinson, Stanford University