Selecting Support: How Dissident Groups Choose External Supporters

• In Event: Radical Extremism

Abstract

The support of outside states to non-state dissident groups has been the norm in international politics rather than the exception in the past several decades. Existing scholarly accounts of external support to violent or nonviolent resistance groups have focused primarily on the foreign policy aspect—external actors making decisions about which side to support and what type of support to provide. Yet, we also learnt from existing research that resistance groups play a much more proactive and direct role in gaining supporters. Nevertheless, our knowledge about the causal mechanisms related to groups' agency in seeking, accepting, and/or rejecting external support is still very limited. In this paper we explore this strategic selection process by asking: 1) When do resistance groups proactively seek support? 2) Under what conditions are they likely to accept or reject support? 3) Do violent and nonviolent groups adopt diverse techniques in attracting external supporters? We rely on qualitative expert interviews from resistance organizers, NGOs, and political actors, as well as quantitative data on external support to non-state armed groups (NAGs) to evaluate these questions. The purpose of this paper is the development of a theoretical framework for understanding the selection process. We also hope to provide guidance for future studies seeking to address this selection in empirical analyses of the role of external support in violent and nonviolent resistance and its influence on the formation and evolution of state-dissident group alliances.

Authors

• Jaime Jackson, California State University, Sacramento

• Belgin San-Akca, Koç University