(iPoster) Rebel Relations in a Civil War and Post-War Power-Sharing Institutions

• In Event: Poster Session: Conflict Processes 1

Abstract

What is the impact of rebel alliances on post-conflict power sharing institutions? Civil war environments resemble the anarchy that shapes international politics. Similar to the lack of a higher authority in the international arena, the control of violence and territory de facto shifts from the central government to various fighting groups with sudden possible changes. The anarchic nature of the international order, characterized by the absence of a central authority to enforce rules and resolve disputes, creates a framework where states interact based on self-interest and power dynamics. Similarly, civil wars share this anarchic characteristic as they occur under circumstances where a central authority has lost control or multiple competing authorities emerge. Actors in civil wars, such as rebel groups or factions, function within a power vacuum and pursue their objectives using strategies akin to those observed in the international arena. They engage in power calculations, form alliances, seek external support, and employ coercive or negotiation tactics to achieve their goals. Christia (2012) argues that the alliances are instruments to win the war and maximize the group’s share of postwar political control. She argues that the discourse of ideological proximity or shared identity are tools to justify the shifting alliances over the course of a conflict. On the other hand, Gade et al (2019) argues that rebel alliances are shaped by power, ideology, and state sponsorship. In this paper, I will approach these studies as compatible and present a framework for that. I argue that the dynamics of actors in alliances impact the calculations of power maximization. The power relations and identity composition of an alliance impacts whether power-sharing happens as well as the type of power-sharing after the conflict ends. By using ROAD (Balcells, Chen, and Pischedda 2022), new dataset on insurgencies collected by Political Violence Lab at Boston College (Krause n.d), and the Rebel Quasi-state Dataset (Albert 2022), I explain how rebel group composition in a civil war impacts the post-fighting institutional building.

As a plausibility probe, I investigate the choices made by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Rojava, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Idlib, and ISIS in Raqqa by looking into the power and identity composition of the rebel groups. Throughout the conflict, these groups held unchallenged control over their respective territories, but their approaches to governance varied significantly. The study will explore how the interplay of identity and power dynamics within these groups influences the creation of governance arrangements. I find that while groups who exercise unchallenged authority and legitimacy enjoy political power without any constraints, the groups who had to fight with equally powerful or legitimate ones had to create some sort of power structure to ensure a peaceful transition after the war is over.

Author

• Betul Ozturan, Boston College