Crowding out the field: <i>External Support to Insurgents and the Intensity of Inter-rebel Fighting in Civil Wars</i>

Stein, Arthur Benjamin; Cantin, Marc-Olivier

doi:10.1080/03050629.2021.1922899

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 67 publications

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“…I controlled for several variables that may influence the link between support overtness and civilian targeting in civil wars. At the group level, I first included a dummy variable to specify whether a group had a Religious Affinity with its sponsor (Braithwaite and Cunningham, 2020; Brown, 2016; Stein and Cantin, 2021). As mentioned above, kinship can encourage a state to support rebels overtly, especially if such aid is popular among its domestic constituency (San-Akca, 2016).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Committed sponsors: external support overtness and civilian targeting in civil wars

Stein

2022

European Journal of International Relations

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Does the overtness of external support to rebels affect civilian targeting in civil wars? Conflict studies increasingly scrutinize how insurgent sponsorships shape rebels’ behavior. However, the influence of external sponsors’ decisions to publicly acknowledge or deny their support on rebel conduct is largely neglected. This article introduces a new dataset on the overtness of external support to rebels in civil wars between 1989 and 2018. It then assesses whether the overtness of support is correlated with insurgents’ propensity to target civilians. I hypothesize that overtly supported rebels are less likely to target civilians than covertly supported rebels. This hypothesis stems from how supply-side factors—the way state sponsors expectedly act after having allocated their support—impact insurgents’ structure of incentives around relations with non-combatants. Statistical analyses yield strong support for my hypothesis. Moreover, further analyses show that support overtness influences civilian targeting independently from sponsors’ characteristics, such as political regimes or foreign aid reliance. Thus, in addition to the type of material aid insurgents receive, variation in whether support is covert or overt shapes how rebels treat civilians.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Committed sponsors: external support overtness and civilian targeting in civil wars

Stein

2022

European Journal of International Relations

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Go arm me: How militant fragmentation affects external support

Berlin

Malone

2023

International Interactions

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Forum: Conflict Delegation in Civil Wars

Karlén

Rauta

Salehyan

et al. 2021

International Studies Review

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This forum provides an outlet for an assessment of research on the delegation of war to non-state armed groups in civil wars. Given the significant growth of studies concerned with this phenomenon over the last decade, this forum critically engages with the present state of the field. First, we canvass some of the most important theoretical developments to demonstrate the heterogeneity of the debate. Second, we expand on the theme of complexity and investigate its multiple facets as a window into pushing the debate forward. Third, we draw the contours of a future research agenda by highlighting some contemporary problems, puzzles, and challenges to empirical data collection. In essence, we seek to connect two main literatures that have been talking past each other: external support in civil wars and proxy warfare. The forum bridges this gap at a critical juncture in this new and emerging scholarship by offering space for scholarly dialogue across conceptual labels.

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Crowding out the field: External Support to Insurgents and the Intensity of Inter-rebel Fighting in Civil Wars

Abstract: How does external support to insurgents influence the likelihood that the latter will get involved in violent clashes against other rebel groups? In this article, we outline a theoretical framework which contends that, in multiparty civil wars, rebels

Cited by 3 publications

References 67 publications

Committed sponsors: external support overtness and civilian targeting in civil wars

Committed sponsors: external support overtness and civilian targeting in civil wars

Go arm me: How militant fragmentation affects external support

Forum: Conflict Delegation in Civil Wars

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