Desertion and Collective Action in Civil Wars

McLauchlin, Théodore

doi:10.1111/isqu.12205

Cited by 23 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…As rebels gain organizational sophistication or conquer territory, they must make decisions about how to contend with civilians in their milieu. 8 Because rebels compete with the state not only for military power but also for political authority, they must find ways to entice civilian cooperation and compliance while preventing defection (Kalyvas 2006, chapters 4 and 5; Mampilly 2011, 55; McLauchlin 2015, 1421; Kasfir, Frerks, and Terpstra 2017, 269). Rebel groups face the additional pressure of needing to find material resources with which to wage war, including funding, weapons, recruits, food, and shelter.…”

Section: Context Of Rebel Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Voting for Militants: Rebel Elections in Civil War

Cunningham

Huang

Sawyer

2020

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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Rebel actors engage in a number of behaviors beyond violent conflict, including social service provision, diplomacy, and establishing local governance. This article centers on an oft-overlooked aspect of rebel behavior and governance: rebel groups conducting popular elections in wartime. We argue that rebel elections are a means through which rebels can strengthen both local and international legitimacy, but that there are risks to employing elections (such as logistical failures or publicized disconnect from civilians). We hypothesize that rebels that are pursuing legitimacy (local and international) in other ways are likely to set up rebel elections and that rebel groups with greater organizational capacity are more likely to introduce elections because they are well placed to manage the risks elections entail. Using a global data set of rebel use of elections where local civilians vote to elect rebel representatives at various levels of organizational hierarchy, we find empirical support for these propositions.

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Section: Context Of Rebel Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Voting for Militants: Rebel Elections in Civil War

Cunningham

Huang

Sawyer

2020

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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“…Scholarship on military organizations’ social embeddedness underlines the necessity of examining network micro-structures in order to understand soldiers’ behavior. Broadly, scholars have identified social factors such as kinship (Goodwin, 1997; Parkinson, 2013; Viterna, 2013), associational memberships (Gould, 1995; Petersen, 2001), past military service (Hundman, 2016; Lyall, 2010; Parkinson, 2016), regional-level ties (Bearman, 1991; Daly, 2016; McLauchlin, 2014, 2015), and other “everyday” relationships (Kim and Crabb, 2014) as influencing outcomes of interest. These findings imply the existence of multiple, non-linear processes influencing soldiers’ decision-making.…”

Section: Theorizing Disobedience: a Relational Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rogues, degenerates, and heroes: Disobedience as politics in military organizations

Hundman

Parkinson

2019

European Journal of International Relations

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Disobedience in military organizations affects critical outcomes such as the quality of civil–military relations, the likelihood of civilian abuse, and battlefield effectiveness. Existing work on military disobedience focuses on group dynamics; this article instead investigates the circumstances under which individual officers disobey. We argue that officers interpret military orders based on their concurrent positions in multiple social networks and that, contingent on the soldier’s environment, such orders can “activate” tensions between overlapping social network identifications. These tensions create motivations and justifications for disobedience. We develop this theory via in-depth case studies of individual officers’ disobedience in the Chinese military and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), combined with an examination of 10 additional cases outlined in an online appendix. Relying on primary sources, we demonstrate how identifications with overlapping social networks led two ostensibly dissimilar officers to disobey in similar ways during the Sino-French War (1883–1885) and the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1989). Our theory thus shows how overlapping social networks create conditions of possibility for even well-trained, loyal commanders to disobey their superiors. In doing so, it highlights the critical fact that even within the context of intensive military discipline and socialization, individuals draw on identifications with varied social networks to make decisions. Further, it implies that individual disobedience should be studied as conceptually separate from collective events such as mass desertion or unit defection.

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“…One of their central dynamics is identification problem about civilians who may be collaborating with the enemy (Kalyvas, 2006). Soldiers may often desert or defect given the chance, as a growing literature is analyzing (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011;Costa & Kahn, 2008;Dahl, 2016;Koehler, Ohl, & Albrecht, 2016;Lyall, 2014;McLauchlin, 2010McLauchlin, , 2014McLauchlin, , 2015Oppenheim, Steele, Vargas, & Weintraub, 2015). Moreover, considering officers in particular, civil wars appear to increase the risk of coups d'état.…”

Section: Theory: Linking Disloyalty To Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

Disloyalty and Logics of Fratricide in Civil War: Executions of Officers in Republican Spain, 1936-1939

McLauchlin

Parra-Pérez

2018

Comparative Political Studies

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Violence within armed groups in civil wars is important and understudied. Linking literatures on civil war violence and military politics, this paper examines the conditions in which this fratricidal violence is narrowly selective or arbitrary with respect to concrete disloyal behavior. It uses a unique dataset of executions of officers on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War. The paper finds that while much of the violence appeared to target those who actually tried to defect, many non-defectors were likely shot too, due most likely to a pervasive stereotype that officers in general were disloyal to the Republic. This stereotype was used as an information shortcut, and was promoted by political actors. Accordingly, unlikely defectors were likelier to be shot in locations in which less information was available about loyalties and in which political forces that were suspicious of officers as a group were locally stronger. 1 We are in immense debt to the late Carlos Engel, who generously shared his data with us. Jun Koga Sudduth also graciously made her purges data available in advance, for which we thank her. We also

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Desertion and Collective Action in Civil Wars

Cited by 23 publications

References 52 publications

Voting for Militants: Rebel Elections in Civil War

Voting for Militants: Rebel Elections in Civil War

Rogues, degenerates, and heroes: Disobedience as politics in military organizations

Disloyalty and Logics of Fratricide in Civil War: Executions of Officers in Republican Spain, 1936-1939

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