Social Movements and Civil War

Porta, Donatella della; Donker, Teije Hidde; Hall, Bogumila; Poljarevic, Emin; Ritter, Daniel P.

doi:10.4324/9781315403106

Cited by 15 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…'Movement' origins From the outset, armed groups with origins in social movements, 132 self-determination campaigns, 133 and spontaneous protests, 134 among other forms of broad-based mobilisation, are characterised by relatively open membership and pre-existing leadership. This applies to both groups that stem from larger social movements and those that splinter from them.…”

Section: Type Narrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But sustained armed opposition to the state becomes possible when defections from state security apparatuses in response to brutal but incomplete repression, combined with foreign support, militarise divided movements through access to military skills and weapons. 62 Militarisation further fragments the movement, including in cases where mass mobilisation unfolds in the absence of pre-existing organisation. 63 Indeed, drawing on the insight that social movements are not unitary actors but collections of factions whose views on and use of violence differ, civil war scholars have found that internal movement divisions increase the likelihood of civil war.…”

Section: Broad-based Mobilisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Armed group formation in civil war: ‘Movement’, ‘insurgent’, and ‘state splinter’ origins

Shesterinina,

Livesey

2024

Rev. Int. Stud.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How do non-state armed groups form in intra-state armed conflicts? Researchers have started to disaggregate armed groups, but we still know little about how armed groups emerge in different ways. Drawing on the literature on social movements, civil wars, and civil–military relations, we generate a typology of ‘movement’, ‘insurgent’, and ‘state splinter’ origins of armed groups. We argue that fundamentally different dynamics of conflict shape armed group origins in the context of broad-based mobilisation, peripheral challenges to the state, and intra-regime fragmentation. Armed groups that emerge in these contexts in general differ in their initial membership and leadership, the basic organisational dimensions that we focus on. We demonstrate the utility of our typology by mapping different origins of armed groups onto existing cross-national data and charting type narratives in illustrative cases. This discussion advances recent efforts to understand the importance of armed group emergence for outcomes of interest to conflict scholars by moving beyond either separate types of origins or highly disaggregated organisational analyses to broader conflict dynamics through which armed groups form, with implications for how these groups act. Future research should consider different origins which we identify in comparison through an in-depth analysis of armed groups’ complex histories.

show abstract

Section: Type Narrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Broad-based Mobilisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Armed group formation in civil war: ‘Movement’, ‘insurgent’, and ‘state splinter’ origins

Shesterinina,

Livesey

2024

Rev. Int. Stud.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Comparative Research

Porta¹

2022

The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While all research is to a certain extent comparative, the concept of comparative research usually refers to studies that compare more than one unit of analysis or, in less inclusive definitions, more than one country. Even though comparative sociology starts to spread, it is especially in political science – with its focus on political institutions – that comparative research became at the same time a broadly used method and also gave the name to an established discipline.

show abstract

Civil Wars and Social Movements

Porta¹

2022

The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While social movements and civil wars have empirical overlaps, the respective fields of study rarely consider each other, as civil war studies focused mainly on macro root‐causes rather than on the meso dynamics of collective action. As Elisabeth Wood noted, “scholars who work primarily on social movements and on civil wars largely work in isolation from one another, with too few analyzing the relationship between the two forms of political opposition as instances of the broader field of contentious politics … Yet scholars of social movements and civil wars share an emphasis on the dynamics of escalation of violence and social mobilization.” Only more recently has research looked at civil wars as often involving social movement dynamics, both at their onset and in their dynamics, singling out some main mechanisms in the shift from social movements to civil wars. Considering trajectories of escalation as moments of time intensification, della Porta et al. pointed at the need to analyze these as contingent and open‐ended processes. Conditions such as the double weakness of civil society and the state, the presence of entrepreneurs of violence, as well as normative and material resources for violence, ethnic and tribal divisions, and domestic and international military interventions must therefore be considered as factors that influence the chains of actors' choices, rather than as structural determinants.

show abstract

Social Movements and Civil War

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Armed group formation in civil war: ‘Movement’, ‘insurgent’, and ‘state splinter’ origins

Armed group formation in civil war: ‘Movement’, ‘insurgent’, and ‘state splinter’ origins

Comparative Research

Civil Wars and Social Movements

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About