The downstream effects of combatant fragmentation on civil war recurrence

Abstract

We consider whether the fragmentation of combatants during civil war has downstream effects on the durability of peace following civil wars. We contend that the splintering of combatant groups, a primary manifestation of rebel group fragmentation, produces potential spoiler groups that are neither incidental nor unimportant in the process of civil war resolution. Making connections to the spoiling and credible commitment literatures, we hypothesize that rebel splintering hastens the recurrence of civil wars. Using event history modeling and propensity score matching to analyze two different civil war datasets, we examine whether the occurrence of fragmentation during a civil war influences the length of peace after the civil war. The empirical analysis of fragmentation events during civil wars since World War II offers support for the hypothesis that splintering decreases the duration of post-civil war peace. The results suggest the need to pay closer attention to the dynamics of fragmentation, and particularly how these dynamics lead to future consequences -even when those consequences take place after the war has concluded. For example, governments that attempt to splinter groups or to use existing fragmentations within rebel groups to end a civil war may encourage the unintended consequence of shorter peace duration.

Conflict Fragmentation Index

“…Data advances allowed researchers to approximate conflict fragmentation by looking at the number of rebel groups and by distinguishing actors emerging through splintering. 2 When fragmentation is conceptualized as actor splintering it primarily refers to fission; an entity disintegrates into some of its components (Findley & Rudloff, 2012;Rudloff & Findley, 2016). Rebel-groups often emerge by breaking apart from another organization.…”

“…Disaggregated conflict studies highlighted the complexities arising from combatant fragmentation. Several researchers have argued that fragmented conflicts are harder to resolve, tend to last longer and are more likely to recur (Cunningham, 2006;Cunningham, et al, 2012;Cunningham, 2013;Rudloff & Findley, 2016).…”

“…The UCDP Data Family can be used for these purposes (e.g Rudloff & Findley, 2016;. see Allansson, et al, 2017 for the UCDP).3 Cunningham (2006) uses the terms original groups and splinter factions to distinguish multiple actors emerging independently from multiple actors emerging through disintegration.…”

New Rebels in Postconflict Settings: The Principal–Agent Dilemma of Peacebuilding

“…Yet few studies on postconflict societies have explored the role of new actors in postconflict violence, as the main assumption in the peacebuilding literature is that only the parties involved in the first episode of fighting constitute a risk to take up arms again (Hartzell and Hoddie 2003;DeRouen and Bercovitch 2008;Walter 2009;Toft 2010;Caplan and Hoeffler 2017). Indeed, even studies focusing on civil conflicts featuring multiple rebel organizations assume that all actors are present already during the first phase of fighting (Nilsson 2008;Olson Lounsbery and Cook 2011;Driscoll 2012;Zeigler 2015;Rudloff and Findley 2016).…”

Post‐conflict stabilization in Africa

“… For democratic regimes, see Hegre and Fjelde (), for elections see Flores and Nooruddin () and Collier et al. (), for characteristics of the combatant group(s) see Zeigler (2016), Rudloff and Findley (), and Kreutz (), and for power sharing see Hartzell and Hoddie (), Mukherjee (), Cammett and Malesky (), and Martin (). …”