Search

States in an international dispute sometimes choose to attack their enemies with their own military forces, but other times choose to empower the other side’s insurgent groups. What explains the decision to act through rebel proxies rather than engage a ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

States in an international dispute sometimes choose to attack their enemies with their own military forces, but other times choose to empower the other side's insurgent groups. What explains the decision to act through rebel proxies rather than engage a rival directly? Theories and empirical analyses of international conflict have adopted a state-centric bias, ignoring the substitution between direct uses of force and indirect action through rebel organizations. This paper examines the decision to delegate conflict to rebels through the lens of principal-agent theory. While states support rebel groups in order to forgo some of the costs of conflict, they also lose a degree of foreign policy autonomy. Moreover, delegation differs from intervention in that external parties are central to the onset of the conflict, rather than becoming involved subsequently. Preliminary evidence of conflict delegation is presented, along with a number of empirically testable propositions. Contemporary conflicts, such as in Sudan, Chad, and Iraq, display elements of delegation to insurgents. Finally, the consequences of delegation from the rebel's perspective are explored. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has looked for factors explaining intrastate conflict within the country ex-periencing conflict. However, the fact that so many civil wars display transnational dimen-sions and often spur conflict between states suggests that the decisions actors make about the onset and settlement of conflict can be strongly influenced by international factors. In this pa-per, we extend our previous work on dyadic analyses of civil war interactions to how transna-tional linkages influence the prospects for settlement and conflict duration. We develop a se-ries of hypotheses on how specific transnational linkages to actors in a civil conflict dyad can make conflict more or less difficult to resolve. We test our hypotheses using new data on transnational linkages of the state and insurgent actors for the intrastate conflicts in the Upp-sala armed conflict dataset. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent to international factors affect domestic conflict processes? How do external conditions affect the state's repressive capabilities and the opportunities for opposition groups to mobilize, launch, and sustain an insurgency? This paper argues that state strength is limited by international boundaries and that transnationally organized rebel groups can evade repression costs. External bases, refugee communities, and characteristics of neighboring states are expected to increase the likelihood of civil war onset and continuation. These claims are tested through a quantitative analysis of civil conflicts during the 1951-2000 period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on factors contributing to domestic rebellion. Civil wars and insurgencies have usually been attributed to domestic factors. However, studies have found out that transnational relations also contributed to the emergence of all social-revolutionary crises and have invariably helped to shape revolutionary struggles and outcomes. The ability of opposition groups to use extraterritorial bases in neighboring countries has an important impact on rebellion.

Previous research has generally assumed that intrastate conflicts are largely driven by internal processes. However, many civil wars display transnational characteristics as issues, actors, and resources underlying the conflict span national boundaries. Groups that seem weak based on their resources at the national level may be strong if they can rely upon resources mobilized outside state boundaries. And although borders are porous and difficult to monitor (e.g., rebels often maintain bases in neighboring states), state agents face considerable difficulties in combating transnational groups and conducing cross-border counterinsurgency. In this paper, we develop a series of hypotheses on transnational factors that can make violent conflict more or less likely such as transnational communities, safe havens in neighboring states, state support for insurgencies, and incentives for intervention. We integrate these hypotheses into a dyadic model of civil war and consider how transnational factors can influence the duration and outcome of civil wars. We test our hypotheses using new data on transnational linkages and external resources at the dyadic level. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]