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Copyright of Alternative Politics / Alternatif Politika is the property of Alternatif Politika and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the effect rebel women have on the shape of civil war peace agreements, paying particular attention to the specific gender-inclusive provisions female rebels advocate for. I argue that, through conflict experiences and socialization, rebel women develop group identities that foster collective demands. Their identities as fighters and women from marginalized groups encourage rebel women to lobby for provisions that address the grievances of women from these societal groups. Using data on women's participation in conflict and the terms written into contemporary peace agreements, I find support for this contention. Greater participation of female combatants is associated with an increased likelihood of observing gender-inclusive agreement provisions calling for the inclusion of women from marginalized groups and addressing the specific post-conflict needs of female ex-combatants. This study is one of the first to show that women's participation in rebellion matters for the shape of post-conflict peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Armed groups generally emerge in failed states that do not have a monopoly on the use of force. These states with more than one power center can be characterized as anarchic systems. In such an environment, a shift in the balance of power in favor of an armed group poses an existential threat to the security of others. This study examines how armed groups respond to shifts in the balance of power to maintain their security in an anarchic system. By examining the case of Libya, the study argues that armed groups tend to employ strategies for deterring the aggressor to restore the balance of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do women's roles in rebel groups influence the perpetration of violence against civilians? Research regarding women rebels' impact on armed group behavior produces mixed findings, warranting further exploration. In this study, I provide the first cross-national analysis of women rebels' influence on one-sided violence arguing that women's impact is conditional upon their role within the group. War is considered a masculine phenomenon where violence is plauded, and women combatants are socialized to behave violently. Gendered perceptions of women as peaceful push women on the frontline to defy stereotypes and be exceptionally violent to be taken seriously as combatants. Meanwhile, these same stereotypes allow women to be especially lethal in their attacks because society does not expect it. Alternatively, women in outreach roles are tasked with acquiring support through nonviolent means. Perceptions of women as legitimate, trustworthy, and peaceful make women in outreach roles effective in garnering support for the group, reducing the group's need to kill civilians to coerce support. Stereotypes of women are responsible for women killing both more and less civilians. Consequently, rebel groups composed of larger shares of frontline women fighters commit higher levels of one-sided violence (OSV) while groups using women in outreach roles commit less OSV. Using data from the Women's Activities in Armed Rebellion data set and the Georeferenced Events Dataset, I find support for both hypotheses. ¿Cómo influye el papel que juegan las mujeres dentro de los grupos rebeldes sobre la perpetración de actos de violencia contra civiles? La investigación existente acerca del impacto que tienen las mujeres rebeldes sobre el comportamiento de los grupos armados produce conclusiones variadas, lo cual justifica un mayor estudio de este tema. En este estudio llevamos a cabo el primer análisis transnacional con relación a la influencia que ejerce el papel de las mujeres rebeldes sobre la violencia unilateral y argumentamos que el impacto de las mujeres está condicionado al papel que estas desempeñan dentro del grupo. La guerra se considera un fenómeno masculino donde se aplaude la violencia y se socializa a las mujeres combatientes para que se comporten violentamente. Las percepciones de género, que caracterizan a las mujeres como pacíficas, obligan a las mujeres en primera línea a desafiar estos estereotipos y a ser excepcionalmente violentas para ser tomadas en serio como combatientes. Además, estos mismos estereotipos permiten que las mujeres puedan ser especialmente letales en sus ataques porque la sociedad no lo espera. De forma alternativa, pueden asignarse a las mujeres roles divulgativos en los cuales las mujeres tienen la tarea de adquirir apoyo a través de medios no violentos. Las percepciones de las mujeres como legítimas, dignas de confianza y pacíficas hacen que las mujeres que ejercen roles de divulgación resulten efectivas para obtener apoyo para el grupo, reduciendo la necesidad del grupo de matar civiles con el fin de coaccionar el apoyo. Los estereotipos existentes acerca de las mujeres son responsables de que las mujeres maten a más civiles, por un lado, pero también a menos civiles, por otro lado. En consecuencia, los grupos rebeldes que están compuestos por una mayor proporción de mujeres combatientes en primera línea cometen niveles más altos de violencia unilateral, mientras que los grupos que utilizan a mujeres en roles de divulgación cometen menos violencia unilateral. Encontramos apoyo para ambas hipótesis a través del uso de datos procedentes del conjunto de datos de actividades de mujeres en rebelión armada y del conjunto de datos de sucesos georreferenciados. Quelle est l'influence des rôles féminins au sein de groupes rebelles quand il s'agit de perpétrer des violences contre les civils ? Les travaux de recherche sur l'incidence des femmes rebelles dans les groupes armés ont produit des résultats mitigés, d'où la nécessité d'un approfondissement. Dans cette étude, je fournis la première analyse transnationale de l'influence des femmes rebelles sur la violence unilatérale en émettant l'hypothèse que l'incidence féminine est conditionnée par le rôle occupé au sein du groupe. La guerre est souvent considérée comme une affaire d'hommes : la violence est saluée et les femmes combattantes sont socialisées de façon à se comporter violemment. Les perceptions genrées des femmes comme pacifistes les poussent à se mettre en première ligne pour remettre en question les stéréotypes. Elles font d'ailleurs preuve d'une violence exceptionnelle pour être prises au sérieux comme combattantes. Ces mêmes stéréotypes permettent aussi aux femmes de se montrer particulièrement meurtrières quand elles attaquent, car la société ne s'y attend pas. D'un autre côté, les femmes qui occupent des rôles de contact auprès du public ont pour mission d'acquérir du soutien sans utiliser la violence. Comme elles sont perçues légitimes, dignes de confiance et pacifistes, les femmes qui occupent ces rôles sont efficaces quand il s'agit d'obtenir davantage de soutien pour le groupe. Aussi, ce dernier aura moins recours au meurtre de civils pour les contraindre à soutenir le groupe. Ainsi, les stéréotypes sur les femmes entraînent à la fois une augmentation et une diminution du nombre de civils tués par ces dernières. Par conséquent, les groupes rebelles qui disposent d'un grand nombre de femmes combattantes en première ligne présentent un niveau plus élevé de violence unilatérale. À l'inverse, ce niveau sera plus faible pour les groupes utilisant davantage de femmes à des rôles de contact auprès du public. À l'aide de l'ensemble de données Women's Activities in Armed Rebellion (activités des femmes dans les rébellions armées) et du Georeferenced Events Dataset (ensemble de données sur les événements géoréférencés), je trouve des éléments pour venir étayer mes deux hypothèses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across Africa, women's political representation is twice as high in postconflict states as it is in non-conflict-afflicted states. Scholars have attributed gains to changing gender norms, international pressure, and local women's movements. However, these factors do not explain variance in women's representation across political parties. This article asks how the conflict legacies of political parties influence these trends, by analyzing patterns of women's political representation in rebel groups that transition into political parties. The article argues that these parties have unique incentives to promote women's representation. Novel data on women's candidacy and electoral success at the party level in postconflict Africa from 1970 to 2020 are presented. Findings suggest that rebel parties run and elect significantly more women than other political parties. These results are consistent across contexts, including varying conflict outcomes. These findings are relevant to understanding women's postconflict political representation and the role of women in rebel parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have written on the extensive risks that transnational terrorism entails for militant groups that perpetrate such attacks. However, despite these risks, transnational terrorism has become an increasingly common feature of civil wars. This raises the question: Why do rebel groups launch terrorist attacks outside of the countries they are fighting civil wars in? I argue that weaker rebel groups are more inclined to turn to such tactics because they are desperate, and as a result, are more willing to make the gamble to signal their resolve, impose costs on their enemies, avoid direct military confrontation with domestic security forces, and generate external support. Using data on the transnational terrorist attack patterns of all rebel group–government dyads present in the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) Dyadic Dataset from 1970 to 2013, I find that conventionally weak rebel groups are more likely to rely on transnational terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Studies Review is the property of Oxford University Press / USA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A growing amount of literature is being devoted to interrogating gendered dynamics in both violent extremism and terrorism, contributing to the integration of international and feminist security. This includes how such dynamics can shape differences in the motivations and participation of women and men. By critically analysing ideological gender constructs in two women-only extremist forums – the Women's Forum on Stormfront.org and Women Dawah, a Turkish-language pro-Islamic State group chat on Telegram – and employing feminist methodology, this article demonstrates how gendered online spaces influence women's 'everyday practices' within extremist movements. We argue that women-only online spaces not only facilitate gendered practices by allowing women to share everyday experiences, hold ideological discussions, and engage in debate, but also provide an important means to navigate these issues within the movement itself. In fact, women-only forums are actively used by women within extremist movements to exert greater agency in the face of otherwise constraining gendered ideological constructs. In turn, gendered everyday practices are reinforced by virtual communities that strengthen a sense of meaning – and purpose – in the movement, albeit being ideologically confined to the private sphere in many ways. This study sheds light not only on the differences in participation between women and men, but also on how such virtual communities can serve as spaces to frame and reinforce gendered practices in extremist movements. This has key implications for deradicalisation and disengagement strategies, which are at present overwhelmingly gender neutral. We provide evidence of how women navigate agency in these spaces, while challenging the stereotype that women in extremist movements are typically passive actors confined to traditional roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The PKK's gender policy, which includes maintaining a fighting force that is 40% female and the promotion of women's liberation as a key component of its political platform, makes the PKK an outlier among both Kurdish nationalist groups and leftist armed movements in the Middle East. Based on interviews with members of the PKK's allied civilian political movement and former PKK combatants, this paper argues that rather than being a function of the PKK's ethnic or ideological identities, this policy emerged as a result of a confluence of four other factors: the PKK's leftist ideology, the preferences of its leadership, and the need to recruit selectively all served as permissive factors. Ultimately, however, it was the greater participation of Kurdish women as a result of Turkish state violence in the Kurdish southeast in the 1980s that ultimately changed the PKK from within. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the gender ideologies of ethnopolitical organizations? Recently, scholarship has cast attention to the determinants of violent organizations' female recruitment patterns. Others have examined the effects of gender ideology on organizational tactics. There is a paucity of work on the determinants of gender ideologies. The article redresses this lacuna by exploring how organizational characteristics influence the gender platforms of ethnopolitical organizations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Focusing on 102 ethnic and ethnoreligious MENA for 25 years from 1980 to 2004, the study finds that broader gender ideologies shape gender platforms. In addition, organizations that provide social services are significantly more likely to advocate gender inclusivity. The context in which organizations operate also has significant effects in that state repression steers organizations to adopt gender inclusivity. The study thus contributes to an emerging literature on gender, shifting focus from the state to the organizational context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the complex interaction between war-dynamics and non-state armed groups' approaches to governance and politics at the local, sub-national level. It focuses on understanding how broader conflict trends influence rebel groups' choices with respect to establishing local governance partnerships, both with civilian agents and other armed factions. The study examines this question through the lens of the Syrian landscape and through an overview of local governance arrangements by Jabhat al-Nusra1 in the Idlib and Aleppo provinces between 2012 and 2017. In tracing the evolution of rebel co-governance arrangements at the local level,2 the article highlights two dynamics: first, how the breakdown of centralized governance and the gradual processed of militarization of local authority3 altered the balance between civilian and armed actors, shifting power in the hands of the latter. Second, how the combination of prolonged strategic stalemate, resource scarcity and ideological competition between armed factions resulted in a shift from cooperative to competitive rebel governance. The article seeks to further nuance the study of rebel governance and rebel-to-political transitions by focusing on how multi-level relationships affect armed groups' governance choices.4 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research on female participation in militant organizations explores organizational and individual factors that influence women's recruitment, and the roles women fulfill. However, most research focuses either on transnational organizations or local militant groups. Within this study, we explore how linkages with transnational groups shape female participation within their overseas affiliate organizations. We employ an original dataset of female militants arrested or killed between 2014 and 2019 in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia, accounting for organizational affiliation. Overall, we find that female participation in militant groups increased between 2015 and 2017, with most of the increase associated with the Islamic State. While most women with an Islamic State association assumed non-combat roles, more than a third assumed combatant roles, indicating the influence of country-level and regional dynamics. Based on our data, female combatants with an Islamic State association served exclusively as either suicide attackers or conducted bombings, diverging from the varied roles assumed by women combatants in other groups in the region. Overall, our findings highlight how the nature of transnational organizations can combine with the local dynamics of their affiliate groups to produce unique trends in the local female militant landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do rebels leave rebellions? Although much scholarly attention has been devoted to understanding why individuals join rebellions, relatively little is known about why they leave. This paper seeks to fill this deficit by exploring the decision-making process that rebels undertake when determining whether to stay or leave. Based on interview data collected from ten active rebels and four former rebels all engaged (or previously engaged) in conflicts in East Africa, we find that the reason why rebels joined the group influences their decision to leave or stay. Rebels who joined due to grievances are far less likely to escape opportunistically, while rebels who joined due to "greed" display a higher sensitivity to the hardships of rebel life and the pull of alternative options. Understanding why a person joins a rebellion helps predict the factors that will drive them to leave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can data on government coercion and violence be trusted when the data are generated by state itself? In this paper, we investigate the extent to which data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) regarding the use of force by corrections officers against prison inmates between 2008 and 2017 conform to Benford's Law. Following a growing data forensics literature, we expect misreporting of the use-of-force in California state prisons to cause the observed data to deviate from Benford's distribution. Statistical hypothesis tests and further investigation of CDCR data—which show both temporal and cross-sectional variance in conformity with Benford's Law—are consistent with misreporting of the use-of-force by the CDCR. Our results suggest that data on government coercion generated by the state should be inspected carefully before being used to test hypotheses or make policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do women insurgents affect rebel organizations' structure and survivability? Scholars acknowledge the importance of organization-level dynamics and unit composition for conflict outcomes. However, our understanding of how gender-diverse cadres influence rebel survivability remains limited. I examine the mechanisms through which women sustain armed conflict. I analyze micro-organizational dynamics of rebellion through a qualitative case study of the Kurdish armed movement in Turkey between 1982 and 2015 based on the official archives of the Kurdistan Workers' Party. I show that women insurgents enable tactical diversity, aid the organization's coup-proofing strategy against factions, and mobilize domestic and international audiences. Women contribute most to their organization during crises and due to exploitation of gender inequalities. Analyzing the relationship between gender dynamics, group structure, and evolving rebel strategies, this study shows that the gender composition of the membership is an important factor influencing rebel survivability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on women's participation in rebel organizations often focuses on "frontline" fighters. But there is a dearth of scholarship about noncombat roles in rebel groups. This is surprising because scholarship on gender and rebellion suggests that women's involvement in rebel governance, publicity, and mobilization can have positive effects on civilian support for and participation in rebel organizations cross-nationally. Further, women often make up the critical infrastructure that maintains rebellion. A new conceptual typology of participation in rebellion identifies four dimensions along which individuals are involved in noncombat labor: logistics, outreach, governance, and community management. These duties are gendered in ways that make women's experiences and opportunities unique and, often, uniquely advantageous for rebel organizations. Women take on complex roles within rebellion, including myriad tasks and duties that rebels perform in conjunction with or in lieu of combat labor. An in-depth analysis of women's noncombat participation in the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland demonstrates this typology's purpose and promise. Attention to noncombat labor enables a more comprehensive analysis of rebel groups and of civil wars. Studying these activities through this framework expands our understanding of rebellion as a system of actors and behaviors that extends beyond fighting. Future scholarship may use this typology to explain variation in types of women's participation or the outcomes that they produce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research finds that cooperation among militant groups is common and contributes to both capabilities and lethality. Comparatively little is known, however, about how militant alliances are maintained and how they break apart. We argue that leaders are critical to sustaining alliances among militant groups. As a consequence, organizational disruption in the form of leadership targeting can lead to the breakdown of militant alliances. To test this argument, we pair original data on militant alliances with data on leadership targeting to reveal that decapitating an organization's leader, and particularly its founder, increases the probability that an organization's alliances terminate. We find that leadership decapitation spurs alliance termination by incapacitating targeted groups, stoking fear among allies, and inducing preference divergence between targeted groups and allies over strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional thinking frames battlefield coalitions as collections of national armies fighting together as multinational coalitions. However, wars also include rebel groups fighting together as coalitions, and rebel groups fighting alongside states in hybrid coalitions. This paper seeks to better understand rebel and hybrid battlefield coalitions, focusing on command and operational military effectiveness. The paper first presents basic ideas about coalition command and military effectiveness from conventional wisdom on multinational coalitions. It then builds on these ideas to explore potential similarities and differences between multinational coalitions on one hand and rebel and hybrid coalitions on the other. In particular, the paper focuses on the nature of different command structures, the varying operational military effectiveness advantages for unified coalition command, and the political motivations for coalition members to resist creating unified command, despite potential effectiveness benefits. The paper concludes by providing policy recommendations to states who lead hybrid coalitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extensive body of literature examines how the media depicts female suicide bombers. However, there has been little systematic testing of these theories. I test common arguments about how female bombers are portrayed, relative to male bombers. I find mixed support for the notion that information on female bombers relies on gender stereotypes. I find robust evidence that the marital status of female bombers is more likely to be reported on than for their male counterparts, while other characteristics, such as education and occupation, are not. I discuss the incentives media outlets and armed groups have for reinforcing these stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the rich literature on women and conflict, many scholars have assumed that the outbreak of civil war suppresses women's political involvement. However, during Syria's civil war, there was significant subnational and temporal variation in the involvement of women in the institutions established by armed groups and civilians in rebel-held areas. Why were some Syrian women able to secure a place for themselves in insurgent governance? How were they able to influence the form of local institutions to secure a role for women? Bringing together the scholarship on social movements and rebel governance, this article argues that two factors determine whether women were able to mobilize politically during conflict: the organizational capacity of women and the strength and ideology of locally active armed groups. The article leverages data on local organizations and institutions in Syria, Syrian news sources, and correspondence with several women's organizations operating in Syria in 2017. By doing so, this article strives to bring attention to the role of gender in the expanding literature on rebel governance. It also highlights the significance of armed groups' ideologies, an aspect often dismissed in the literature in favor of a focus on material factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the text, I frame intersectionality through the kaleidoscope of these cognitive tools, from the simplicity of a metaphor, through the utility of a heuristic device, to the structured nature of paradigmatic thinking that guides a field of study, to the I possibility i of an explanatory social theory that engages the issues that most concern scholars and practitioners of intersectionality. The journey of intersectionality in Collins's thought - from the moment she first described intersecting systems of oppressions as intersectionality up to this latest project of critical social theory - has been long. Here, I would like to explore how intersectionality might influence debates in the sociology of religion and conversely, how the sociology of religion might influence intersectionality. Just as the ideas of intersectionality are interconnected and find new meaning in intersectionality's metaphoric meeting place as an exchange of ideas, so too do the distinctive views of people who are sufficiently grounded within intersectionality contribute to its critical ethos by offering critical analyses of their own. Furseth extends this question to explore the border space between intersectionality and the sociology of religion for a possible route to examine how ethics might inform intersectionality's development as a critical social theory. [Extracted from the article]

Building on research that applies the policy deference model to high court decision-making during external war, we propose that conflict intensity, political government's preference on liberalization, and the gender of appellant impact the manner in which courts follow policy deference during internal war in transitioning countries. Contextually, we argue that shifts in women's roles and gender relations during internal conflict in transitioning societies condition the manner in which civilian courts make decisions on civil and political rights cases. During external war in advanced democracies, policy deference infers that courts will rule more conservatively on civil and political rights cases. Using habeas corpus cases as a representation of civil and political rights' protection from El Salvador's civil war period (1980–1992) and two measures of conflict intensity, our findings indicate that the court's decision-making process deviates from conventional expectations derived from the policy deference model in three ways: (1) conflict intensity solely affects the court's decision-making on habeas corpus cases involving men; (2) the political government's choice for political liberalization affects the court's decision-making on both women and men cases; and (3) gender conditions the manner in which policy deference applies in a society that is experiencing societal change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the variation in sexual violence perpetrated by state-security forces? Prior research has suggested sexual violence is an explicit strategy of violence. More recent work has suggested sexual violence in certain contexts acts as a tolerated practice. I argue that the type of regime institutions influences the perpetration of sexual violence by deterring behavior of individuals and providing pathways to accountability. Authoritarian regimes in general have weaker institutional accountability compared to democracies. Institutions in personalist regimes in particular are geared toward preservation of personal power, rather than accountability for the regime. Regimes with higher accountability will experience lower sexual violence, while those with lower accountability experience higher perpetration. Moreover, the gendered nature of regime institutions influences perpetration of sexual violence where masculine institutions predominate. I test these predictions using cross-national data on the incidence of sexual violence, during both peace and conflict. The results suggest that personalist regimes, and especially regimes with weaker female empowerment or higher levels of corruption, experience more sexual violence. This analysis links political institutions to the toleration of sexual violence by state-security forces, underscoring the importance of institutional structure and behavior in the perpetration of sexual violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions do barriers to women's mobilization erode or emerge across various stages of civil war? The article draws upon evidence from three cases of civil war: Nepal (1996–2006), Colombia (1964–2016), and Rwanda (1990–1994). Comparative analysis of the escalation, peacemaking, and recovery process in each case reveals that the mechanisms shaping the erosion and emergence of barriers to women's mobilization are highly interactive across all three stages of conflict. In particular, the study highlights three concepts that are essential for understanding whether or not barriers to women's mobilization continue to erode after civil war: (1) institutional tokenism, (2) social friction, and (3) capacity to govern patriarchal backlash. This study of pathways for women's mobilization during civil wars has important implications for the study of the interactive relationship between formal and informal institutions, and research on long‐term peacebuilding efforts designed to ameliorate deeply embedded structural and cultural violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of explanations have been advanced for why soldiers commit acts of sexual violence in wartime, yet we have little understanding of why some rebels refrain from sexual violence. We examine the systematic absence of sexual violence by certain rebel groups, using original data on rebel leader selection practices coupled with data on sexual violence from the Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict project. We find strong quantitative support for our claim that leader selection processes hold significant consequences for engagement in sexual violence: rebels who choose leaders via an electoral process are less likely to engage in sexual violence in wartime. Moreover, we find that the degree of electoral inclusiveness significantly affects whether rebels commit sexual violence. Rebel groups that hold elections with civilian participation are significantly less likely to use sexual violence than groups whose leader elections occur only among group members or top-level rebel officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Interactions is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Many factors contribute to insurgents' patterns of civilian victimization. Yet, the literature has rarely considered this behavior in terms of the typically transnational character of insurgency. This study's theoretical argument is that border fortifications causes transnational insurgent groups to perpetrate more violence against civilians. Insurgents who are transnational strategically and materially benefit from operating in target states' contiguous neighbors and participating in cross-border commercial networks of illicit commodities. As political geographers and some political scientists have described, various states have responded to this and other forms of illicit movement by erecting border walls or fences. The author contends that these border barriers deprive impacted transnational fighters of resources, prompting them to demand more voluntary support from civilians who are less likely to provide it. The expectation is that insurgents in this situation consequently commit more violence against civilians as a means of coercive resource extraction. This behavior transpires in the form of short-term surges because impacted insurgents can adapt to their new material contexts, but successive fortification generates new, even greater bursts of violence. Using the qualitative method of process tracing and new data on India- Bangladesh border fortifications gathered for this project, the author tests his argument with a case-study of the United Liberation Front of Assam. The preliminary evidence in this pilot-study indicates that the global trend of fortifying borders to counter transnational insurgency may in fact be harming the civilians who walls and fences are purported to protect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do young Muslim women radicalize and undertake high-risk political behaviors, and what factors influence their sociopolitical transformation? The process of radicalization happens because of individual, social, and political dynamics, and is facilitated by the availability of computer-mediated communication. Some young Muslim women keep detailed records of their radicalization process via social media, which we use to understand their sociopolitical transformation. By evaluating their language, we can better understand how their personal, social, and political development unfolds. This paper is a case study examining the words of one young Muslim woman, Aqsa Mahmood, who moved from her home in Scotland to join the ISIS fighters in Syria. Her Tumblr blog provides a linguistic, political, and ideological record of the process of her radicalization. We identify linguistic patterns in her blog posts that can help to develop and reveal a typology of the language of female radicalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on multi-actor civil wars highlights that rebel organizations condition their conflict behavior on that of other rebel organizations, with competition and free-riding constituting the core theoretical mechanisms. We provide a new actor-centric approach to explicitly model strategic interdependence in multi-actor civil wars. We argue that rebel organizations have incentives to remain mobilized until the end of a conflict to maintain their power to negotiate, power to spoil, power to enforce, and power to protect. This induces strategic complements that dominate duration dynamics in multi-actor conflicts. Based on a network game-theoretic model, we derive a spatial econometric framework that allows for a direct test of strategic interdependence. We find that the estimated duration interdependence is positive but partially offset in secessionist conflicts where the public goods nature of the incompatibility also induces strategic substitution effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil conflicts are complex: multiple warring parties compete for control of territory both against each other and the government. These processes are often dynamic, changing over time and space. In this study, we embrace these complexities through a network-based approach. By considering important relational patterns, such as reciprocity and transitivity, and tying them together with existing theoretical developments in the conflict processes literature, we answer the question of "who fights whom and when" during civil conflict. Furthermore, by using the case of Nigeria, we offer novel theoretical insights about how the entrance of a new, aggressive actor can decisively alter the trajectory of conflict. In addition, we show that our approach is better at predicting "who fights whom and when" in an out-of-sample context than extant approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using case study evidence, this article demonstrates how the relationship between conflict intensity, gender inclusive ideologies and gender inclusive policies on one hand, and the decision to recruit female combatants on the other hand, is conditioned by the groups' conflict phase. Conflict phases divide conflict events into two distinct parts, the guerrilla activity phase and the civil war phase, contingent on the insurgents' number of armed fighters, military capabilities, level of institutionalization and degree of territorial control. These conflict phases affect the recruitment behavior of insurgent groups making them more likely to recruit female combatants in the civil war phase and less likely to do so in the guerrilla activity phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a collection of open source data, the article uses network analysis to represent alliances and conflicts among 179 organizations involved in violence in North and Western Africa between 1997 and 2014. Owing to the fundamentally relational nature of internecine violence, this article investigates the way the structural positions of conflicting parties affect their ability to resort to political violence. To this end, we combine two spectral embedding techniques that have previously been considered separately: one for directed graphs that takes into account the direction of relationships between belligerents, and one for signed graphs that takes into consideration whether relationships between groups are positive or negative. We hypothesize that groups with similar allies and foes have similar patterns of aggression. In a region where alliances are fluid and actors often change sides, the propensity to use political violence corresponds to a group's position in the social network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the impact of gender on international affairs? In this paper, we argue that existing theories of international relations often miss the crucial role of gendered perceptions in politics. We draw on research in experimental psychology and the comparative politics of gendered leadership to understand how gender influences reactions to female foreign policy. We argue that female leaders in particular face gender stereotypes that cause dispute opponents to underestimate their resolve during bargaining. Using data on the gender of leaders in militarized disputes, we find evidence of gender biases in bargaining interactions: Female-led states are more likely to have their disputes reciprocated and are consequently more likely to forcefully escalate a dispute than male-led governments. These findings point to the importance of stereotypes and cognitive biases when studying how the increasing heterogeneity of policymakers—and especially world leaders—impacts foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrorist group rivalries and alliances have important consequences, but the sources of these relationships are debated. This article offers a side-by-side examination of correlates of terrorist rivalries and alliances. Global analyses of hundreds of terrorist groups find violent rivalry is associated with drug trafficking, state sponsorship, ethnic motivation, and operating in a civil conflict country. Alliances are associated with territorial control, intermediate membership size, and religious motivation. The idea that alliances are an indicator of weakness does not find much support. When relationships are disaggregated into theoretically relevant categories (inter-field and intra-field rivalries, and domestic and international alliances), further distinctions appear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, an upward trend in terrorist attacks has mirrored an increase in suicide attacks. According to our preliminary analysis, the events of September 11th marked a sea change in the number of terrorist attacks. While a rich literature has evaluated why terrorists participate in suicide attacks, none have considered the uptick in volume after 9/11, and fewer yet have considered how female fighters may be contributing to this. We evaluate how both structural and female-specific factors affect the likelihood of female fighter suicide attacks. Recent literature discovered a trend in terrorist groups using females as suicide bombers due to cultural norms that permit them to get closer to targets. We test our theory using data from the Chicago Project on Security and Threats Suicide Attack Database (CPOST-SAD) and various datasets from the Quality of Government (QOG) compendium for the 1986–2016 time period. We construct a series of models that consider both female-specific and structural factors that could explain variation in the number of female suicide attacks. Our results indicate that our models encompass relatively stable patterns. Female political empowerment, female educational attainment, and female employment rates are significant and positive in our post-9/11 models, indicating that they may increase female suicide attacks. Democracy is a relevant structural factor and generally yields a positive effect on female suicide attacks across both time periods and multiple models. Ethnic fractionalization is significant in both time periods but yields a negative effect before 9/11 and a positive effect in the later period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens when the world's 'oldest profession' interacts with history's oldest form of war? In the Horn of Africa, a symbiotic relationship between prostitutes and terrorists has emerged, illuminating critical information about the group's ideology and strategy. In this article, we argue that al-Shabaab's differential treatment of Somali and other East African women reveals the group's strategic focus on Somalia, despite its claims to be a globally focused Islamic extremist organization. Through original ethnographic fieldwork in Kenya, the authors explore al-Shabaab's deliberate relationships with different groups of women and explain how this helps scholars better understand the group. This article suggests the next phase of scholarship on gender and terrorism, encouraging scholars not only to pay attention to the relationship between women and terrorist groups, but to also examine the nuanced relationships between different categories of women and terrorist groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History reveals enemies often ally to confront a common threat. In such competitive coalitions actors must balance the simultaneous risk of distrust of their ally against external danger. We model this interactive relationship and generate several novel outcomes. Intra-alliance rivalry forces allying players to preemptively commit more resources to conflict and to free ride less. Consequently, their likelihood of conflict success increases. However, intra-alliance instability forces weaker players to commit a higher proportion of resources to fighting than do their stronger allies. This outcome runs contrary to Mancur Olson's classic collective action result that the "small exploit the great." Furthermore, allies do not demonstrate a uniform preference for bandwagoning or balancing. In general, it is preferable to bandwagon with friends but to balance with enemies. Finally, because rivalry can raise alliance payoffs, actors may rationally seek out risky partnerships with so-called enemies rather than molding more certain alliances with friends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of resources in war has been much debated. What happens when foreign patrons provide lavish amounts of cash to rebels, without mechanisms of accountability? This article analyzes three major sources of funding and their micro-level effects on insurgent-groups in the Syrian civil war. Recipients of funding demonstrated opportunism in actions, alliances, and ideologies, directly related to the funding source. Funders thus set the agenda of the war, promoting Islamist ideologies and regional over local issues. Private donors rivaled state sponsors, in what may be a harbinger of future globalization trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do rebel groups often fight each other when confronting a common, and typically stronger, enemy—namely, the government? Inter-rebel aggression is a calculated response by rebel groups to opportunities for expansion and to the threats confronting such groups. In particular, inter-rebel wars occur under the following conditions: (1) when a window of opportunity emerges allowing rebel groups to defeat coethnic rivals at low costs and thus achieve rebel hegemony, or (2) when rebel groups are confronted with a window of vulnerability, in which they experience a radical deterioration of power relative to that of coethnic rivals and then attempt to escape in a desperate military gamble. Both strict military considerations and ethnic identities shape the rebel groups' calculus. Coethnicity influences the threat perception of rebel groups and their ability to grow at the expense of rivals, thus providing both defensive and offensive motives for inter-rebel aggression. Because coethnic rebel groups want to mobilize and control the same ethnic communities, they are highly sensitive to immediate, intense conflicts of interest and see other coethnic rebel groups as serious threats. Moreover, coethnic rebel groups can generally expect to absorb the resources of defeated rivals, which in turn may improve their chances in the fight against the government. In-depth case studies of multiparty insurgencies in Ethiopia's Eritrea and Tigray provinces, based on interviews with former rebel leaders, strongly support the window of opportunity and vulnerability theory of inter-rebel war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is widespread variation in scope, scale, and forms of rape across and within conflicts. One explanation focuses on the integration of women in armed groups. Scholars and international organizations posit that the inclusion of women in armed groups discourages wartime rape. They advocate women's increased participation to combat rape and other forms of civilian violence. Using an original dataset of women's involvement as combatants in civil wars from 1980 to 2009, I argue that the participation of female fighters has no significant impact in constraining an armed group's propensity to rape. Female combatants do not lessen rape because organizational factors, primarily culture, drive violence in armed factions and encourage conformity irrespective of individual characteristics. Advocating further militarization of women in an attempt to reduce conflict-related rape may be an ineffective policy prescription. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Why do most civil wars occur in a relatively small number of countries? We answer this question by analyzing how civil wars diffuse in multiethnic states. Our theory outlines two motivation and two opportunity mechanisms that trigger additional ethnic rebellions in the same state. First, ongoing civil wars motivate members of other ethnic groups to mobilize in reaction to the negative externalities of nearby conflict. Second, ethnic groups emulate nearby rebel groups as a means of addressing preexisting grievances. Third, fighting multiple civil wars drains state capacity, opening the door for additional challengers to rebel against the government. Finally, long-lasting civil wars signal that the state is unable to defeat active rebels, thus creating incentives for new challengers to take up arms. We test our mechanisms in all multiethnic states with a history of armed conflict between 1946 and 2006. Using Geographic Information Systems, we construct overlap and minimum distance measures between ethnic groups' settlement patterns and conflict zones. Our statistical analysis indicates that new ethnic civil war onsets are more likely in the vicinity of ongoing armed conflicts. Ethnic civil wars also diffuse as governments face an increasing number of rebels and longer rebellions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are some countries more linguistically homogeneous than others? We posit that the international environment in which a state develops partially determines the extent of its linguistic commonality and national cohesion. Specifically, the presence of an external threat of territorial conquest or externally supported secession leads governing elites to have stronger incentives to pursue nation-building strategies to generate national cohesion, often leading to the cultivation of a common national language through mass schooling. Comparing cases with similar levels of initial linguistic heterogeneity, state capacity, and development, but in different international environments, we find that states that did not face external threats to their territorial integrity were more likely to outsource education and other tools for constructing identity to missionaries or other groups, or not to invest in assimilation at all, leading to higher ethnic heterogeneity. States developing in high threat environments were more likely to invest in nation-building strategies to homogenize their populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]