Dissertation: Explaining Cohesion, Fragmentation, and Control in Insurgent Groups

Committee: Roger Petersen (Chair), Barry Posen, Stephen Van Evera, Steven Wilkinson (Yale)

In societies shattered by civil war, insurgent organizations mobilize men and materiel for war-fighting while trying to build political credibility and community support. Groups vary dramatically in their ability to manage these tasks, with some maintaining high levels of cohesion and unity and others fragmenting into factional feuds, splits, and even total collapse. Armed group cohesion (and its lack) has been used as a key variable to explain military outcomes, patterns of human rights abuse, and peace-building success or failure, but the causes of organizational control remain understudied. I examine the “least likely” context for sustained cohesion - secessionist insurgencies against relatively strong and formally democratic states. My dissertation uses over a year of detailed comparative fieldwork on the 19 major insurgent groups in Kashmir, Northern Ireland, and Sri Lanka to explain cohesion and fragmentation in these violent non-state actors.

I argue that variation in internal control is driven by the interaction of two variables - first, the structure of the social networks around which the organization builds itself, and, second, the group’s access to external material support from states and diasporas. I find that deeply-rooted, if often narrow and minority, religious organizations, cadre-based political parties, tribes, networks of veterans, and caste groupings (a set of social structures that I call bonding networks) provide the underpinning of sustained rebellion against strong states. By contrast, even larger and more popular insurgent groups fragment if they are based on socially-diffuse coalition network social bases. Rather than mass popular support and ethnic or class solidarity, cohesive armed groups are built around robust sub-ethnic social networks and institutions.

I also find, contrary to the conventional wisdom, that external support can actively improve insurgent cohesion and discipline. Rather than fueling thuggish proxy armies, state and diaspora support provide crucial military power to disciplined insurgent forces that allows them to survive in the face of powerful governments. Material and social variables interact to create distinct trajectories of armed militancy.

Dissertation Summary

Research Agenda

Working Papers and Works in Progress

“The Poisoned Chalice: Military Culture, Contentious Politics, and and Cycles of Regime Change in Pakistan” (Under Review)

“Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Fragmentation: Trajectories of Militancy in Kashmir and Pakistan.” (August 2009)

“Voting, Violence, and the Political Economy of Insurgency on the Indian Periphery” (Link to early version ISA paper - February 2009; current draft June 2009)

“Indian Security Strategy in the 21st Century.” With Vipin Narang. (May 2009)

“Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Insurgent Rivalry and Ethnic Defection in Kashmir and Sri Lanka.” (August 2009)