Things Fall Apart: Cohesion and Fragmentation in Armed Groups

Programme group Transnational Configurations, Conflict and Governance

This NWO funded project investigates the dynamics of cohesion in armed groups. It addresses both the causes and consequences of fragmentation.

Funded by: NWO

Period: 01/04/2011 until 31/03/2014

Why do some insurgent organizations fragment into feuding factions while others manage to remain cohesive? And how does unity or disunity among the parties to a civil war affect key conflict processes?

Objective 

This project addresses both the causes and consequences of fragmentation, explaining why some armed groups maintain higher levels of control, discipline, and unity than others, and why this variation matters in civil wars.

The variable ability of armed groups to foster unity has recently been linked to violent conflict's duration, settlement, and recurrence, patterns of civilian victimization in civil wars, and the military effectiveness of insurgents. Emphasis on fracturing insurgent organizations has also been central in counterinsurgency doctrine and practice.

Existing explanations locate the sources of unity and disunity in popular support, material endowments, internal ideological disputes, terrain and geography, levels of external support, and the social bases from which insurgents mobilize.

While these factors have been shown to be important in particular cases, we lack a general theory of armed group cohesion and still have a poor understanding of the interaction effects between these variables and endogenous dynamics within war as violence unfolds.

Research method 

The proposed research combines international collaboration in the creation of an original dataset with fieldwork to conduct surveys and gather evidence on armed groups in the Horn of Africa.

The project extends our understanding of why groups break apart or stay together, and the consequences of these dynamics across a range of important civil war processes. 

Published by  AISSR

AISSR

27 March 2014