Civil Conflicts

How do armed groups consolidate power in conflict landscapes packed with rival factions, paramilitary militias, and local warlords? This special issue publication in the journal Studies in Conflict and Terrorism illustrates three pathways to armed group consolidation: cooperative, competitive, and coercive. We explore several hypotheses revolving around territorial control, permeability of group boundaries, and the role of external state sponsorship. We cover eight case studies: Taliban during the 1990s; Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE); Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD); Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF); People's Protection Units (PDY/YPG); Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq; the Islamic State movement; and Russian-Speaking militias in Eastern Ukraine. Our contribution demonstrated how nonstate armed actors can overcome fragmentation to concentrate power in multiparty civil conflicts.

In March 2008, Tibet erupted in the biggest challenge to Chinese rule since 1959. While
Beijing and Dharamsala engaged in their familiar battle of representations, pundits
speculated on the causes of the uprising, ranging from conspiracy theories to informed policy
analysis. Applying the framework of the insecurity dilemma, this article argues that Tibetan
identity insecurity on account of the post-1989 hard-line Chinese policies was the chief cause
of the uprising. Largely peaceful protests and occasionally violent riots in Tibet have been
integral to Tibetan efforts to mitigate their societal insecurities provoked by Chinese
migration, ‘assimilationist’ policies and ‘cultural imperialism’. However, Tibetan protests
and riots heighten Chinese insecurities and harden Beijing’s policies both inside Tibet and
towards the Dalai Lama. This paper reveals the dynamic cycle of hard-line Chinese policies
provoking Tibetan uprisings; the resulting hardening in Chinese policies feeds back into
Tibetan insecurities and protests. The 2008 uprising was the most recent cycle in the longrunning
saga of the Sino-Tibetan insecurity dilemma. The article warns that unless the
Tibetans and the Chinese find a way to break out of the insecurity dilemma, Tibet could
explode into another frenzy of violence and counter-violence in the near future.

The economic analysis of conflicts assigns a crucial role to the rebellion making process. However, the existing literature on this issue often rests on unsatisfactory micro-foundations. It tends to overemphasize two extreme forms of mobilisation, namely purely greed-driven or, alternatively, purely ideology-driven. It doesn’t fully address the puzzles associated with the leader-followers interaction within violent organisations. The present paper is an empirical account describing how rank and file members of an ethnic militia are mobilised. The survey shows that the purely economic explanation of violent mobilisation doesn’t hold despite the fact the militia levers its own funds. At least two other considerations are at play for members: first, the feeling of danger, the desire of protection against fuzzily identified risks (criminality, unknown future, menace from other ethnic groups etc.); second, the social proximity to militia insiders. In fact, vulnerability (either perceived...