Fragile proxies: explaining rebel defection against their state sponsors
Foreign governments frequently intervene in armed conflicts by sponsoring rebels against their adversaries. A sponsorship is less costly than a direct military intervention, but rebels often defy orders, desert fighting, or turn guns against their sponsors. Under what conditions do rebels defect aga...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2017
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| In: |
Terrorism and political violence
Year: 2017, Volume: 29, Issue: 5, Pages: 922-942 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (Verlag) |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Keywords: |
| Summary: | Foreign governments frequently intervene in armed conflicts by sponsoring rebels against their adversaries. A sponsorship is less costly than a direct military intervention, but rebels often defy orders, desert fighting, or turn guns against their sponsors. Under what conditions do rebels defect against their sponsors? Drawing on organizational theory, I argue that as rebel organizations become less centralized and formalized, the rebels are likely to defect against their sponsors. This occurs because non-centralized organizations have weak central leadership and allow for dispersed decision-making, both of which narrow the manipulative capacity of sponsors. Due to these disadvantages, non-centralized rebel movements are less accountable to their sponsors, cannot credibly commit to rapidly change their policies in response to changes in the sponsor’s demands, and suffer from frequent and destructive quarrels between the top and lower echelons. Using multilevel logistic models for panel data, I test my argument on a novel dataset. My quantitative analysis shows that rebel structure is a robust predictor of defection. |
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| Item Description: | Gesehen am 21.11.2023 Published online: 01 Dec 2015 |
| Physical Description: | Illustrationen |
| ISSN: | 1556-1836 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/09546553.2015.1092437 |