Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The Fates of Rebels: The Politics of Insurgency Survival and Demise

发生在国家控制之外的政治暴力，特别是内战和叛乱，为学术调查和对当今国际安全环境的实际政策回应提出了关键问题。学术辩论主要集中在解释叛乱暴力的原因，特别是那些成功或失败的叛乱。在战争结束时，占多数的反叛团体所面临的广泛后果很少受到审查。从生存(定义为持续的叛乱或政治解决)到灭亡(定义为内部分裂或外部失败)，叛军的命运差别很大。这些结果不一定与战争的起因、组织成员的动机或民众对叛乱的支持程度有关。这篇论文提出了一个比较框架来解释内战中反叛组织经历的组织变异和相应的命运。它基于两个结构因素构建了这些群体的新类型学，这两个因素导致了他们截然不同的命运。首先，反叛组织独立于外部国家行为者的跨境网络的自治程度，决定了它收集和使用资源的方式，并反映了它在地区国家政治中扮演的角色。其次，它独立于内部国家权力机构的自治程度塑造了团体成员，并反映了它在国内政治中发挥的持续作用。打击叛乱的国家战略往往与叛乱类型和现任政权应对来自政治社会不同阶层对其权威的挑战的方式相对应。这些叛军类型及其战略选择为他们的存亡提供了看似合理的预期的基础。那些有外部资源联系和内部政治联系的国家比没有这些联系的国家更有可能生存下来。这种差异在撒哈拉以南非洲部分地区四分五裂的国家和有争议的地区政治中很普遍，在印度北部、巴基斯坦和阿富汗的边境地区也存在。由国家科学基金会资助的实地考察工作将在乌干达、苏丹南部和塞拉利昂进行。它将侧重于1)获取和分析主要文件，以重建事件模式并确定关键行为者；2)对前叛乱分子、军事和政府官员、学者和民间社会领导人进行实地访谈，这将有助于深入了解在这些国家活动的一系列反叛团体的内部战略辩论和决策。这些案例允许通过比较来检验命题，同时控制特定的变量，并提出反事实来检验结论。这项研究与美国的政策制定者相关。撒哈拉以南非洲、中东和南亚部分地区的地方和区域不稳定、恐怖主义的威胁以及失败国家与国家安全之间公认的联系，使人们的注意力集中在如何制定有效应对已成为全球范围的叛乱暴力的问题上。对叛军命运的研究产生了广泛适用的原则，涉及叛军与他们战斗的政权之间的独特关系，以及叛军与支持他们的邻国之间的关系。从这些关系派生出的叛军类型因此导致了对他们的组织、行为和战争最终轨迹的预测。对多种叛乱类型的内部运作的研究表明，维和干预和反叛乱行动等国际应对措施如何影响截然不同的结果，取决于他们的目标是哪种类型的叛乱。因此，这种研究将就如何解决这些冲突提供切实的建议。

Political violence that takes place outside of state control, in particular civil wars and insurgencies, raises critical issues for academic inquiry and for practical policy responses to today's international security environment. Scholarly debates primarily focus on explaining the causes of insurgent violence, with particular reference to those rebellions that succeed or fail. Seldom examined is the broad range of outcomes faced by the greater majority rebel groups at war's end. Rebel fates vary considerably along a spectrum from survival, defined as ongoing insurgency or political settlement, to demise, defined as internal fragmentation or external defeat. These outcomes are not necessarily related to the causes of war, the motivations of group members, or to the degree of popular support for rebellion. This dissertation project presents a comparative framework for explaining the organizational variation and corresponding fates experienced by rebel groups in civil wars. It constructs a new typology of these groups based on two structural factors that contribute to their contrasting fates. First, a rebel group's degree of autonomy from external state actors' cross-border networks shapes how it collects and uses resources and reflects the role it plays in regional state politics. Second, its degree of autonomy from internal state authority shapes group membership and reflects the ongoing role it plays in domestic politics. State strategies for countering rebellion tend to correspond to rebel type and to the ways in which an incumbent regime deals with challenges to its authority from different segments of political society. These rebel types and their strategic choices provide the basis for generating plausible expectations of their survival or demise. Those with external resource linkages and internal political linkages are more likely to survive than those without. Such variation is prevalent in the fragmented states and contentious regional politics in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and is present in the borderlands of northern India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Fieldwork funded by the NSF award will be conducted in Uganda, Southern Sudan, and Sierra Leone. It will focus on 1) obtaining and analyzing primary documents to reconstruct patterns of events and to identify key actors; and 2) field interviews with former insurgents, military and government officials, scholars, and civil society leaders, which will lend insight into the internal strategic debates and decision-making of a range of rebel groups that operated in these countries. These cases allow for testable propositions through comparisons while controlling for specific variables, and present counterfactuals against which to test conclusions.This research is relevant for policymakers in the United States. Local and regional instability in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, the threat of terrorism, and the recognized connection between failed states and national security focus attention on how to devise effective responses to insurgent violence that has become global in scope. The study of rebel fates generates widely applicable principles regarding the distinct relationships between rebels and the regimes they fight, and between rebels and neighboring states that sponsor them. Rebel types derived from these relationships thus lead to predictions regarding their organization, behavior, and ultimate trajectories in warfare. Research into the inner workings of multiple rebel types shows how international responses, such as peacekeeping interventions and counterinsurgency operations, can influence very different outcomes depending on which type of insurgency is their target. Such research will therefore provide practical advice on how to address these conflicts.