 Political Fragmentation and Alliances among Armed Non-state Actors in North and Western Africa (1997–2014)Olivier Walther, Christian Leuprecht and David B. Skillicorn Terrorism and Political Violence, 2020, vol. 32, issue 1, 167-186 Abstract: Drawing on a collection of open source data, the article uses network analysis to represent alliances and conflicts among 179 organizations involved in violence in North and Western Africa between 1997 and 2014. Owing to the fundamentally relational nature of internecine violence, this article investigates the way the structural positions of conflicting parties affect their ability to resort to political violence. To this end, we combine two spectral embedding techniques that have previously been considered separately: one for directed graphs that takes into account the direction of relationships between belligerents, and one for signed graphs that takes into consideration whether relationships between groups are positive or negative. We hypothesize that groups with similar allies and foes have similar patterns of aggression. In a region where alliances are fluid and actors often change sides, the propensity to use political violence corresponds to a group’s position in the social network. Date: 2020 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ftpvxx:v:32:y:2020:i:1:p:167-186 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2017.1364635 Access Statistics for this article Terrorism and Political Violence is currently edited by James Forest More articles in Terrorism and Political Violence from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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