Why Split? Organizational Splits among Ethnopolitical Organizations in the Middle East

Victor Asal, Mitchell Brown and Angela Dalton

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2012, vol. 56, issue 1, 94-117

Abstract: Why do political organizations split? Drawing insight from organizational theory and social movement literature, this article explores the effect of organizational factors on group schism. Using a new data set of 112 ethnopolitical organizations in the Middle East, the article examines to what extent organizational factors such as leadership structure, organizational legality, and tactical intensity, as well as contextual variables such as state violence and external support for the organization, influence group schism. Findings show that organizations with a factional or competing leadership structure and those that use violence as a tactic are at a greater risk to split. Contrary to research on political parties, which highlight the importance of factional leadership structure in relation to the maintenance and growth of the party organization, findings suggest that competing leadership structure, along with the employment of tactical violence, precipitates ethnopolitical organizational fission and eventual splintering.

Keywords: conflict; ethnic; organizational; organizational fragmentation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://jcr.sagepub.com/content/56/1/94.abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jocore:v:56:y:2012:i:1:p:94-117

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Conflict Resolution from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().