State breakdown and Army-Splinter Rebellions

Theodore McLauchlin

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2023, vol. 67, issue 1, 66-93

Abstract: In Afghanistan, Libya, Liberia and beyond, armed rebellions have begun when armies fell apart. When does this occur? This paper conducts a large-N analysis of these army-splinter rebellions, distinct from both non-military rebellions from below and from coups, using new data. It finds that they follow a logic of state breakdown focusing on regime characteristics (personalist regimes and the loss of superpower support at the end of the Cold War) rather than drivers of mass mobilization from below. In contrast, these regime-level factors matter much less for the non-military rebellions from below that dominate theorizing about civil war origins. This paper also shows that one option for military rebels lies in not attempting a coup but instead heading straight into a rebellion. This paper thus distinguishes highly different paths to armed conflict, validates the state breakdown approach to why armies fall apart, and extends the well-known tradeoff between coups and civil wars.

Keywords: civil wars; foreign aid; internal armed conflict; military power; rebellion; civil-military relations; coups; authoritarian regimes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220027221112030 (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:67:y:2023:i:1:p:66-93

DOI: 10.1177/00220027221112030

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 ().