Resisting Radical Rebels: Variations in Islamist Rebel Governance and the Occurrence of Civil Resistance

Matthew Bamber and Isak Svensson

Terrorism and Political Violence, 2023, vol. 35, issue 5, 1126-1146

Abstract: During the Syrian civil war, different types of Salafi-Jihadi rebel groups controlled territory and established governance over civilians. Their governing strategies have been markedly diverse. In this study, we explore how this governance variation can help to explain the occurrence of civil resistance. We suggest that different types of rebel governance structures provide political opportunities for civilians to mobilize against those rebel groups through public demonstrations. In particular, we argue that it is middle-ranged opportunity structures of rebel governance that strongest incentivizes civil resistance, by giving enough space for civilian mobilization but fewer alternative channels of expressing discontent. This argument is explored through an analysis of the variation between the three main Salafi-Jihadi rebel groups in Syria—IS, HTS and Ahrar al-Sham. We show how differences in the groups’ four rebel governance dimensions—rebel collaboration, civilian inclusion, alliance structure, and repression—impact the political opportunities for civilians to mobilize against these groups. We find that HTS, the group that is in the middle range across these four governance dimensions, provided greater opportunity for civilian protests. This study uses a new dataset of civilian resistance events in Syria as well as interviews with civilians governed by these groups.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09546553.2021.2019023 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:ftpvxx:v:35:y:2023:i:5:p:1126-1146

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ftpv20

DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2021.2019023

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
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().