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Combatant Fragmentation and the Dynamics of Civil Wars
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2012
Abstract
Civil war dynamics and outcomes are shaped by processes of change largely unaccounted for in current studies. This examination explores how the fragmentation of combatants, especially the weaker actors, affects the duration and outcomes of civil wars. Some results of a computational modelling analysis are consistent with the article's expectations, several of them are counterintuitive. They show that when combatants fragment, the duration of war does not always increase and such wars often end in negotiated agreements, contrasting with the expectations of literatures on spoilers, moderates and extremists. Empirical cases, such as Iraq, Congo, Chechnya and the Sudan, illustrate the importance of fragmentation. This study demonstrates the value of accounting for diverse changes in actors and circumstances when studying the dynamics of war.
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Footnotes
Department of Political Science, Brigham Young University (email: [email protected]); and Department of Political Science, Oklahoma State University (email: [email protected]), respectively. The authors wish to thank Eric Dickson, Paul Diehl, Stephen Haptonstahl, Patrick James, James Kuklinski, Sarah Mitchell, Glenn Palmer, Toby Rider, Scott Wolford and the Political Science Research Seminar at Oklahoma State University for helpful comments. Special thanks to Wills Hickman, Adam Harris, Ken Noyes and Jon Walton for valuable research assistance. Findley acknowledges support from National Science Foundation Grant No. 0904883 and Rudloff thanks the College of Arts and Sciences at Oklahoma State University for research and travel support through an Arts and Sciences Summer Research grant. Computer code and raw results are available upon request from the authors. The Appendix may be viewed at http://www.journals.cambridge.org/jps.
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where ψ represents the maximum possible percentage change in agent m's β parameter in regards to the target agent.
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90 We constructed an alternative model in which all agents can observe battles (but not necessarily participate) and still update their beliefs about the battling agents. The results of the model presented in Figures 4 and 5 of this article are similar to the results in this alternative specification (see Appendix, Figures 7 and 8).
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