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Honor Among Thieves: Understanding Rhetorical and Material Cooperation Among Violent Nonstate Actors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2021

Christopher W. Blair Open the ORCID record for Christopher W. Blair [Opens in a new window] ,
Erica Chenoweth Open the ORCID record for Erica Chenoweth [Opens in a new window] ,
Michael C. Horowitz Open the ORCID record for Michael C. Horowitz [Opens in a new window] ,
Evan Perkoski Open the ORCID record for Evan Perkoski [Opens in a new window]  and
Philip B.K. Potter Open the ORCID record for Philip B.K. Potter [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

Cooperation among militant organizations contributes to capability but also presents security risks. This is particularly the case when organizations face substantial repression from the state. As a consequence, for cooperation to emerge and persist when it is most valuable, militant groups must have means of committing to cooperation even when the incentives to defect are high. We posit that shared ideology plays this role by providing community monitoring, authority structures, trust, and transnational networks. We test this theory using new, expansive, time-series data on relationships between militant organizations from 1950 to 2016, which we introduce here. We find that when groups share an ideology, and especially a religion, they are more likely to sustain material cooperation in the face of state repression. These findings contextualize and expand upon research demonstrating that connections between violent nonstate actors strongly shape their tactical and strategic behavior.

Keywords

Militant alliancescooperationideologycounterterrorism
Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 76 , Issue 1 , Winter 2022 , pp. 164 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2021

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