Go Arm Me: How Militant Fragmentation Affects External Support

Over the last fifty years, civil conflicts have grown increasingly complex due to the proliferation of new armed groups and rebel fragmentation. Yet, existing research on external support for armed groups often ignores this multi-actor dimension, overlooking the unusual amount of discretion sponsors have in deciding whom to support in any given target state. This paper explores how multi-militant conflict environments impact foreign state sponsorship decisions. Conventional wisdom predicts that shared ethnic and ideological ties increase the likelihood of external support for an armed group because these ties signal a lower risk of misuse (agency slack). In contrast, this paper highlights how an increasing number of armed groups in a conflict setting can decrease the importance of shared ties between state sponsors and militants. We argue this change occurs because multi-militant environments reduce a group's willingness to misuse support and improve a sponsor's options to shift support if misuse occurs. We utilize a mixed-methods approach to examine this logic, drawing on an original dataset of 1,402 armed groups and qualitative evidence from Iraq during Saddam Hussein's rule. The results advance understanding of the consequences of conflict fragmentation and external support for non-rebel actors.

近五十年来，随着新型武装团体的涌现与反叛势力的碎片化发展，国内武装冲突日趋复杂。然而，现有关于武装团体外部支持的研究往往忽略了这一多行动者维度，也未关注赞助方在选定目标国内部支持对象时所拥有的异常宽泛的裁量权。本文旨在探究多武装派别冲突环境如何影响外国国家的赞助决策。主流观点预判，共通的族裔与意识形态纽带会提升外部支持某一武装团体的概率，因为这类纽带意味着援助被滥用的风险更低（即代理松弛（agency slack））。与之相对，本文则揭示了冲突场景中武装团体数量增加时，会如何削弱国家赞助方与武装派别之间共通纽带的重要性。我们认为，这一变化的成因在于：多武装派别环境会降低单个团体滥用援助的意愿，同时也为赞助方在出现滥用行为时提供了更多更换援助对象的选择空间。本文采用混合研究方法验证这一逻辑，所依托的原始数据集涵盖1402个武装团体，同时辅以萨达姆·侯赛因执政时期伊拉克的质性研究资料。本研究结果有助于深化学界对冲突碎片化及其外部支持对非反叛行动者之影响的理解。