Within-Group Competition and the 'Collusion of Radicals' in Civil Conflict

• In Event: Inter-rebel Cooperation and Conflict

Abstract

We develop a formal model that opens the black box of intra-group competition in civil conflict. Our model contains two groups, each of which is in turn comprised of 'radical' and ‘moderate’ factions. In the first stage, which takes place simultaneously in both groups, individual group members must choose to affiliate with either the radical or moderate factions. These affiliation decisions then determine whether moderate or radical leaders control their respective organizations. Once in place, these leaders must then choose between conflict and accommodation. Among other results, and counterintuitively, we demonstrate that radical factions in competing groups, despite being ideologically disparate, often have every incentive to support one another’s internal ascendancy. ‘Radical Collusion’ emerges due to strategic interdependence: in equilibrium, radicals in organization A can only win the affiliation stage if radicals in organization B win the affiliation stage, and vice versa. This occurs when the costs of going into conflict are intermediate, when moderate factions are highly accommodating, and when the two groups’ radicals are especially ideologically distant from one another. Again counterintuitively: the more radical factions dislike one another, the more strategically interdependent they are. As an example of this strategic phenomenon, we present a case study of the often overt coordination that took place between the Assad regime and ISIS during the Syrian civil war.

Authors

• Xiaoyan Qiu, Washington University in St. Louis

• Daniel Max Kselman, IE University