Some of the most brutal and long-lasting civil wars of our time involve the rapid formation and disintegration of alliances among warring groups, as well as fractionalization within them. It would be natural to suppose that warring groups form alliances based on shared identity considerations – such as Christian groups allying with Christian groups – but this is not what we see. Two groups that identify themselves as bitter foes one day, on the basis of some identity narrative, might be allies the next day and vice versa. Nor is any group, however homogeneous, safe from internal fractionalization. Rather, looking closely at the civil wars in Afghanistan and Bosnia and testing against the broader universe of fifty-three cases of multiparty civil wars, Fotini Christia finds that the relative power distribution between and within various warring groups is the primary driving force behind alliance formation, alliance changes, group splits and internal group takeovers.
• The manuscript's approach to civil war alliances spans political science subfields and involves a range of methodologies • Theoretically, it engages the neorealist literature within international relations, as well as the identity, ethnicity and coalition literatures within comparative politics and political economy • Empirically, it closely engages with four comprehensive comparative case studies of multiparty civil wars (the Afghan civil wars of 1978–1989 and 1992–1998 and the Bosnian civil wars of 1941–1945 and 1992–1995) that involve both qualitative and quantitative analysis of primary data collected in the field
Contents
Part I. Context and Theory: 1. Literature and research design; 2. A theory of warring group alliances and fractionalization in multi-party civil wars; Part II. Afghanistan: 3. The Afghan Intra-Mujahedin War, 1992–1998; 4. The Afghan Communist-Mujahedin War, 1978–1989; 5. The theory at the commander level in Afghanistan, 1978–1998; Part III. Bosnia and Herzegovina: 6. The Bosnian Civil War, 1992–1995; 7. The Bosnian Civil War, 1941–1945; Part IV. Further Extensions: 8. Quantitative testing on the universe of cases of multi-party civil wars.
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