What Matters Is Who Supports You: Diaspora and Foreign States as External Supporters and Militants’ Adoption of Nonviolence

• DOI: 10.1177/0022002719826645
• Date: 01 October 2019
• Published date: 01 October 2019
• Author: Marina G. Petrova
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

What Matters

Is Who Supports You:

Diaspora and Foreign

States as External

Supporters and Militants’

Adoption of Nonviolence

Marina G. Petrova

1

Abstract

Militant groups are usually committed to violent tactics to pursue their goals. Yet, in

certain cases, militants adopt nonviolent tactics and desist from violence. As internal

conflict rarely remains isolated from outside influence, I argue that external sup-

porters affect militant groups’ tactical considerations. I expect that different external

benefactors will have different effects on the probability of switching to nonviolent

tactics. The focus here is on diaspora and foreign states as external supporters, and I

conduct a large-Nanalysis with violent group-level data. I find that external support

from diaspora is positively associated with rebels’ adoption of nonviolent tactics,

while support from foreign states is not. In fact, foreign states as supporters are not

as effective influencers as diaspora. These findings shed light on the important role of

nonstate actors in conflict dynamics and present evidence that challenges the notion

that diaspora’s involvement prolongs internal conflicts.

Keywords

external supporters, militant groups, change in tactics, nonviolent dissent, internal

armed conflict

1

Department of Government, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom

Corresponding Author:

Marina G. Petrova, Department of Government, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester

CO4 3SQ, United Kingdom.

Email: mgpetr@essex.ac.uk

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2019, Vol. 63(9) 2155-2179

ªThe Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0022002719826645

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The Palestinian National Liberation Movement, or more commonly referred to as

Fatah, was waging armed resistance for about fifty years with varying degrees of

intensity and different violent tactics. They fought over Palestinian liberation from

Israel and used a variety of violent approaches, from assassination to full on armed

incursions, to come closer to their political objective. Yet, from the mid-2000s, the

organization dramatically reconsidered its tactics. Fatah switched from armed to

unarmed resistance and engaged in disciplined nonviolent activity such as demon-

strations and even participatio n in the political life of the Pales tinian Authority

(Qumsiyeh 2015). The same tactical shifts took place in the cases of Umma Libera-

tion Party in Sudan, the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front in Cambodia, and

the African National Congress in South Africa. Even though the adoption of non-

violent methods of opposition is likely to have important implications for the devel-

opment of the conflict, there is scarce analysis on the factors that drive militant

groups to adopt nonviolence. This article fills the gap in the literature by offering an

explanation on why and under what conditions some militant groups resort to the use

of nonviolent forms of resistance while others remain committed to an armed strug-

gle. While some studies address different aspects pertaining to rebel groups’ attri-

butes and interactions (e.g., Salehyan, Gleditsch, and Cunningham 2011; Otto 2018;

Fjelde and Nilsson 2012), the work of Dudouet (2013, 2015) largely prompted the

discussion on rebel groups’ shift to nonviolence.

So far, rebel groups’ tactics have been viewed mostly on a spectrum of

violence without assuming the possibility of extending this spectrum to a non-

violent dimension.

1

For instance, the works of Bueno de Mesquita (2013) and

Stanton (2013) have investigated the determinants of rebel groups’ shifts to

specific violent tactics such as terrorism. Here, I examine rebel gr oups’ adoption

of nonviolent tactics, which is a largely unexplored topic, but it is expected to

have implications for conflict dynamics and resolution. For instance, the transi-

tion of the Communist Party of Nepal Maoist to nonviolent tactics opened up

the space for peace talks and significant reduction in violence (Thapa 2015). In

the case of Northern Ireland, the Irish diaspora pressured for peaceful means of

opposition and the transition to nonviolence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA)

resulted in cease-fires (Golan and Gal 2009).

The adoption of nonviolent tactics hinges on organizational resources; rebel

groups need to be aware of the possibility of nonviolence and to be capable to pursue

it, that is, they require resources (e.g., technical knowledge, infrastructure of resis-

tance, legitimacy). I claim that external actors are well suited to provide rebels with

resources to influence them to adopt nonviolent tactics or even entry into politics.

Yet, I expect that there is difference across external actors in terms of their ability

and willingness to prompt rebels to employ nonviolence. This is because external

actors differ in terms of reliability and sustainability of support provision and are

expected to have different relations with the rebel group they support. Here, I focus

on foreign states and diaspora as external sponsors as this allows me to address the

state versus nonstate actors dichotomy and it is a good source of variation. Instead of

2156 Journal of Conflict Resolution 63(9)