COUNSTER introduces a novel triadic framework to investigate how governments strategically engage with non-state armed actors’ constituents — and why some of these strategies succeed while others fail.
Explore the Project ContactPolicymakers and scholars have long treated armed conflict as a military problem. Yet decades of counterinsurgency show that force alone rarely resolves root causes — it more often generates new grievances. Previous studies succeeded in documenting the varieties of governments’ counterinsurgency strategies, yet, failed to account for attractive tactics along repressive ones; and did not address the features of these tactics that vary widely across and within cases — implying a strategic calculation going on. We currently lack a universal theory to understand: why, how, and under what circumstances do governments fight non-state armed actors by strategically engaging the constituents those actors claim to represent?
We call that strategy counstering, running from attractive measures — reforms, concessions, exemptions, recognition — to repressive ones such as curfews, travel bans, and forced displacement. We model civilians’ central role in counterinsurgency by including non-violent aspects of conflict, within an interactive framework that accounts for all actors and available strategies. This will enable a citizen-centric approach by focusing on the causes behind why some strategies work and others fail.
COUNSTER will offer the literature a blueprint to understand, explain, and predict the specifications and ramifications of governments’ struggle against insurgencies; and hence, provide us with evidence-based tools to end protracted conflicts faster, and more sustainably at a lower social cost.
Read the full project →