Description
How do foreign states exercise control over armed groups? State support to non-state actors is never a risk-free strategy. The provision of support to armed groups abroad may backfire. Proxies can divert resources, refuse to adhere to demands, or even abandon or turn against the state sponsor. To ensure compliance and mitigate the inherent risks involved in conflict delegation, we argue that states make use of seven types of control mechanisms when outsourcing violence to non-state armed groups: selection, contracting, checks and balances, monitoring, reporting, rewards, and sanctions. In this article, drawing on insights from principal-agent theory, we outline a theory of control and illustrate how various mechanisms have been employed by foreign state sponsors in the Syrian Civil War.
