Description
Why do some relationships between state sponsors and armed groups endure while others end? Most research has focused on understanding why states use proxies and accounted for its many devastating effects. Significantly less thought has been devoted to what makes some relationships last while others do not. This is surprising given the norm-breaking character of these connections and that outside support makes armed conflicts longer, deadlier, and more intractable. Although the international community and specific states invest considerable resources in condemning and sanctioning state sponsorship, our understanding of these deadly connections remains limited. In this project, we want to examine different types of delegation agreements that shape the type of control mechanisms established between states and armed groups. More specifically, we aim to assess the effects of overlapping, simultaneous, and contradictory logics of control and how these can help explain the robustness of proxy relationships. By unpacking this in greater detail our project tackles one of the most understudied phenomena in contemporary conflict studies. We evaluate this with global statistical analyses and detailed case study comparisons using original data. This is a significant contribution to several intersecting areas of research, while holding direct policy relevance to the international community working on policies aimed at managing and ending state sponsorship of armed groups.
