Rebels and Conflict Escalation
Explaining the Rise and Decline in Violence

Duyvesteyn critically examines the potential explanations for the escalation and de-escalation during conflicts involving states and non-state actors, such as terrorists and insurgents.

Isabelle Duyvesteyn (Author)

9781316518472, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 June 2021

200 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 1.9 cm, 0.55 kg

'Isabelle Duvesteyn's book offers an original and highly stimulating new perspective on the notion of escalation and de-escalation in conflict. Her volume makes an important contribution to our knowledge and understanding of this under-studied and under-theorized area.' M. L. R. Smith, Professor of Strategic Theory, King's College London

Violence during war often involves upswings and downturns that have, to date, been insufficiently explained. Why does violence at a particular point in time increase in intensity and why do actors in war decrease the level of violence at other points? Duyvesteyn discusses the potential explanatory variables for escalation and de-escalation in conflicts involving states and non-state actors, such as terrorists and insurgents. Using theoretical arguments and examples from modern history, this book presents the most notable causal mechanisms or shifts in the shape of propositions that could explain the rise and decline of non-state actor violence after the start and before the termination of conflict. This study critically reflects on the conceptualisation of escalation as linear, rational and wilful, and instead presents an image of rebel escalation as accidental, messy and within a very limited range of control.

1. Rebels and escalation
2. Escalation and de-escalation
3. Political opportunity and rebel violence
4. Political will
provocation and concession
5. Capabilities
strategy
6. Capabilities
substitution
7. Political will
group processes and individual considerations
8. Legitimacy and support
9. De-Escalation
10. The escalation and de-escalation of rebel violence
Index.

Subject Areas: Social issues: war & conflict issues [Children's / Teenage YXZW], Comparative politics [JPB], Peace studies & conflict resolution [GTJ]