Friends in high places: state support for violent and non-violent ethnopolitical organizations

ABSTRACT

States seek to influence or alter political outcomes in other states by supporting non-governmental groups located within their rivals or enemies. While a dyadic-relation model explains much of state support for non-governmental ethnopolitical organizations, its static view fails to capture the changing nature of their relationships. By bringing violent and non-violent organizations into the same analysis, and examining data across different international systemic periods, we add new empirical evidence to previous studies, arguing that the external support for resistance is influenced by a specific context in the post-Cold War period as well as the behaviour and characteristics of the organizations vying for support. Analysing the Middle East Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior (ME-MAROB) dataset, we find that violent organizations are more likely to obtain external support than those organizations adhering to the principles of non-violence in both the Cold War and the post-Cold War periods. However, organizational popularity, capability, and kinship with the state sponsor encourage state support only after the end of the Cold War. This suggests that the shift in the international system caused by the collapse in bipolarity encouraged state actors to reconsider their behaviour in supporting ethnopolitical organizations inside other states.

KEYWORDS:

• State support
• ethnopolitical organization
• violence
• non-violence
• Cold War
• Middle East

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We have left out the dummy years produced by the i.year command in the table below for reasons of clarity but the entire regression with the year dummies is available upon request.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Victor Asal

Victor Asal is a professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York. His main research areas are political violence and political discrimination as well as effective interactive teaching.

R. William Ayres

R. William Ayres is Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Professor of Political Science at the University of Toledo. His research has focused on ethnic conflict and international conflict.

Yuichi Kubota

Dr Yuichi Kubota is an associate professor at Faculty of International Studies and Regional Development, University of Niigata Prefecture. His main research interests are civil war, public opinion, and political economy of development in Asia.