Measuring the competitive communicative constitution of insurgencies and their opponents

ABSTRACT

We introduce a method to measure the socially constituted strength of an insurgency and its state opponent as they compete for recognition as a governing body, based upon the four flows theory of the communicative constitution of organizations. We validate our method using a RAND data set of 30 recently concluded insurgencies, and find that our method not only predicts the ultimate victor in all 30 conflicts, but also refines previous analyses of the pattern of conflict by reducing the number of parameters necessary to forecast outcomes and grounding these observed trends in the intersection of organization and communication theories. Our results reveal the criticality of an organization maintaining an aura of cohesive structuring while avoiding to appear more oppressive than its opponent.

KEYWORDS:

• Asymmetric conflict
• insurgency
• social movement
• communicative constitution of organizations (CCO)
• computational social science

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kyle M. Schwing

Kyle M. Schwing is a recent graduate of the Individualized Interdisciplinary Ph.D. program at Virginia Tech.

Jason Spitaletta

Jason Spitaletta is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the Catholic University of America.

Jonathan Pitt

Jonathan Pitt is an adjunct faculty member of the Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering and an affiliate of the Intelligent Systems Division of the National Security Institute at Virginia Tech.