Here to Stay: Foreign Fighters & The Duration of Civil Conflict
Open Access
- Author:
- Mc Nicholas, Meghan C
- Area of Honors:
- International Politics
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Douglas William Lemke, Thesis Supervisor
Michael Barth Berkman, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- foreign fighters
civil war
intrastate conflict
Iran
Iraq
civil conflict duration - Abstract:
- Since the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), foreign fighters have played an increasingly visible role in sustained intrastate conflict. The expansion of mass communication, improved methods of transportation, and rapid globalization have vastly improved the ability of people to easily move across borders. This has not only fundamentally changed the nature of civil conflict itself, but also the overall presence and impact of foreign fighters – thanks to social media, the internet, and safer methods of travel, we see more the engagement of foreign fighters in civil conflict more today than ever before in history. Despite this, contemporary international relations and conflict studies research has largely focused on foreign fighters and civil conflict as two entities independent of one another. The two concepts remain largely unlinked, and no clear relationship has been thoroughly addressed by area experts. This hole was the inspiration for my senior thesis, which will attempt to explore one particular facet of the relationship between civil war and the engagement of foreign fighters: duration. More specifically, my project will seek to answer the following question: how does the involvement of foreign fighters impact the duration of civil conflict? I will use a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses to identify patterns (if any) and use Cunningham’s Veto Player Theory to explain potential links between foreign fighter engagement in civil conflict and the total duration of prolonged intrastate violence.