Essays on counterinsurgency and grey zone conflict [electronic resource]

This thesis studies conflict below the threshold of conventional war. Chapters 1 and 2 analyze agency problems within illicit organizations. Like most licit organizations, terror and insurgent groups suffer from agency problems. However, the typical techniques for resolving agency problems in licit organizations, like auditing and transfer payments, demand a level of oversight and involvement that the leadership of terror and insurgent groups cannot safely deliver. These chapters discuss an organizational solution to agency problems, namely, forming self-regulating teams; if agents with different and offsetting preferences can be integrated into teams, then these members can constrain each other to act in the interests of the group's leadership. Within the context of groups like al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and the Haqqani Network, foreign fighters can offset the preferences of local fighters and, if properly integrated into teams, can mitigate agency problems. Chapter 1 formalizes the logic above. Beyond the application to terror and insurgent groups, this chapter introduces a novel contracting mechanism that formalizes strategic institutional design. This contracting mechanism is relevant because (1) its use illustrates a new explanation for how diversity can be valuable to organizations, and (2) its use here suggests that organizational structure is not only useful for defining operational units but also can be a tool for resolving agency problems. Chapter 2 tests the logic above. Chapter 1's model suggests that if an insurgent group's leadership faces significant pressure from counterinsurgency practices, then the organizational solution will be too risky to implement, foreign fighters will not be integrated into teams, and the group will suffer from agency problems. This hypothesis is tested and supported through a cross-case analysis of AQI's and the Haqqani Network's use of foreign fighters and degree of internal dysfunction. Additionally, Chapter 2 finds evidence of the hypothesis within AQI through (1) an analysis of mid-level leadership targeting (May 2007-April 2008) and (2) an event study that exploits the exogenous timing of the targeting of Abu Zarqawi (June 2006). This Chapter finds evidence that select counterterror and counterinsurgency policy decisions can shape the structure and function of terror and insurgent organizations. Chapter 3 analyzes grey zone conflict, conflict that falls short of war and that is a pervasive feature of the current international order. This Chapter identifies a specific type of grey zone conflict, hassling, where one side commits costly violence against the other to extract a larger share of a political settlement. This Chapter then develops a series of models describing this phenomenon. Model 1 shows that a state's inability to commit to not hassle can lead to hassling occurring in equilibrium, despite the existence of a mutually beneficial peaceful offer. Model 2 demonstrates that uncertainty over how states value hassling can lead to war. Model 3 provides a game-free analysis of hassling models with information asymmetry and speaks to the conditions under which hassling is more likely to occur. Model 4 shows that because hassling can undermine a state's future capacity in wartime, despite the mutual costs states face in an equilibrium with hassling, a Pareto-improving peaceful equilibrium may not exist.

Keywords: Business.
Advisor: Fearon James D. primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Jha Saumitra primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Bendor Jonathan B. advisor. Thesis advisor
Shapiro Jacob