Goals Matter: The Implications of Antisystemic Goals on Civil War Duration
Open Access DepositedIn recent years the world has experienced the rise of a new type of civil war,characterized by groups not focused on seizing power from the state, but on establishing an entirely new method of governance. Groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda are present in dozens of countries and play an active role in multiple ongoing civil wars. Their goals differ from those normally held by rebels in civil war, who fight to either take control of the existing state or to secede and create a new state. But these rebel groups have rejected that very system – they want to govern large swaths of territory under a new form of government that has no regard for the existing state structure. How does the presence of groups with these new goals, driven by their ideology, change the nature of civil wars? This dissertation lays out a theory intent on describing how rebel groups with antisystemic goals, fundamentally different from those of state-centric or secessionist rebel goals, change how civil wars can be resolved. I theorize that the presence of rebel groups with antisystemic goals increase the duration of civil wars because their goals attract outside military intervention and curtail opportunities to end the conflict short of complete military victory. I use a quantitative analysis of civil war duration data from 1946-2021 to determine that civil wars containing rebel groups with antisystemic goals are in fact lasting longer than other civil wars, and a qualitative analysis of two civil wars to uncover how these antisystemic goals remove opportunities to settle conflict and draw outside military intervention, thus extending the duration of the conflict.
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