When militant organizations lose militarily but win politically
| Author | Benjamin Acosta,Melissa Ziegler Rogers |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836720904400 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836720904400
Cooperation and Conflict
2020, Vol. 55(3) 365 –387
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0010836720904400
journals.sagepub.com/home/cac
When militant organizations
lose militarily but win politically
Benjamin Acosta
and Melissa Ziegler Rogers
Abstract
The literature on political violence emphasizes two main ways that militant organizations
‘win’: eliminating the adversary outright or coercing the adversary into making concessions.
While most do not win in this way, some organizations that fail to win go on to achieve
their goals in post-conflict political competition. What explains variation in the post-conflict
political success of militant organizations that did not achieve their organizational goals on
the battlefield? In this study, we run the first large-n empirical analysis of the phenomenon.
Our empirical results show that organizational size and wartime lethal capacity positively
predict the political success of militant organizations that did not win on the battlefield. Other
plausibly related features of militant organizations, such as their united wartime front or
coherent ideology, do not predict eventual political success. Additionally, we investigate the
case of Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional in El Salvador and present marginal
effects analyses—further illustrating the effects of a legacy of violence and organizational size
on post-conflict political success.
Keywords
Militant organizations, militant transition, political outcomes, post-conflict success
Military organizations that fail to win on the battlefield sometimes go on to achieve their
goals politically. In this article, we provide the first large-n study of the relatively uncom-
mon occurrence of post-conflict political success of militant organizations. We seek to
understand the predictors that separate the many post-conflict militant organizations that
flounder or fail to compete in elections from those that go on to hold executive office in
their nations. We contend that organizational size and wartime lethality are crucial ele-
ments in forging the potential for future success in the political arena.
Corresponding author:
Melissa Ziegler Rogers, Department of International Studies, Claremont Graduate University, 170 East
Tenth Street, Claremont, CA 91711, USA.
Email: melissa.rogers@cgu.edu
904400CAC0010.1177/0010836720904400Cooperation and ConflictAcosta and Rogers
research-article2020
Article
366 Cooperation and Conflict 55(3)
Lebanon cogently exemplifies the phenomenon. Between 1975 and 1990, a civil war
and overlapping regional conflict ensnared the Mediterranean country in a ‘labyrinth of
violence,’ ultimately killing upward of 150,000 people (Phares, 1995: 158). At an early
point in the conflict, political parties came to understand that their political standing was
only as good as the killing capacity of their affiliated militias (Harris, 2006; Rizkallah,
2017). As the Clausewitzian maxim dictates: ‘war is [merely a] continuation of [politics
by] other means’ (Clausewitz, [1832] 1984: 77).
Though often framed as a conflict between Muslims and Maronite Christians,
Palestinians and Lebanese, or Syrians and Lebanese, much of the war involved intra-
sectarian violence. Perhaps the most brutal of such conflicts pitted Samir Geagea’s
Maronite al-Quwwat al-Lubnaniyye (Lebanese Forces, or LF) against the renegade army
of rogue Maronite General Michel Aoun. While quite effective in lethal capacity—kill-
ing thousands of rivals and at least 500 Syrian troops in a final battle before accepting
military defeat (Harris, 2006: 277)—Aoun’s renegade army failed to secure integration
into the post-conflict political system. In 1991, Aoun fled to France, where he would stay
in exile for over a decade. Yet, Aoun’s renegade army and movement, which adopted the
name at-Tayyar al-Watani al-Hurr (Free Patriotic Movement, or FPM), maintained two
qualities that would enable its continuation and eventual prominence in Lebanese poli-
tics: (1) a legacy of violence and (2) a large and loyal following that preserved that
legacy.
Following the 2005 Cedar Revolution—the series of popular demonstrations that
ended with the expulsion of Syrian occupation forces—Lebanon reinstituted democratic
elections. Aoun, having once eschewed politics as ‘unnecessary,’ entered the political
arena to advance FPM’s interests (Harris, 2006). Beginning with the 2005 elections,
Aoun harnessed FPM’s legacy of violence and large support base and translated it into
electoral power—providing his party with the most seats in Lebanon’s unicameral
Chamber of Deputies of any Christian party, including longtime adversaries LF and al-
Kata’eb al-Lubnaniyye (Kataeb, or the Lebanese Phalanges). By 2009, FPM held the
largest role in Lebanon’s ruling government, and by 2016 FPM firmly led the govern-
ment, with Aoun ascending to the presidency. A picture, now immortalized, shows Aoun
upon election as Lebanon’s 13th President, at a victory podium with arms raised in imita-
tion of shooting two guns in the air.1
In an electoral setting, even defeated militant organizations can live on and potentially
win, so long as they have the numbers to get out the vote. Further, organizations like
Aoun’s FPM that thrive off of a history of violence can draw on such legacies not only
to mobilize proud supporters (Acosta, 2014a; Crenshaw, 1981) but also to discourage
rivals and adversaries from attempting to exclude them from electoral and political pro-
cesses. In this latter regard, legacies of violence empower organizations with a deterrent
capacity. In this article, we contend that if a defeated militant organization preserves a
large support base and legacy of violence, it can potentially apply its militant legacy to
secure participation in electoral politics and, once it has done so, use its large support
base to win a political victory.
The literature on political violence and the transition of militant organizations to polit-
ical parties lacks a paradigm or large-n study that addresses the phenomenon of militant
organizations losing militarily but coming back to win politically. We aim to fill this gap
To continue reading
Request your trial