The urbanization of insurgency : shifts in the geography of conflict
Name
671488840-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
7.19 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
cd135d9948509cd41fc7bd9b0859e05f
Author(s)
Calluzzo, Nicholas T
Advisor(s)
Roger Petersen.
Alternative Title
Sifts in the geography of conflict
Date Issued
2010
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
The 20th century witnessed the steady decline of the ability of states, particularly great powers, to defeat insurgencies. During the same period, the world has become both more populous and more urban. As people have taken to the cities, so too have insurgents increasingly made battlefields out of urban areas. This study has sought to determine the impact of urbanization on insurgency outcomes using a post-war dataset of insurgencies. It has predicted that urbanized insurgencies favor the insurgent by facilitating concealment and cover, nullifying the relatively power differential enjoyed by states, and providing them with an abundance of soft targets useful for undermining the counterinsurgent's legitimacy. Although constrained by a number of data limitations, the results demonstrated that more urbanized insurgencies were a significant challenge to counter insurgents. By partitioning the dataset by insurgency type, the study was able to determine unique predictors of conflict outcome for each type. Urbanized insurgencies are particularly hard to defeat when the counterinsurgent is a foreign occupier, more democratic, and the insurgency has external support. Rural insurgencies become more difficult to defeat the more linguistically diverse the population. Furthermore, by increasing the number of conflict casualties, rural insurgents can particularly benefit from rough terrain.
Description
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2010.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-74).
Subjects
Political Science.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science
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