How the “Internal Brakes” on Violent Escalation Work and Fail: Toward a Conceptual Framework for Understanding Intra-Group Processes of Restraint in Militant Groups

Abstract

This article advances the emergent literature on restraint within militant groups in three ways. First, it offers a framework for situating the “internal brakes on violent escalation”—understood as the practices through which group members shape the outer limits of their action repertoires—in relation to the interplay between conflict dynamics, intra-group processes and individual-level decision making. Second, it develops a basic analytical strategy for examining how such brakes operate at different levels of proximity to potential or actual instances of escalation. Third, it sets out four types of mechanisms through which internal brakes appear to generate or enable restraint.