Social Control in Civil Wars

Abstract

The primacy of territorial control in theories of civil war has advanced our understanding of war dynamics, most notably lethal violence, but has hindered our understanding of the distinct ways in which armed groups seek control over people. We propose to complement territorial control by separately conceptualising social control, which we define as the extent to which armed groups have access to people and their resources. Access to people requires different tactics compared to access to territory, because people are mobile. We develop a framework in which state and non-state armed groups choose whether to prioritise territorial or social control first in order to gain sovereignty, which requires both territorial and social control. Alternatively, armed groups choose to pursue territorial control or social control only, resulting in corridors or social networks, respectively. We illustrate the advantages of the framework by showing how it allows us to analyse armed groups’ tactics to control access to people, to connect research agendas on armed group violence, governance, and civilian displacement, and to better conceptualise armed group power and strength.