The origins of Islamist insurgencies: the social-institutional foundations of an ideological shift

Thesis

Islamism has become the predominant ideology of civil war in the post-Cold War order, and yet its significance for civil wars remain poorly understood. At the macro-historical level, it is unclear why it was Islamism, rather than something else, which replaced socialism as the foremost counter-hegemonic ideology among Muslim would-be revolutionaries. At the micro-level, there are no satisfactory explanations for why some rebel groups adopt Islamist ideology while others do not. This thesis is an attempt at theory-building to explain the historical rise of Islamism among rebel groups, through an inductively-derived theory of how group-ideology is determined by the process of mobilisation at the micro-level.

I do this by tracing the trajectories of Islamist groups from their pre-war social-institutional origins to the point of rebellion. I compare three sub-national regions which experienced Islamist rebellions to eight regions which did not in Somalia, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Russia. To this end, I argue that societies which do or do not experience rebellions can be distinguished according to their pre-war social landscape. This is defined by the degree to which the capacity for violence is fractionalised among multiple actors, and how capable governing institutions are at providing public goods.

I show, first, that ideological choice among rebel groups is strongly constrained by organisational legacies and the process of mobilisation. Second, that the ideological contours of a rebellion is defined by the types of pre-war networks which are best positioned to mobilise in response to a conflict-issue. Third, that broader processes of modernity in all cases undermined pre-existing institutions, paving the way for religious institutions as providers of welfare and security, implying a shift in social capital which made Islamist mobilisation viable. Fourth, the outbreak of violence represents a clash between such local experiments in religious governance, and states which seek to impose institutional uniformity. Finally, I provide a classification of pre-war social landscapes and argue that different mechanisms are tied to each landscape-type. I use this to set out a new agenda for studying both ideology and civil war, and the origins of civil wars more broadly.

Authors: Naghizadeh, MH

• DOI: 10.5287/bodleian:r1J2pdxxE
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Somalia; Islamism; Chechnya; rebellion; Pakistan; Civil War; insurgency
• Subjects: Political violence; International relations