Violent Non-State Actors

From Anarchists to Jihadists

Ersel Aydinli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138598409
• eBook ISBN: 9781317201212
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Given the importance of violent non-state actors (VNSA) and their evolving role in global politics, dynamic frameworks of analysis are needed both to trace historical trajectories in the evolution of violent non-state actorness and to identify emerging patterns by examining modern day cases.

This book examines the defining characteristics and evolutionary dynamics of VNSAs, and introduces a framework based on their autonomy, representation and influence providing a comparative analysis of the late 19th and early 20th centuries' Anarchist movement and the modern-day Jihadist network. It explores the distinct characteristics of the Anarchists and Jihadists as VNSAs with global potential, not just describing them, but also seeking to understand what they are instances of. With a longitudinal analysis, the book also considers the types of changes that have occurred in the past 150 years and the possible role VNSAs may play in current and future power polity shifts away from states toward non-state actors. It concludes with both theoretical implications for the study of non-state actors and transnational relations, and practical implications for government agencies or private groups tasked with finding ways of countering such violent non-state actors.

This important book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, political science, and terrorism/security studies. It will also be of interest to practitioners in the security services including think-tank analysts and government security analysts.

1
Tracing violent non-state actorhood in global politics

A framework for analysis

How important are non-state actors? Well, one non-state actor, the Jihadists, with the help of another non-state actor, Fox TV, were able to bring the great American superpower into a war against all kinds of other shadowy non-state actors. I guess that answers the question.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, May 2011, Ankara, Turkey

Introduction

Power in global politics is shifting in at least two distinct ways. The first is in a geographical sense, with power moving from certain traditionally strong states or regions, such as the West, or Europe, to other states and regions, for example, the East, or Eurasia. More interesting though, perhaps, is a parallel shift in the power of polities,¹ this one from statehood to non-statehood, or from the pre-dominance of the state as the primary pillar to which international relations has been both practically and conceptually bound, to the rising importance and centrality of non-state actors and transnational relations.²

The second of these shifts is arguably more transformative in terms of the effect it is having on the nature of global politics. Geographical shifts still constitute changes taking place within the state system, so while the names of the dominant actors may be altered, the basic patterns of practices and behaviors can be expected to remain more or less the same. A polity shift, however, is a substantially different kind of change, with potential effects that we still know relatively little about. Not only are the numbers and types of actors proliferating beyond states, but with these new actors’ increasing involvement in transnational politics, even the most principled traditional concepts and patterns of relations can no longer be counted on as building blocks for scholarly inquiry or speculation. For example, a concept such as Anarchy, upon which so much of modern international relations scholarship was built, may be seeing a qualitative change to a form that is more raw and, indeed, ‘Anarchic’ than in past understandings; non-state actors may not react in predictable ways to traditional state behaviors, such as to acts of deterrence; and it remains unclear what happens to classic patterns of alliances or balancing when non-states begin to take a role.

Even though such a shift has occurred before in the not-so-distant past,³ our understandings of what it means, the context in which it is occurring, and the nature of the actors driving it, remain dispersed and in that sense, limited. The starting point to understanding the shift lies arguably in further conceptualization of its primary actors—non-states. For international relations, the ‘state,’ and the (fairly) common understanding of what it was and what it meant, has long provided a pillar around which scholarly inquiry could be built up. Whether in a positive or negative sense, whether the state is your punching bag or your main-stay, it has provided some kind of clarity and a reference point against which, or to which, scholarship can refer. When it comes to non-state actors however, we have far less comprehensive research on what they are, how they interact, and how they may be changing over time. If we accept that a polity shift is occurring, we must develop a deeper understanding of this form of agency. Only with such understandings can we begin to fully analyze the implications of this shift for our existing knowledge of global affairs, from the implications for basic concepts like Anarchy or sovereignty, to those for basic patterns and practices, such as alliance building or power transitions.

This book aims, therefore, to provide a framework for discussing the potential role in global politics of one particular form of non-state actor. Violent non-state actors, many of which are the most overt challengers to states’ authority and dominant position in world affairs, may have a uniquely stimulating role to play in the shifting of power polity, and therefore are the focus of this framework. Two cases of violent non-state actors are highlighted, the Anarchists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the Jihadist network of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as popularly associated with al Qaeda and, recently, the Islamic State. By defining broad criteria for understanding violent non-state actors, the book further intends to provide a means for evaluating violent non-state actorness and for exploring its potential in global politics.

Violent NSAs and the power polity shift

Research on the transnational realm and a polity shift toward non-state actors (NSA), is often still very much statist inspired, in the sense that its ultimate aim has often been to explore the possible declining role of the state.⁴ Ironically, given that goal, when there is consideration of NSAs in this work, there is often less attention paid to the violent non-state actors who arguably pose the most direct challenges to state authority. This tendency may be because the authors of these works are more likely to come from a liberal strand of international relations theorizing, and thus their attention is drawn to the more benign actors, issues and activities, such as transnational activists,⁵ advocacy networks,⁶ and NGOs.⁷ Moreover, such research has also generally focused more on western-originated and developed-world groups and activities—and in doing so has left relatively under-considered the ‘other’ (e.g., the developing world, Eastern originated) entities and activities, which comprise many of the current non-benign groups with potential impact on transnational power shifts.

Another possible reason for the negligence of studying violent NSAs (VNSAs) as the agents for a broader expansion of the political universe is that malign non-state actors and activities have traditionally been marginalized by International Relations scholars overall. Instead, in the world of International Relations, VNSAs have generally been relegated to the sub-area of terrorism studies or to studies on organized criminal activities. Works seeking to understand the role of VNSAs and how they relate on a more conceptual level to the international system and to global politics remain still limited, though some more have begun to appear, particularly after the events of 9/11.

Among these efforts to explore VNSAs and their implications for global politics are those works that have sought to identify and define NSAs and actorness overall (with VNSAs as a part of this),⁸ and works showing how NSAs have interacted both with states and within the larger environment to mobilize strength and project power.⁹ To make fuller sense of the diverse literature on VNSAs and their role in a polity shift away from the state, we can broadly categorize it into works with a power-centric starting point, and those with a threat-centric analysis.

Power-centric images of violent non-state actors

‘Power-centric’ inquiries refers broadly to those works attempting to explore the shift in power polity from the statist international realm to the non-statist, transnational one and, in particular, to the latter’s most unruly actors, by offering frameworks for understanding these activities or by suggesting typologies of the actors themselves. A well-known example of such a framework is that proposed in Josselin and Wallace’s volume, in which their understanding of NSAs’ role in a power polity shift is revealed in their distinguishing between transnationalism and transgovernmentalism. By focusing on the former, NSAs’ power source is seen in transnationalism, while transgovernmental entities are confirmed as remaining, to some extent, under state control.

Some have viewed these emerging threats and power sources as the continuation of “informal violence,”¹⁰ others have characterized them as the “privatization of war”¹¹ or as a new kind of warfare.¹² Still others have explored the emergence of “private authority”¹³ in global politics, a heading which includes the conceptualization of “illicit authority” for malign examples,¹⁴ and the idea that security is now being transformed from a service provided by the state to being a “market good” for those who can afford it.¹⁵

With power and authority often being used interchangeably in this literature, it is possible to look at various typologies of authority to gain insights into the divergent natures of non-state power. For example, according to Hall and Biersteker, “private authority” refers to something that is obviously not a state itself, but is also not “state-based, nor state created.” Rather, private authority is defined as “institutionalized forms or expressions of power” that are legitimate in the sense that there is “some form of normative, un-coerced consent or recognition of authority on the part of the regulated or governed.” They go on to divide types of private authority into three: (a) market, (b) moral, and (c) illicit. Figures and collectives of “illicit authority” are those NSAs that are motivated by either financial gain or political purposes.¹⁶ The primary examples for the illicit authority category are groups using terrorist tactics (often motivated by political motives), transnational criminal groups (driven by profit), and some mercenaries whose services are not transparently documented, thus distinguishing them from more formal privately contracted security services.¹⁷ If politically motivated, such groups are likely to adapt asymmetric strategies¹⁸ via the transnational space to wage their battle against states and the state-centric system.

The illicit authorities’ relation with the state and state system are in obvious stark contrast to that of the ‘market’ or ‘moral,’ or, essentially, non-violent NSAs. Multinational corporations (MNCs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), for example, are often very much intertwined with the state. The former in particular, are likely to try and maintain good relationships with states—they pay taxes, and may lobby their own statespeople in order to insure positive relationships with other nations where their subsidiaries are located. Even for so-called non-governmental organizations, the boundaries with the state-centric world are often not well separated. Many NGOs still use governmental monies, (take, for example, NGOs supporting the development of democracy), and frequently rely on statist support in other ways as well, for example, to provide security when an NGO is trying to function in an unstable region. The distinction can also be seen on the issue of ethical self-restraint—a trait more likely to be lacking in violent NSAs. MNCs, NGOs, and other forms of market or moral private authorities, are still under some restraint from international norms and peer pressure, whereas illicit authorities not only face the least amount of such ‘ethical’ pressures, but also have the most compelling motivation to explore new (even unethical) ways to ensure their own survival.

Clearly, individuals and collectives of illicit authority are the most independent of the NSAs, but even among them there may be varying degrees of loyalty and affiliation to the state. Organized criminal groups, for example, as long as their financial interests are secured, may still remain loyal to their states, leading to one description of organized criminals as those trying to take advantage of the malfunctions of the state system while still living within it.¹⁹ Politically driven examples of illicit authority on the other hand are often seeking expressly to overthrow a state or the state-system at a broader level.²⁰ Because of this, they face particularly harsh statist efforts aimed at their destruction. Such examples seem to represent a kind of extreme autonomy, meaning not just being separate from the state, but being actively in conflict with it—a distinction that could also be described as ‘passive’ versus ‘active’ autonomy. One might speculate that so-called ‘active’ or ‘extreme’ autonomy could contribute in a Darwinian sense to increased adaptability among these entities, since their autonomy makes them truly on their own, and may force them to put themselves and their own survival needs before all others. If they view their environment as truly “jungle-like” and unreliable, might they be compelled to become particularly self-reliant and innovative?

Rather than looking at the different types of non-state authority, other works have opted to consider the dynamics of actual power transition from states to non-states, identifying such different contexts as those in which a lack of public authority leaves a void that is filled by non-state newcomers; or, particularly within the economic realm, contexts in which certain ideological positionings (e.g., the popularity of neo-liberal economic ideas) aim to reduce the extent of public power.²¹

In looking at the conditions under which public to private power transition may occur, the argument has also been made that when a state becomes convinced that certain non-state activities are of benefit t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1 Tracing violent non-state actorhood in global politics: a framework for analysis
• 2 The Anarchists
• 3 The Jihadists pre-9/11
• 4 The Jihadists after 9/11
• 5 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index