Actor Fragmentation and Civil War Bargaining: How Internal Divisions Generate Civil Conflict

The research argues that the 'unitary actor assumption' in civil war studies overlooks the critical role of internal fragmentation. By analyzing self-determination movements from 1960 to 2005, the author finds that movements with more internal factions are significantly more likely to experience the onset of civil war and to remain in active conflict. This is attributed to the fact that multiple factions create uncertainty for states regarding the movement's preferences and capabilities, and make it difficult for any single faction to provide a credible commitment to a settlement.

• Internal divisions within opposition movements increase the probability of civil war onset because they exacerbate information problems and uncertainty for states regarding what concessions would satisfy the movement.
• Fragmented opposition movements face significant credible commitment problems because factions often act independently and lack political institutions to regulate their interactions or ensure compliance with agreements.
• Empirical analysis of self-determination movements between 1960 and 2005 shows that more fragmented movements are significantly more likely to see the onset of civil war and to be engaged in active conflict in any given year.
• The impact of fragmentation is substantively large: moving from the minimum to maximum values of the logged number of factions leads to a 23% increase in the probability of civil war onset and a 37% increase in the likelihood of being in civil war in a given year.
• The assumption that opposition movements are unitary is empirically inaccurate; over 90% of the studied self-determination movements exhibited internal divisions at some point, and 85% experienced changes in the number of factions over time.
• Including opposition fragmentation in predictive models of civil war onset increases the area under the curve (AUC) from 0.63 to 0.70, indicating a significant gain in predictive power.

APA

Cunningham, K. G. (n.d.). Actor Fragmentation and Civil War Bargaining: How Internal Divisions Generate Civil Conflict. Peace Research Institute Oslo. https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/1f4c7b40-c3c6-47af-a139-e6a9a11146a7/Actor Fragmentation and Civil War Bargaining How Internal Divisions Generate Civil Conflict.pdf?inline=true

Chicago

Cunningham, Kathleen Gallagher. Actor Fragmentation and Civil War Bargaining: How Internal Divisions Generate Civil Conflict. Peace Research Institute Oslo, n.d. https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/1f4c7b40-c3c6-47af-a139-e6a9a11146a7/Actor Fragmentation and Civil War Bargaining How Internal Divisions Generate Civil Conflict.pdf?inline=true.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Cunningham |first1=Kathleen Gallagher |title=Actor Fragmentation and Civil War Bargaining: How Internal Divisions Generate Civil Conflict |publisher=Peace Research Institute Oslo |url=https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/1f4c7b40-c3c6-47af-a139-e6a9a11146a7/Actor Fragmentation and Civil War Bargaining How Internal Divisions Generate Civil Conflict.pdf?inline=true |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{cunninghamndactor, author = {Cunningham, Kathleen Gallagher}, title = {{Actor Fragmentation and Civil War Bargaining: How Internal Divisions Generate Civil Conflict}}, institution = {Peace Research Institute Oslo}, url = {https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/1f4c7b40-c3c6-47af-a139-e6a9a11146a7/Actor Fragmentation and Civil War Bargaining How Internal Divisions Generate Civil Conflict.pdf?inline=true}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }