Civil wars are often analyzed as contests between two coherent sides: the state and the rebels. This framing obscures the relationships through which wartime politics unfolds. Armed actors form alliances, compete, fragment, and govern. Civilian communities and institutions resist, cooperate with, accommodate, or mediate among armed actors. External patrons and intermediaries reshape local relationships by providing resources, recognition, and influence. These relationships do not merely reflect conflict. They shape patterns of violence, organizational trajectories, and political order during and after war.
This open panel brings together research on three sets of relationships: those among armed actors, those linking armed actors to civilian communities and institutions, and those connecting local actors to external patrons and intermediaries. It welcomes papers using diverse theoretical and methodological approaches. Relevant questions include: How do alliances and rivalries form, persist, and change? How do actors’ relational positions shape their strategic behavior, use of violence, organizational cohesion, and governing practices? How do civilian actors navigate their relationships with armed actors through violent or nonviolent resistance, mediation, tacit cooperation, accommodation, or acquiescence? How does external support reconfigure coalitions and local distributions of power? How do interactions among armed and civilian actors shape the use of coercion, claims to legitimacy, and the exercise of wartime authority?
By treating rebellion as embedded within wider relational configurations, the panel connects research on relations among armed groups, civilian agency, and external intervention. Together, these perspectives help explain why some conflicts escalate while others exhibit restraint, why armed coalitions endure or fragment, and how forms of wartime rule emerge and shape postwar political order.
