Department of Political Science

Professor Cyanne Loyle has been awarded a NSF to pursue a new scholarly agenda on the topic of rebel governance.

The NSF award, in collaboration with Kathleen Cunningham at the University of Maryland, will address a critical need of our research into the diverse nature of rebel political institutions and the relationship between rebel organizations and the citizens they represent/control. Through the organization of a scholarly workshop Loyle and Cunningham seek to address the following central questions: under what conditions do rebel actors attempt to (and subsequently succeed) in providing governance to civilians? How and when do rebels attempt to create and maintain legitimacy within local populations? What are the varieties and determinants of rebel political structures? The long-term goal of the project is to enhance the capacity of conflict studies to address the growing global challenges associated with internationalized rebel organizations and transnational terrorism. Groups, such as IS/ISIS, Boko Haram, and Al Shabab, are growing in their global reach and level of violence, while work on how these organizations are governed, make political decisions, and respond to their domestic and international constituencies is still in its infancy. The workshop will result in the future collaboration of scholars working in this field to enhance our overall learning and research outputs on this topic and will directly engage the policy community to this end.