STAY THE COURSE OR BACK OUT? UNDERSTANDING VARIATION IN REBEL COMMITMENT TO PEACE PROCESSES

Rebels exhibit significant variation in their commitment to peace processes. While existing scholarship often treats rebels as unitary actors, this approach fails to capture the internal dynamics that significantly influence this variation. In this dissertation, I argue that rebel organizational structure shapes their trajectory through the complex stages of peace processes, resulting in varying commitment to these processes. To explore this, I develop a new conceptual framework, viewing peace processes as a series of interconnected stages, each with distinct characteristics and a crucial emphasis on the timing and sequencing of events. I then integrate this framework with organizational theories of rebel behavior, drawing primarily on Historical Institutionalism (HI), to demonstrate how path dependency and existing institutional structures within rebel organizations influence their responses to peace processes. Specifically, I examine how the interplay of centralized power and internal cohesion shapes the nature of rebel leader-member relations. These relations, in turn, shape how rebels navigate peace processes. Within this integrated framework, I identify the transition to the formal stage of peace processes—from secret talks to official negotiations—as a critical juncture. This juncture presents a window of opportunity for institutional adaptation in leader-member relations, as the shift from clandestine operations to public engagement necessitates changes in leadership styles, communication, and internal decision-making. How rebels adapt, or fail to adapt, their internal institutions governing leader-member relations at this juncture leads to divergent trajectories of rebel commitment. These trajectories, influenced by contextual factors, established path dependencies, and the specific ways in which leader-member relations are organized and adapted, explain the observed variation in rebel commitment to peace processes. Using an in-depth case study of the Taliban’s commitment to the Afghan peace process, complemented by comparative perspectives from the Free Papua Movement’s (OPM) commitment to the Jakarta-Papua peace process, the Kurdish Workers’ Party’s (PKK) commitment to the Turkey-Kurdish peace process, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia’s (FARC) commitment to the Colombian peace process, I inductively develop my theory. The dissertation provides new insights into rebel decision-making during peace processes, offering substantial conceptual, theoretical, and empirical contributions to scholarship. The findings offer crucial insights for peacebuilding practitioners, highlighting the need to understand and address internal rebel dynamics for more effective interventions that promote lasting peace.