Pardee Students Published in Cornell International Affairs Review
Three students from the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University – Regina Acosta (‘22), Guthrie Kuckes (‘22), and Anne Malin Marie Schuemann (’21) – published an article in the Fall 2020 issues of Cornell International Affairs Review on the rise of “hybrid insurgent groups” in failed/failing states.
The article, titled “Hybrid Insurgencies After State Failure: Case Studies of the Taliban and Mexican Cartels,” explores a shifting focus in international relations and comparative politics towards a rise in anarchy in connection with international organized crime. The authors argue that traditional, binary classifications of insurgent groups is insufficient; while groups are motivated by greed or political gain, such a simple classification undermines their statues and how they came to be.
By using the drug cartels of Mexico and the Afghani Taliban as case studies, Acosta, Kuckes, and Schumann examine how “hybrid insurgent groups” behave, react to state actions, and rise to prominence following state failure.
An excerpt:
We believe that defining systems of binary oppositions—occasionally growing into larger systems of discrete oppositions—is futile. As we researched this paper, we witnessed again and again how numerous authors either tied themselves into knots trying to fit insurgent groups into a number of discrete categories of anti-state violence, or otherwise simply gloss over the complexity of insurgent groups. However, this simplification alone is insufficient, and rigid, binary-opposition based theories are likewise inadequate to explain a growing number of hard-to-categorize insurgent groups.