Concluding Remarks

Abstract

The great variety of findings in this book, all sustained by fine-grained empirical research, implies two straightforward yet intellectually frustrating statements. First, no single, undisputable causal mechanism emerges to explain individual enlistment in violent groups. Second, the organizational forms that non-state armed groups take are shaped by a multiplicity of complex and intertwined factors, leading to very diverse outcomes. Some organizations are extremely violent, others are not; some last long, others do not. Although analytical modesty is a necessary lesson from what precedes, ordering and articulating the respective conclusions of this book is not an impossible task. This is what we try to do below. We organize our concluding remarks in three sections. The first concerns the ways combatants make decisions in volatile and dangerous circumstances. The second discusses the drivers of non-state armed groups’ organizational dynamics. The third section tentatively addresses the difficulty of making sense of the empirical variations in forms of organized violence.