Salient Cleavages, Tactical Cooperation and Violence between Armed
Groups in Yemen
Abstract
Existing scholarship ignores relational interdependencies when
attempting to understand the behaviour of non-state armed groups during
civil war. This paper investigates the in- terconnected web of alliances
and rivalries in the Yemen Civil War to answer the following question:
why do armed groups fight each other? We employ a network approach to
investigate determinants of intergroup violence. This emphasises the
role of identity, arguing that operating in salient cleavages
necessitates that groups align or distinguish themselves from each
other. We further argue that informal cooperation incentivises violence
the longer the war continues. These arguments are tested using pooled
Exponential Random Graph Models to account for endogenous structures
over time. Results indicate that shared identity is a significant driver
of hostilities, moderating cooperation and amplifying the effects of
group attributes. Robustness checks and simulations demonstrate that
network models more accurately capture the underlying mechanisms to
predict fighting in this case.