09:30 - 11:10
P1
Room: Club B
Panel Session 1
Kirby Goidel - Perceptions of Threat and Public Support for Military Alliances
Nihad Aboud - Globalisation of Islamist conflicts: Drivers of affiliation with transnational networks of global jihad
Alexander Sorg, Julian Wucherpfennig - Foreign Military Deployments and Free-Riding in Alliances? Unpacking the Micro-Mechanisms
Andrew Long - Democracy, the Democratic Community and Military Alliances
Globalisation of Islamist conflicts: Drivers of affiliation with transnational networks of global jihad
P1-02
Presented by: Nihad Aboud
Nihad Aboud
University of Essex

This paper answers the question why do some locally oriented groups of Islamist militants affiliate with networks of global jihad (AQ or IS) while others not. The benefits and costs of such affiliation have been addressed in the literature, but an attempt to theorize the variation in the behaviour of these groups and their decisions is still missing. The main argument that I propose lies in legitimacy seeking rationale. Given the importance of legitimacy for armed groups for status, success, and sustainability, I argue that when national/local Islamist militants run into a legitimacy deficit at the domestic level, they try to substitute for such shortfall at the external transnational level by affiliating with a network of global jihad like AQ or IS. I propose four factors that affect and indicate the legitimacy of militant groups at the national level: provision of social services, level of crime involvement (kidnapping), group age and group size. I test my argument quantitatively, using time-series cross-sectional data on 168 groups, over the years 1998-2016, including 37 affiliate groups. The results of the analysis show that groups that provide public services are less likely to affiliate with networks of global jihad, whereas groups that engage in kidnapping, and are of small size are more likely to affiliate. The findings of this paper contribute to a current theoretical debate related to the transnational nature of conflict and inter-group alliances and have important policy implications as they shed light on the dynamics governing the increase in global jihadism