ABSTRACT This study extends the previous literature on multiparty mediation by examining how the composition and structure of multiparty mediation affect the prospects for mediation success from a social network perspective. There is little, if any, existing literature that systematically investigates how combined mediation efforts by IGOs, NGOs, individuals and states influence the outcome of intrastate conflict resolution. Accordingly, this study examines the performance of what I term the ‘multiparty mediation networks.’ My analysis of annual relational data on multiparty mediation in the period 1946–2004 reveals that a coordinated, e.g. dense, multiparty mediation network is more successful than an uncoordinated mediation network.

ABSTRACT Despite sharing similar conditions for conflict onset, not all peripheries become violent. What explains uneven conflict outcomes across borderlands? I argue that territorial saliency, particularly a territorial dispute involving a hostile neighbour, shapes conflict paths through selective state-building mechanisms. Conflict is proofed in the contested areas where it poses a credible exit threat to a hostile neighbour, as national leaders prioritise territorial consolidation by accommodating frontier minorities. Conversely, peripheries without such pressures are neglected, inducing conflict to emerge. To illustrate this argument, I compare two adjacent borderlands (Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland) in India’s northeast, using archival materials documenting early state-building efforts.

ABSTRACT Post-civil conflict demobilisation research usually focuses on rebel disarmament and overlooks the non-state militias that helped incumbent regimes retain power. Despite being allied to the government, pro-government militias can pose a long-term threat to the state if not eliminated or integrated. We argue that post-war militia management politics are driven by structural factors and elite concerns for regime survival. Quantitative analyses show that post-war pro-government militias survive longer in autocracies compared to when democratic regimes have defeated a rebellion. The findings paint a more complete picture of armed group demobilisation and have implications for post-war repression, democratisation and conflict recurrence.

ABSTRACT Exploring the governance of intimacy of the Maoist insurgencies in India and Nepal, the article aims to offer a window into this intimate social constitution by comparing the governance of marriage and sexuality, thereby examining the inherent contradictions in radical violent politics. Based on fieldwork in Nepal and India and employing ‘critical feminist curiosity’ as a theoretical framework and methodological tool, it offers a comparative analysis of rebel politics of intimacy. By exploring intimacy within the rebel group as a locus of progressive politics, this paper contributes to feminist security studies, feminist international relations and rebel governance scholarship.

ABSTRACT What would we learn about rebel governance and civil wars if we included women and took their labour, participation and experience of wars seriously? Much literature in this field is implicitly as well as explicitly gendered, privileging male experiences and knowledge. This Special Issue therefore aims to broaden our theoretical, conceptual and empirical discussion by exploring the role of women’s labour and participation in underwriting, restricting or legitimising rebel governance and civil wars. It will do so by tracing women’s gendered work in and experience of rebel groups across different civil war settings, and in post-war settlements and processes.

ABSTRACT What are the legacies of defeat? This article examines the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), a rebel movement which fought a 27-year long civil war against the Angolan state until its military defeat in 2002, and traces its strategies of legitimisation during and after the war. Focusing on the alternative imaginary of the Nation upon which UNITA constructed its social base, I argue that the legacies of defeat depend on the ability of armed groups to keep alive the narratives that supported their struggle and articulate them with shifting local realities in the post-war environment.

ABSTRACT This article explores the potentialities of memory workshops for studying civilian agency in violent settings. Drawing from field research with campesino communities in Colombia, it provides a description of the workshops’ implementation process, including creative tools such as memory web creation, collective drawing of timelines and exploration of emotional biographies. Through these activities, campesinos reflected on the embodied and discursive relations within their communities, evoking experiences and practices of wartime. The article highlights the limitations of conventional research methods and proposes memory workshops as a methodological alternative that foregrounds the co-production of data, facilitating the emergence of localised knowledge and self-authorship.

ABSTRACT The recruitment and use of children by armed groups continue to threaten the effective protection of children. Preventive approaches to child protection, call for robust early warning mechanisms that do not only focus on the recruitment and use of children, but capture the root causes and vulnerabilities of both boys and girls for recruitment. A comprehensive early warning mechanism for prevention requires a gender-sensitive approach. This paper seeks to examine the gender dynamics of the recruitment and use of children by armed groups, and how that can inform a gender sensitive data collection and analysis to improve early warning.