Intrinsic Social Incentives in State and Non-State Armed Groups

How do non-state armed groups (NSAGs) survive and even thrive in situations where state armed groups (SAGs) collapse, despite the former’s often greater material adversity? We argue that, optimizing under their different constraints, SAGs invest more in technical military training and NSAGs invest more in enhancing soldiers’ intrinsic payoffs from serving their group. Therefore, willingness to contribute to the group should be more positively correlated with years of service in NSAGs than in SAGs. We confirm this hypothesis with lab-in-the-field and qualitative evidence from SAG and NSAG soldiers in Nepal, Ivory Coast and Kurdistan. Each field study addresses specific inferential weaknesses in the others. Assembled together, these cases reduce concerns about external validity or replicability. Our findings reveal how the basis of NSAG cohesion differs from SAGs, with implications for strategies to counter NSAG mobilization.