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Why do some insurgent groups escalate violence to higher-intensity insurgencies or civil war? We explore this question among 140 insurgent groups worldwide across various thresholds of armed conflict. We argue that the main drivers of escalation are insurgent networks and domestic resource mobilization. Findings show that territorial control and engagement in criminal activities to finance operations are key factors associated with insurgent-inflicted battle deaths. The number of insurgent alliances, however, is the strongest determinant of higher-intensity armed conflicts. State counterinsurgency strategies also play an important role. Many of these insights support an exploratory look at rising insurgent violence in West Africa's Sahel region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some militant groups wage sustained insurgencies while other groups do not? To address this puzzle, this study uses a resource mobilization framework and quantitative regression analyses of 246 prominent militant groups featured in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) from 1970-2007. Findings show that proxies for organizational capacity and constituency dominance are better predictors of sustained insurgencies than traditional measures of group capabilities, diverging from current explanations of insurgency onset and outcomes. An insurrection led by a single group is the strongest determinant of a sustained insurgency, suggesting that rival consolidation plays a key role in the nascent stages of an armed conflict. While rarely achieving ultimate objectives, this study finds that religious militant organizations are associated with a higher likelihood of waging sustained insurgencies. Hub-spoke structured groups, with relatively decentralized command and control, are similarly as likely to sustain insurgencies as hierarchically structured groups. There is no single model that can explain particular militant group trajectories and counterinsurgency campaigns require context-specific analysis. However, this study presents generalizable empirical associations across diverse militant groups to examine an underexplored outcome of interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]