Measuring the competitive communicative constitution of insurgencies and their opponents

ABSTRACT We introduce a method to measure the socially constituted strength of an insurgency and its state opponent as they compete for recognition as a governing body, based upon the four flows theory of the communicative constitution of organizations. We validate our method using a RAND data set of 30 recently concluded insurgencies, and find that our method not only predicts the ultimate victor in all 30 conflicts, but also refines previous analyses of the pattern of conflict by reducing the number of parameters necessary to forecast outcomes and grounding these observed trends in the intersection of organization and communication theories. Our results reveal the criticality of an organization maintaining an aura of cohesive structuring while avoiding to appear more oppressive than its opponent.