Clients, Rivals, and Rogues: Why Great Powers Intervene in Revolutionary Civil Wars

Why do great powers intervene militarily in revolutionary civil wars? This pivotal question in international relations is answered though a new theory of security hierarchies that emphasizes the role of clients, rivals and rogues in world politics. Employing a mixed-methods approach, integrating statistical analysis with comprehensive case studies of Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, this book demonstrates that great power interventions are significantly more constrained and predictable than previously assumed. Role theory and frame analysis further exhibit how the status of other states within a great power's security hierarchy influences interventions. The findings provide a lucid account of great power behavior, offering critical insights for scholars and policymakers interested in the international dimensions of intrastate conflicts. Clients, Rivals and Rogues shows that the strategies that underpin great power interventions and provides crucial lessons for the management of regime conflicts, one of the most common and deadly forms of political instability today.

Erin K. Jenne is a Professor of International Relations at the Central European University in Vienna, where she teaches courses on mixed methods, ethnic conflict, nationalism, populism and foreign policy analysis. Her first book, Ethnic Bargaining: The Paradox of Minority Empowerment (2007), won the Mershon Center's Edgar S. Furniss Book Award for making an exceptional contribution to the study of national and international security.

Milos Popovic is a Data Analyst at Booking.com in Amsterdam. His research focuses on civil wars and terrorism, and on using R to map and analyze big data. NodeXL has recognized him as a Top 10 data visualization and R contributor on Twitter, and he is an expert in DataViz.

David S. Siroky is a Professor of International Relations and the Director of the Violence, Conflict, and Security Lab at the University of Florida. He is co-author of Defection Denied: A Study of Civilian Support for Insurgency in Irregular War (Cambridge University Press, 2022).