Project description
How governments engage with constituents of non-state armed actors
While much of the literature focuses on the military aspects of conflicts, it often neglects how governments engage with the constituents of non-state armed actors (NSAAs) to sever their ties to them. The ERC-funded COUNSTER project aims to create a framework for examining government strategies against radicalisation, insurgency and terrorism, focusing on the role of NSAAs’ constituents. It will model the causes and outcomes of countering efforts and explore the mechanisms that influence their success beyond military power alone. This project will assess the effectiveness of strategies targeting NSAAs. It will analyse interactions among the government, NSAAs, and constituents, aiming to improve understanding of counterterrorism strategies and provide tools for better conflict resolution.
Objective
COUNSTER introduces a novel triadic framework to investigate government strategies for combatting radicalization, insurgency, and terrorism by focusing on the role non-state armed actors’ (NSAAs) constituents play in conflict processes. While the literature extensively addresses military aspects of conflicts, how governments strategically engage with NSAAs’ constituents during a conflict to sever the ties between the two (hereafter referred to as to counster / counstering, a term coined within this project) has been widely neglected despite its prevalence. COUNSTER addresses this gap by arguing that we should turn our focus towards modeling the causes and outcomes of counstering efforts and investigate the mechanisms that render those strategies successful, or not, given that military power is neither the only, nor the most effective tool in governments’ arsenal. By employing a constituency-centered perspective, this novel approach also allows ascertaining the effectiveness of both attractive and repressive strategies targeting NSAAs’ constituents in fight against radicalization, insurgency, and terrorism.
COUNSTER aims to offer a theoretical breakthrough to conflict studies by adopting a unique and comprehensive approach that centers on the interactions within the government-NSAA-constituency triad. This will be achieved by embracing a holistic view accounting for triadic actor interactions via mixed-method comparative analyses at both macro and micro levels, complemented by original observational and experimental data. COUNSTER will allow us to reach a systematic understanding revealing the causal pathways behind the success and failure of counterterrorism/insurgency (CT/COIN) strategies, and hence, provide a toolkit for scholars and practitioners to better understand and explain the dynamics of conflict resolution and termination as well as design more effective policies.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
06800 BILKENT ANKARA
Türkiye
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